A lot of Calgary’s interesting tourist attractions are either outside or involve some form of hybrid outdoors walking. Not wanting to lose all my ex­plo­ra­tion time to the relentless rain that has been pummeling (and on some occasions, flooding) Calgary since my arrival, I decided to find an indoors ac­tiv­i­ty and stumbled across a music museum inside Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre.

One of the first sections by the entrance was closed due to a special event, but the rest of the museum was open. The museum was a fairly traditional mixed-media interactive museum, with a lot of displays, lots of audiovisual material, a lot of opportunities to go hands-on, and a lot of text explaining the history and science behind the various musical topics.

There was a little section about the early 2000s in a chronological timeline that featured Avril Lavigne, which I obviously got very excited about because of how obsessed I was with her as a teenager. It’s not often that Avril Lavigne gets an entire spotlight to herself, but then I realized and remembered that it was because she is Canadian and was born in Ontario.

Unfortunately, the day that I visited happened to coincide with what appeared to be an elementary or middle school field trip, so the museum was flooded with children the entire time I was there. This was unfortunate for some of the hands-on activities, as there were always kids occupying all the stations. When I did manage to find an open station to play a guitar, the guitar was greasy… so I promptly put it down, upon which a hawk-eyed little girl swooped in and immediately took my spot.

I definitely would’ve enjoyed the museum more if I had a bit more peace and quiet to thoroughly experience everything that was available, but it was still a nice visit, and definitely something unique and uncommon when it comes to topics of museums. Admission was “pay what you can”; I paid the recommended CA$15, but if you take a visit and have unlucky timing like I did, they would let you in for free for a subsequent visit to pick up where you left off.

On one of the rainy days during my stay in Helena, Montana, I found myself an indoor activity to do—visit the Montana Historical Society.

Apparently a visit to the Montana Historical Society is usually done as a two-part trip, the first to the museum that I visited, and the second to the O­rig­i­nal Governor’s Mansion on Ewing Street. Unfortunately, I woke up pretty late and had some time-sensitive work to get done, so I had a little bit of a late start to my day and didn’t have enough time to visit both before closing time. However, I still got a thorough walk through the entire museum por­tion.

Overall, I’d say that this was probably one of the most cookie-cutter, textbook museums you can find. It focused in on a topic (Montana history), had a lot of exhibits on display behind locked glass, had a few videos playing on screens, and had a decent amount of text explaining the various different ex­hib­its.

My favorite part of the museum was on the second floor, which was actually more of an office floor than it was a museum floor, but there was one ex­hibit by the stairway. Apparently this is a white buffalo (not entirely albino, but close), which is very rare.

Because of how rare it is, scientists monitored it closely and ensured it would be of extra good health. This additional support meant that the buffalo grew far beyond its regular life expectancy, and once it died of natural causes, it was taxidermically stuffed for preservation and turned into an ex­hibit at this museum. You can tell how old it was because of how much hair it lost—I guess buffalos bald too, just like humans.

While hiking at Spring Meadow Lake State Park (photos of which I’ll probably share in a Montana round-up blog post, because there aren’t many), I no­ticed that there were some strange sculptures out in the open in the distance. Curious, I looked up what was in that general direction on Google Maps and found the Archie Bray Foundation, which appeared to be some kind of school and museum that’s open to the public.

When I went to visit the following day, it didn’t quite go as planned—the building with the exhibits was closed, the studios had signs that said they were not open to the public, and the sales center (which I think was open?) had a sign on the door that said that masks were required for entry, regardless of vac­ci­na­tion status, without exception. This reminded me of a restaurant I saw in Texas that said “No masks allowed. Yes, it’s political.” … Except, the op­po­site, obviously.

As you may have guessed, I am a normal human being who has not even touched a mask for months except for when going on a plane, and I didn’t have a mask with me, so I chose to honor their wishes and did not enter. Luckily, there was a lot of stuff outdoors that I could still check out.

As I got close to the back of the property, things got weirder—there were more buildings, but they all looked abandoned and were falling apart.

Further still, there were random things built on the outskirts of the plot of land, all of which seemed to not really make any sense. For example, there was an area that had a massive pile of what appeared to be scrap bricks, but then it looked like someone had just randomly climbed to the top of the dis­carded pile and built a furnace.

In summary, I have absolutely no idea what in the world I witnessed. It was very strange experience, but still a pretty amusing use of half an hour.

As my second tourist activity in Gillette, I visited the Campbell County Rockpile Museum, a museum mainly focused on local Gillette and Wyoming history. It wasn’t quite as impressive as the Frontier Relics & Auto Museum, but I noticed that the Rockpile Museum still made a bit of an effort to make at least half of the museum a lot more immersive and realistic than many other museums I’ve seen.

