ArcaMax

Take your daughters to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame (www.cowgirl.net) in Fort Worth, Texas, the only museum in the world dedicated to the women of the American West, where they can saddle up on a life-size model of a bronco.

Even if you can't visit on National Museum Day, spend a fall weekend or a day off from school exploring some place you've skipped in favor of bigger cities and bigger attractions like:

-- The Kansas City Toy and Miniature Museum (www.toyandminiaturemuseum.org) with the world's largest collection of antique toys and marbles. Buy an old-fashioned toy (gyroscope maybe) to take home.

-- In Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge National Historic Park (www.valleyforge.org), there's the Stoogeum (www.stoogeum.com), the world's only museum dedicated to the Three Stooges, and the Elmwood Park Zoo (www.elmwoodparkzoo.org), home to one of the largest open-air bald eagle exhibits in the country. There's also the chance to get close to bison and elk.

-- Try Reiman Gardens at Iowa State University (http://www.reimangardens.iastate.edu/) in Ames, Iowa, where there's plenty of room for your kids to run and jump and explore some 27 sculptures created from nearly 500,000 LEGO bricks that will be there until the end of October. Reiman Gardens, by the way, is the first public garden in the country to display LEGO sculptures -- some nearly eight feet long!

-- The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (www.nationalcowboymuseum.org) in Oklahoma City, Okla., where kids will love the chuck wagon and bunkhouse exhibit and there's a special micro website just for them, complete with games and songs.

-- See art created from toothpicks, a 55-foot-tall WhirliGig and, opening in October, All Things Round at the American Visionary Art Museum (www.avam.org) in Baltimore, Md., where kids love eating at Mr. Rain's Fun House.

In Sioux Falls, I loved that kids could experience art just by walking or taking the free trolley around town. Artists loan sculptures to the annual sculpture walk with subjects ranging from Girls Can Do Anything to Solar Harmony. Locals then vote on their favorites, which the city then purchases.

At the city's Falls Park -- the Falls of the Big Sioux River drop as much as 7,400 gallons of water 100 feet over the falls each second! -- parents and kids climbed the pink-hued rocks and biked on the trail that loops 19-plus miles around the city.

I didn't see one grumpy face. And that says a lot.

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For more Taking the Kids, visit www.takingthekids.com and also follow "taking the kids" on www.twitter.com, where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments.

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