Yesterday I told you about our trip to see the Spider-Man exhibit at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.

And I need to devote a post to the museum itself.

It’s really an amazing place.

It’s huge - it’s almost overwhelming - but it is very worth your time if you’re making the trip.

It’s not super-convenient to downtown Chicago - it’s not right off the train - it involves a train and a bus or just a bus ride.

We Ubered.

I’ll tell you what would have been great, though, if I hadn’t just run a marathon - it’s right along the lake and there’s a bike/running path that goes all the way down there and that would be an excellent way to get to the museum on a nice day.

And you can easily spend the day there.

There’s kind of a centerpiece exhibit with a model of Chicago and Seattle illustrating the history of that railroad route. (I liked looking at the model but my brain was a little post-marathon so I didn’t retain a ton of non-Spider-Man information. I’m a sucker for a city in miniature.)

We spent a bunch of time in the weather section - there were some pretty interesting exhibits around wave movement and the impact of weather, as well as some solar-powered stuff.

I took a hard pass on some of the human body displays.

There was a plane exhibit that was pretty interesting, and we walked through some NASA stuff - I don’t know why I never really grasped this before but some of those Apollo missions were in such tiny crafts.

I’d never been all that interested in space exploration in my life…maybe I’ll start looking into that now.

The museum had a lot of separate places where you had to pay extra to access - I think there are a couple of theaters, but there was also a submarine exhibit that I think had a separate admission.

We did not pay more other than to see Spider-Man.

There were some pretty good gift shops - I controlled myself in the Spider-Man exhibit gift shop and then in the museum shop I got a Spider-Man exhibit magnet and a Griffin Museum mug that has a nice ‘Chicago’ written on one side. I’ve used it almost every day since I’ve been back. (The last thing I need to get after any trip is a mug but [a] I liked this museum so much I wanted to support it with a purchase and [b] what can I say I like a good mug.)

There is certainly no shortage of stuff to do in Chicago - a lot of it is centered in the area around Grant Park.

I don’t know that if I hadn’t gotten those targeted ads about Spider-Man I would have ever thought of visiting the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.

But having been there and seeing how much there is to do there…well, next time I go to Chicago I wouldn’t rule out going back.