There were four “sections” to the museum. The first, main area was the main building, which was laid out more like a traditional museum.

While I was there, I also encountered a lot of kids who were dressed up in old attire. When I asked about them to one of the front desk attendants, he told me that one of the local schools likes to do immersive experiences where kids dress up and pretend like they’re living in a certain time period, and part of that experience involves coming to the museum and looking at some of the relics from the time period that they’re studying.

The second section was two smaller buildings that acted as classrooms for the children. Apparently the larger one was in active use at the time, but I got to peek into the smaller one; it resembled a fairly normal classroom, and I didn’t see anything particularly notable about it.

The third section was the newest section, and was the section that had more immersive experiences. This section focused a lot more on Gillette’s ev­o­lu­tion in particular. There were recreations of the various places that used to exist in Gillette, and one section of one of the walls was dedicated to show­ing how much Gillette had grown as a city through maps and satellite imagery.

Finally, the fourth and final section was outdoors and had all the larger exhibits, primarily focused on what appeared to be farming equipment and trains.

I personally think this museum is geared more towards locals to learn about how their city and state came to be what it is today, and less about at­tract­ing and impressing tourists. With that being said, if you’re a general history enthusiast, I think this museum would be a nice stop to check out some of the neat little relics from the past.

The most efficient path from southwest South Dakota to southern Montana was through Wyoming, so I made yet again another trip through Wyoming, mak­ing it my third visit to the state—the first across the south, the second through the southeast corner, and this time through the northeast corner. My first stop was at Gillette, Wyoming.

One of the most recommended tourist attractions in Gillette was the Frontier Relics & Auto Museum, and after visiting, I definitely agree. Although it might seem strange, I’m pretty sure that this museum is actually my all-time favorite museum, even after having visited nearly 40 states at this point and having gone to major museums and tourist hotspots in each one.

The Frontier Relics & Auto Museum is very special in that, on first look, it is very disorganized and chaotic. However, that is precisely why it is such an amazing museum. Stepping inside makes you feel completely immersed in that time period (which I think was somewhere around the 1940s to 1960s—I don’t know for sure because I am not a history enthusiast and know very little about history). Everything around you makes you feel like you’re actually a real person living real life in that era.

Most museums will take relics from the past, organize them in straight rows and columns, lock them behind a glass enclosure, and label them. Instead, this museum spreads them out all over the place out in the open. For example, there is a section that is built like a mechanic’s shop, and it looks like you’re walking through the shop shortly after a mechanic finished working on a car, placed leftover parts back on the counter, put work orders on their desk, and threw their gloves on top of their toolbox.

I feel like this premise would only ever work in a small town like this, because if a major museum in a major city did this, I know for a fact that it would be absolutely destroyed by children (and likely even have a lot of the relics stolen by deviant teens and adults). However, I’ve noticed that the culture out in the “middle of nowhere” places like this is much better than big cities, and I’ve noticed that people have much more kindness, integrity, and respect for each other, so it’s nice that this museum is taking advantage of that to give its visitors an amazing time.

If you ever find yourself passing through Gillette for any reason, I highly recommend that you take a stop to visit this museum. The experience that you’ll get from it is very unique and one-of-a-kind.

(As a disclaimer, even though I share a lot of neat things and positive experiences from my travels, I rarely ever call something the “best,” so I feel the need to clarify here that this actually is my personal honest opinion and that I was not compensated in any way for this review, nor do I plan to accept any compensation or other benefits after-the-fact.)

For my final activity of the Rapid City area in South Dakota, I decided to visit the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, officially in Box Elder, but with an Ellsworth Air Force Base postal address and just outside the Ellsworth AFB secure entrance.

As I’ve mentioned before, I know very little to nothing about aircraft, apart from just general information about commercial planes from major United States airline carriers that I ride to get to different places in the country. Because of this, I can’t really give much specific information about the planes that I saw. To make matters worse, the actual museum was closed on the day I visited due to a private event, so I was only able to look at the planes parked outdoors and had very limited information.

With that being said, one of the more obscure supplementary reasons why I continue to go to air museums is actually because I personally think I am not very good at photographing aircraft, and one of the best ways to get better, apart from doing research and learning from someone who is already good at it, is to keep trying and practicing and analyzing your work to identify ways you can improve.

So, come along on my aircraft-photographing journey where I try out various different angles, perspectives, and crops to experiment with what makes the most visually-appealing capture. I’ve also included a couple photos of the visible innards of a few aircraft, in case you somehow stumbled across this post as an aircraft enthusiast and actually know what you’re looking at, unlike me.