Screens out, mummies in
Visit Baton Rouge has a passport that turns "I'm bored" into a summer project— mummies, castles, science and all.
A week into summer vacation and you already know how this goes. The controller hasn't left one kid's hands. Another is somewhere in a numbing phone scroll. The summer imagined in May has arrived, only to reveal itself as a long Tuesday.
When they say there's nothing to do, you now have an answer.
The setup: Visit Baton Rouge offers a free Museum Passport that sends families roaming the city, checking in at local cultural sites via GPS and earning a prize at the end.
The sites include:
- LSU Museum of Art—mummies, real ones.
- Old State Capitol—Gothic architecture that reads like a castle. Let them see it that way.
- Baton Rouge Gallery—contemporary art that opens a door to a bigger creative world than the one on their screens
- Knock Knock Children's Museum—hands-on science for the younger set
- LSU Rural Life Museum—Louisiana history you can walk through, not just read about
The one thing to know: The passport is free to download, but it does not cover admission or offer discounts at participating museums. Budget accordingly before you load them in the car.
The bottom line: A summer in which a child stands inside a 19th-century Gothic statehouse and comes face to face with a mummy is, by any reasonable standard, an improved summer. The passport strings together those small revelations, one check-in at a time.