5 Places to Take Kids in Nebraska

The world’s largest indoor desert and the nation’s biggest indoor rain forest are only the beginning of the attractions family travelers can enjoy while traveling through Nebraska.

Omaha’s 160-acre Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium brings various environments to life for kids as they meet tropical creatures and plants in the Lied Jungle and get up close to cactus in the Dome Desert. In Kingdoms of the Night, they can enter a world of animals rarely seen in daylight. In the aquarium, everyone loves walking through the underwater tunnel while sharks swim overhead.

Kids will find plenty to do at Omaha Children’s Museum, too, where science and technology are explored through interactive exhibits and hands-on experiences. In the summer, beat the heat in the Splish-Splash Garden, part of the museum’s outdoor exhibit space.

At Lee G. Simmons Conservation Park & Wildlife Safari in Ashland, you can drive and walk through a landscape populated by local wildlife you would rarely get to see in the wild. Get close to elk, deer, bison, wolves, bear, and even prairie dogs and eagles.

Visiting Strategic Air Command and Space Museum in Ashland will be of more interest to older kids, with its emphasis on space exploration and aircraft employed by the space program. Along with spacecraft, you’ll see airplanes and missiles and explore all things space related in the changing special exhibits.

Don’t miss seeing some of Nebraska’s natural wonders, especially the 350-foot-high Chimney Rock. Along with being a dramatic geologic formation with its tall sandstone spire, Chimney Rock is a National Historic Site. It was an important landmark for pioneers headed west in the 1800s, and the landscape looks much as it did to those travelers in covered wagons. You can walk to the rock on an unpaved roadway to get a sense of what travel was like for the pioneers.