Autry Museum - More fun than you'd think

It's October and here in Los Angeles we are on "Storm Watch." Which means that it's rainy, the freeways are a mess, newscasters are running about in yellow slickers and stay at home moms are desperately seeking indoor activities. Today we spent the morning at the Autry Museum in Griffith Park and I was pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed it.

Being neither a fan of Westerns nor horses, I was not expecting much, but today (second Tuesday of the month) was free day at the museum so I decided to give it a try. Most of the museums around Los Angeles have one free day per month and depending on the museum, free day can be a mad house-- lines of school field trippers, hordes of stroller pushing moms, but we lucked out and the museum was relatively quiet.

I'm sure many people have the same impression that I did, that the museum is some sort of tribute to Gene Autry, but in fact the Autry Center "explores the experiences and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West." It has exhibits on immigrants, Native Americans, the gold rush, etc. but we focused on the toddler friendly areas, meaning we skipped the photographs of Native Americans and spent an inordinate amount of time trying on cowboy hats. Baby M and his friend Baby K sat on a saddle and while watching themselves superimposed on old westerns, ran around a re-creation of an old west street, looked at classic cowboy toys from the 1950's, sat in a stagecoach and played in a 1930's era replica of a Chinese immigrant family's home. We spent a few hours at the museum, had a snack and then headed home. It's not the kind of place where you'd spend all day (unless your kid really, really likes cowboys), but it was a nice way to get out of the rain for a few hours.