Two Days in Cincinnati with Kids and Teens: In which we become the World’s Biggest William Howard Taft Fans

travel dates: July 2021

Despite fond childhood memories of watching WKRP in Cincinnati in syndication, I had never spent any time in Cincinnati aside from passing through on the interstate. So when we found ourselves passing through again on our way home from Detroit, we decided to stop for a couple of days and see what it had to offer aside from 80s sitcom nostalgia.

We stayed at the FMCA campground near the city, and I’ll talk more about it in another post…but it’s a great option for FMCA members.

Cincinnati is one of those stops that we’d almost made on other trips in the past (we were going to pick our trailer up here in the spring, for example, but ended up having it delivered closer to us), so I already had a big list of things we wanted to see. The American Sign Museum was at the top of that list. It’s just what it sounds like…a museum full of signs of all sorts, and it’s a lot of neon and nostalgia-fueled fun.

 

Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for students and seniors, and free for kids under 12. They’re also part of the NARM association of museums, so we were able to get free reciprocal admission through that. They have a strict photo policy and don’t allow photography equipment other than cell phones and tablets, so you only get iPhone photos in this post. But it’s so bright with neon that they turned out surprisingly well!

They offer an audio tour if you want to learn so much about the history behind all these signs, but you can also just wander and gawk, which is the approach we took. It’s a quick stop, particularly if you’re not doing the audio tour; allow an hour or two.

Longtime blog readers will know that we never pass up a president’s house, so we were excited to learn that William Howard Taft grew up in Cincinnati and that his childhood home is now a National Historic Site. And if you’re looking to expand from presidents’ house to Supreme Court Justices’ houses, you’re in luck, because William Howard Taft was both! Taft is perhaps most famous for the apocryphal story about how he was too big to fit in the bathtub in the White House, but it turns out that there are things about him that are even more impressive and interesting.

We started at the visitor’s center, watched the movie, checked out the small exhibit area, and picked up a junior ranger book for Abe. And then headed over to the house; it’s a self-guided tour, but the ranger stationed there gave us a thorough introduction to the first couple of rooms and answered questions before turning us loose to explore on our own. Part of the junior ranger book is set up as a sort of scavenger hunt in the house:

This lamp is pretty cool:

Some of the rooms in the house are restored to look like they would have during Taft’s childhood, and others are more museum style documenting various parts of his career.

And you can have your picture taken with Taft! Note that he really doesn’t look too big for a bathtub.

We finished up by turning Abe’s book so he could get his badge, and taking advantage of the smoking hot sale on t-shirts they had! Apparently they had overestimated how much demand there would be for commemorative merchandise from the site’s 50th anniversary that had happened two years earlier, and they were still trying to unload t-shirts from it. I think they were $5 each, and we bought five. As you can imagine, the kids get a lot of attention when they go out somewhere in matching William Howard Taft National Historic Site t-shirts. I’m just kidding. They don’t do that.

We were all a little surprised by how much we enjoyed this site and by how likable we found Taft. Definitely worth a visit! And another pretty quick stop; you should be able to see everything in under two hours. There’s no entrance fee.

We had been itching to get to the Cincinnati Zoo to meet Fiona the hippo in person ever since we got to know her online during the early days of covid. We’d always heard such great things about the zoo, but, honestly, it wasn’t our favorite zoo. We probably hit it on a bad day, but I think it was the most crowded zoo we’d ever been to. The parking lot was a good hike from the entrance, and then we waited in line for a very long time before we even managed to get inside, and then it was tough to see any of the more exciting animals that well because everything was so crowded. Also it was hot, which isn’t the zoo’s fault. I don’t have a picture of the line to get into the zoo, but here’s the line to get on the train later. So crowded!

Still, we DID get to see Fiona, though we had a lot of company:

We tired of the crowds and spent some time with the less exciting animals…or maybe they were just more off the beaten path? (because there are penguins in this picture, and what’s more exciting than penguins?!) Anyway, the less crowded places:

And, finally, we headed to the Cincinnati Museum Center. This is an old train station that now houses a science/natural history museum, children’s museum, and history museum (and is again an active Amtrak station after a period where the station moved elsewhere). All three are part of the ASTC reciprocal network, so it’s a great place to visit if you have that membership. And even if you don’t; we were surprised by how much there was to see here and how much we enjoyed it. But, I mean, you really can’t go wrong with museums in an old train station! It’s a very cool setting:

We started with the science museum and visited the dinosaurs:

And enjoyed the ice age walkthrough:

They have a really cool looking cave exhibit, but, alas, it was closed while we were there. There’s also a big space section.

We didn’t have time for the children’s museum (we ended up wishing we had a lot more time to spend here; we had an afternoon, but could easily have stayed a full day), but moved on to the history museum. And, again, were blown away by how extensive it is and how much we liked it. Who knew we were so interested in Cincinnati history?! That’s what I often find with these local/regional history museums, though–sometimes they’re very staid and old fashioned and not particularly engaging; other times they’re so well done that they really suck you in to the history of an area you didn’t even know you wanted to learn more about.

There’s a giant, room-sized model of the city:

this cool streetcar where you can go on a simulated ride:

and then, just when we thought were pretty much at the end, we came to this area with a life-size reproduction of a riverboat and a city street from Cincinnati’s frontier days. I was charmed!

And that wraps up our quick visit to Cincinnati! We all really enjoyed it, and I hope I’ve convinced you that there’s a ton to do there (including lots of stuff we didn’t get to) and that it’s well worth a visit.

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