Juliette M.
Yelp
I'm a sucker for cool museums and this one might be small, but it is definitely worth a visit. We've been here before, but it was a number of years ago while they were renovating the museum. At the time the monument was still open and they were doing presentations in a tent, sitting under the tent was extremely uncomfortable though, being August.
This time, we visited on an incredibly rainy day. The ranger at the gate told us that 90% of the complex is outdoors and we could turn around and leave if we want, since it was pouring down rain. But since we had seen the outside things before and missed the museum, we decided to just go ahead and visit the museum and kept our receipt so we could return within 7 days if we wanted to come back and see the outside things.
Cost to enter is $10 for adults, free for children. I don't remember off the top of my head what the age is for children to get in free, but I'm sure it's listed on their website. The museum is wonderful! It isn't very big but they have a topo map of the area, as well as a room with a timeline of the Wright brothers lives and endeavors. The centerpiece of the museum is a life sized model Wright flyer. All around the model is information about how it works and how the Wright brothers developed it. The real highlight of the museum for us was the ranger who did the demonstration and presentation. He did a quick demonstration of how the Wright flyer moves, and then about half an hour later, he did a full presentation of their lives and journey to be first in flight. It was fantastic, the ranger was very engaging and it's always nice to hear an engaging presentation rather than having to read and digest all that information rapid fire.
We were able to go outside briefly during a break in the rain. Immediately outside of the museum is the area where the Wright brothers lived and worked on their flyer after bringing it down from Ohio. They have a "runway" of sorts showing markers for the take-off point and then points of landing for their first, second, third, and fourth flights. That is all within very easy walking distance of the museum.
The final section of the complex is the big memorial up on the hill and the metal recreation of the scene which you can walk to, but most would probably prefer to drive. There are two parking lots at the base of the hill and you can walk up the hill to the monument. On the other side of the monument is the metal scene, it features the flyer, the brothers, and the other individuals who were present, all cast in metal and set up there for you to take pictures with. We saw this in the past but this time we just drove around it and stayed in the car because it had started raining again.
If you've never been here before you should definitely visit.