This year I decided to take my dad to the Reynold's museum for Father's Day, and it was a wonderful choice. I had been to the museum once before, on the weekend they held their harvest festival, and it was quite different on a regular weekend Sunday. The museum is located a short drive from Edmonton in Wetaskiwin, and is easily located using the signs in the Wetaskiwin area. On our weekend the museum was pleasantly quiet, giving us lots of space to read panels and play with the interactive exhibits. The museum does a great job of presenting local auto and farm history in a way that is interesting and fun, and it really is cool to see how cars have changed over the years in Western Canada. A tour through the museum took us about an hour, and we moved through at a fairly quick pace. You could spend more time if you watched all the videos they have available.
We also had lunch in their cafe. If you are thinking you may need food while visiting the museum, definitely check out the cafe. I was pleasantly surprised by how good my chicken burger was, and pleased that it was prepared fresh after I ordered it instead of just being warmed out of a cooler. The cafe is located in the back of the museum and the views of the surrounding farm fields are quite pretty. One of the highlights of our visit was the car tour from the main museum to the Aviation Hall of Fame. A volunteer picked us up in a restored car from the 1950's and drove us around a short tour of the large equipment they have out in a field and told us a bit of the history of it. This was included in admission and was very enjoyable (also fun to ride in a classic car!). The Aviation Hall of Fame was neat, but we moved through it quickly. There isn't as much interactive content, and my dad and I didn't feel like absorbing the large amount of reading material available.
Finally, I would highly recommend the harvest festival weekend. The fields around the museum are harvested with vintage farm equipment, and staff and volunteers are available to explain how things work. There are also tons of activities, with things like making bread, grinding flour from wheat and churning your own butter. When I visited with a group of friends for the harvest festival we were there for a solid 3-4 hours and we barely were able to take everything in. The Reynold's Museum is a wonderful addition to the great activities available in Alberta, and well worth a visit. read more