I always like to look for ways to break up trips, particularly on the ride home when everyone might be a little sad to come back to reality. It gives us something to look forward to while we are packing up from our family fun. On our way home from Wintergreen, we stopped at the Chesterfield location of the Children's Museum of Richmond.
If you have a membership to the Children's Museum of Virginia, you get free admission! (You may remember we went to the other location a few years ago and had some issues with our pass from our Children's Museum. The woman claimed there was no such program despite its being on the website... but at this location we had zero problems!) It was a perfect way to break up the trip and give the boys some time to run around and play.
I was so impressed with the constant cleaning from volunteers from their Children's Hospital. I've never seen anything like it. Each family is given a two hour time slot to enter with limited tickets sold. There is a bus and a fire truck, berry and apple picking, a grocery store, a bank, water play and more. Items in the grocery store and restaurant were prebagged for play with each individual family. Once done you bagged them back up and put them into a bin for cleaning. A few things were closed including the indoor play place, and we could tell that there were some things like weighing fish at their bait and tackle shop that had been taken out, but overall we had a blast and I'm so glad that they were open.
A quick tip, this museum is literally inside of a strip mall. We thought for sure that our GPS had taken us the wrong way when we pulled into a back parking lot facing a dumpster, but sure enough one turn later it was right in front of us! We checked out their gift shop too and found a few things for upcoming birthdays at a reasonable price. I also loved all of the quotes and facts about children and play on the walls throughout the building. Check it out if you are in the area!
