Armed with his Batman jacket and Elmo sippy cup, my son, Charles, stood outside the car giddy with excitement. Today he was going on an adventure to Baton Rouge (ok, so maybe he thought he was going to the zoo) but we knew he was going to have fun regardless. So after buckling him in–surrounded by enough toys to last the hour drive to our destination–and clicking the baby’s car seat into place, we set off on our journey.

Mid-morning traffic wasn’t terrible, and we made good time getting to our first turnoff at Essen Lane. We had been to the Rural Life Museum before, back during our college years, but never to the adjacent Windrush Gardens–and never with kids. I’ve found that I discover everything anew when I revisit a place with my toddler, whose interests (and eye-level) are very different from my own.

As we drove down the winding road that led us back to the museum, we marveled at how we felt completely set apart from the city, although we were smack dab in the middle of it. In the time it took me to unload the baby, Charles was already climbing a massive column from Louisiana State University’s original Hill Memorial Library. My husband chased him inside the Visitor Center, where he took a whirlwind tour of the old carriages while we paid our admission.

Ox at the Rural Life Museum

The woman at the front desk informed us that the ox outside had just been fed a pumpkin, so I let my husband poke around the museum while the kids and I went to peek at the giant animal. We heard the ox before we saw it, its deep moo overpowering the air around us. I can’t recall ever being face-to-face with an ox before, and as he gave me a hard, unblinking stare, I understood the awe and fear that was showing in Charles’ eyes.

Another young boy shrieked at the ox and broke the trance he had caught us in. James, who turned out to be a year older than Charles, was a fearless child and laughed at our timidness around the beast. His enthusiasm was catching, and Charles and he became instant friends, inseparable the rest of the time at the museum.

Acadian home (built pre-1805)

Aside from the ox, the outdoor section included 32 buildings illustrating a working plantation and folk and Creole architecture. While James flitted from one structure to the next, Charles followed him in lockstep. They posed for pictures in the outhouse, raced across wooden porches, pointed out the pint-sized “Charlie chairs” that furnished many of the buildings and fished with their stick fishing poles in a small bayou.

Windrush Gardens

I was most impressed by the simple, yet beautiful church, while my husband the gardener saw great potential in the winter Windrush Gardens that promised a multitude of spring flowers. An accidental turn led us to a lovely lake before we made our way back onto the map and through the maze of the plantation garden. James offered us some comic relief when the “squirrel” attacking him, which elicited some high-pitched screams from the once fearless toddler, turned out to be a strand of moss caught in the heel of his shoes.

After a tearful goodbye between the new best friends, we filled our now starving stomachs with boudin balls and red beans and rice from the The Chimes restaurant just off LSU’s campus. As all dining-out experiences are with us, it was an interesting 43 and a half minutes, but we made it through without completely destroying the place.

LSU’s Mike the Tiger

It was late afternoon when we entered LSU’s campus and weighed our options against the fact that Charles was still napless for the day. But we were encouraged by the baby’s amazingly good mood-he hadn’t made a peep the entire trip-and pressed on to see the school’s highlights. So just like the kid in his favorite book, Born to be a Tiger, Charles scaled the Indian Mounds, roared at Mike the Tiger, gazed up at Tiger Stadium (and begged for a way inside the locked gates) and threw his LSU football through the arches in the Quad.

As we drove away that evening, I realized, once again, we had overdone it as usual. Both kids were now squalling and both parents were exhausted. But as the youngsters fell asleep in their car seats, we breathed a sigh of relief at the quiet and inwardly smiled at the amazing adventure we had just given our children.