After our morning’s adventure at Sunny Jim Cave and La Jolla Cove, we still had a few hours to kill before they would turn the water back on at our house. So we headed to Balboa Park.

Balboa Park is one of my favorite places in the world. It’s a beautiful park, right in the middle of the city. Our world-famous zoo is there, along with a bunch of museums, gardens, and performing arts centers. It’s a really fun place to explore, and easy to spend a day there.

Tuesdays are especially cool at Balboa Park, because some of the museums are free to county residents and military. There’s a rotating schedule—different ones are free each week—so before we left the house we checked to see which ones were free that week. We almost decided on the Museum of Man, an anthropology museum which is one of my favorites, but since Brenda doesn’t live in the county she couldn’t get in free, and the admission to that one is steepish. We decided the Mingei International Museum would do very nicely instead. It’s a museum of art from cultures all over the world and looked really interesting.

Plus the Nikigator is outside the Mingei. Whee, art that kids are encouraged to climb all over! Even the moms got in on the fun.

That’s a tiny little me, reflected in each one of those shiny marbles. Too bad I’ll be in Omaha during all of the next 7 Days run.

Inside the Mingei (which is well worth the price of admission) the best thing we saw saw this project called Fisch Out of Water. It was a display of wire jellyfish, hung from the ceiling. I especially got a kick out of the fact that some of the jellyfish were crocheted.

There were tons of cool, interesting, unique pieces of art in this little museum. Unfortunately, most of it is tempting to small children’s hands. It didn’t help that some of the art looked a heck of a lot like benches and tables. There were security guards hovering everywhere, reminding us anxiously not to touch the art. It’s not like Brenda and I were ignoring our kids, either, we were right on top of them reminding them to keep their hands behind their backs so they wouldn’t forget and touch anything.

Brenda and Bug and I could have stayed much longer than we did, drifting from room to room and leisurely examining our favorite pieces. Annalie was champing at the bit to get back outside, though. And we didn’t want to end up on the wrong end of town at rush hour.

On the way back to the car we stopped by the organ pavilion, thinking the kids might like to run across the stage. Annalie decided she needed to climb over each and every row of benches on her way to the stage. Okay then.

Bug made a beeline for the stage and sat on the edge, dangling her feet while she watched Annalie climb the benches. Once Annalie got there, the real fun began.

Annalie and Bug danced and ran and chased each other around that stage for a good twenty minutes or more. Brenda and I sat in the front row and enjoyed a break. We stayed until we noticed that the girls had apparently worn themselves out and were having a quiet chat on the stage, then herded the girls toward the parking lot, making vague plans to go back one Sunday for the free organ concert. Not only did we make it home before traffic got too gnarly, but when we got there the water was back on two hours ahead of schedule.

Go see the cave we’d been meaning to see for years? Check. Climb all over festively-tiled giant alligator statue? Check. Crocheted wire jellyfish? Check. Let kids burn off excess energy before going home? Check. Expose children to local geography, wildlife, and culture? Check, check and check. Tourist Tuesday? Win!