Duke Lemur Center and Museum of Life and Science: One Day in Durham, NC with Kids

Travel date: May 28, 2018

I first heard about the Duke Lemur Center maybe two years ago, and I’ve been a little obsessed with finding a way to get there ever since. So when we needed a good place to stop in between home and Washington, DC, of course we picked Durham. LEMURS!

This is Elvis Presley. We were told he’s not a very friendly lemur:

The Duke Lemur Center is home to the largest population of lemurs outside of Madagascar. They offer a number of different public tours, depending on the composition of your group, your budget, and your level of interest in lemurs; we went for the basic Lemurs Live! tour, an overview that takes you around to some enclosures to see and learn about 9 different species of lemur. This tour is $12 for adults and $9 for kids 3-12.

If you want to get more up close and personal with lemurs there are a whole bunch of different, much more expensive options that include behind the scenes tours and chances to see more of the property and the lemurs who aren’t in enclosures (this makes for much better pictures, I imagine….that shot of Elvis up there is the only one of mine that turned out at all worth saving. Darn bars). Someday we won’t have a 5 year old anymore and we’ll go back for more lemurs.

The tours do fill up, so make sure you book yours in advance.

It was a rainy day overall, but the rain mostly held off until post lemur tour:

Back at the gift shop, we bought a t-shirt for Milo, a stuffed lemur for Abe, and, of course, this sticker for Big Blue:

Then we went to get lunch and discovered that nearly every restaurant in Durham is closed on Memorial Day. We finally found a Mexican place downtown that was okay, and from there we headed to the Museum of Life and Science.

We’d been here before, a few years ago, but it was much too hot that day to explore many of the outdoor exhibits. So we made that our priority this time, despite the drizzly rain that was falling the whole time.

Incidentally, one of the reasons we decided to go here was that the museum participates in the ASTC reciprocal program, so we thought we’d get in for free with our local science museum membership….it turns out they only allow in four people under the reciprocal benefits, so we had to pay for two of our kids. But still a good deal, of course. Just a head’s up.

We spent a little while in the indoor exhibits, gawking at alligators and sitting on tiny chairs:

And then we headed out to see the farmyard:

….where a lot of the animals were sort of huddling in the buildings trying to stay out of the rain….

…and then spent a very long time at this fabulous tree house area, climbing up all the wet and slippery ramps and having a great time:

And then Abe spent some time in the little creek play area:

And climbed on some giant stumps:

And that was the end of our rainy Memorial Day in Durham. You can also read about the awesome Conservators’ Center that we visited last time we were in the area here.

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