getaways

Of Treehouses and Trails

Creative Kidstuff on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Whatever the Weather.
The Lynn Meadows Discovery Center's Treehouse
Village keeps kids occupied in three dimensions..
Touch. Talk. Climb. Have fun … Wait; they don’t sound like the rules for visiting a museum! But they are if we’re talking about the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center, a playground for young minds on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Since 1991, this hands-on children’s museum in Gulfport has been breaking the rules of traditional museums by putting the emphasis on the audience, not the objects—an approach that has garnered it a reputation as one of the top fifty children’s museums in the country.

Maybe it’s appropriate that the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center should be built in and around a 1915 school building, because inside and out, this is a place for learning. Exhibits simulate the real world of South Mississippi. Inside, kids can walk in another child’s shoes in the exhibit “What It’s Like to Be Me” or fly to Mexico on the LMDC jet. Kids who enter the Mississippi History Hotel find themselves back in the 1890s. There’s a “Port” exhibit for loading bananas with cranes and fishing for shrimp; the exhibit “It’s a Matter of Science” is a chance to touch a tornado, make magnetic sculptures, and even understand a pulley … fully; there’s a wetlands experience, a TV newsroom; a very popular indoor climbing structure, and a pint-sized café called the Pelican Porch & Bayou Bait Shop where the kids get to do the cooking.

Out of doors, this museum keeps the discoveries coming with a huge Tree House Village and six acres of grounds to explore.

And should you still have the energy …
Twenty minutes north of Gulfport on Highway 49, the Tuxachanie National Recreation Trail offers an unspoiled introduction to the DeSoto National Forest. Administered by the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, the Tuxachanie is a twenty-two-mile hiking trail that begins along the path of an abandoned railroad, meaning you can take in as long or as short a section of it as you like. Along the way the trail, which is primarily designed for hiking, traverses tupelo and cypress swamp, savannah, and ridges of longleaf pines cut through with stands of palmettos. The Tuxachanie is part of a 170-mile trail system that traverses the 378,000 acre De Soto National Forest, with offerings for hikers, bikers, horse riders and ATV people. The Tuxachanie Trail can be accessed from three different trailheads: Highway 49 north of Saucier, the Airey Lake Recreation Area, and the P.O.W. Lake Recreation Area. The primary trailhead is located 2.5 miles north of Saucier, Mississippi, on the east side of Highway 49. You can camp anywhere along its length so long as you set up more than 100 feet off the trail.

DETAILS. details. DETAILS.

Lynn Meadows Discovery Center
246 Dolan Avenue, Gulfport, MS 39503
(228) 897-6039 or www.lmdc.org
10 am–5 pm Tuesday—Saturday.
Closed Sundays 7& Mondays
Admission: $7
Tuxachanie National Recreation Trail
Primary trailhead: 2.5 miles north of
Saucier, Mississippi, on the east side of Highway 49. No fees.
 For more information contact the
Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service:
De Soto District: (601) 528-6160
www.fs.fed.us/r8/mississippi/desoto