Cheshire Library has a collection of museum & state park passes that are available for Cheshire residents to check out. CPL Staff member Lisa is writing a series for our blog about the museum passes we offer, along with related reading material. Thanks, Lisa!
Featured Museum Pass:                             Mystic Aquarium

This pass is good for $5.00 off admission for up to 4 people.
A little history on the Aquarium: Mystic Marine Life Aquarium was founded in 1973 to serve as a living laboratory and major public exhibit, highlighting some of the most intriguing species in the world. The Aquarium established itself as a progressive research entity under the leadership of its first director, Dr. Stephen Spotte, whose publications became the cornerstone of modern aquarium keeping.

In 2012 Sea Research Foundation marked the centennial of the maiden voyage and tragic loss of the RMS Titanic with the opening of Titanic – 12,450 Feet below. This exciting new exhibit was a collaboration between Dr. Robert Ballard, who found her in 1985, and former Disney Imagineer Tim Delaney, and was made possible by a $1 million donation from United Technologies Corporation. Located in the renamed Ocean Exploration Center, the exhibit promises Titanic fans of all ages the chance to experience the fanfare of her maiden voyage, the fateful night of her sinking and the moment she was found.  For more information on the history of the Mystic Aquarium check out: http://www.mysticaquarium.org/about/history.

For additional information, including Hours of Operation, check out their website at http://www.mysticaquarium.org/ or contact the Aquarium at 860-572-5955.

Featured Museum Pass:                              Mystic Seaport
This pass is good for 1/2 off admission for 2 adults and 2 children.  The passes are good for specific days so be sure to borrow the pass for the specific day of the week that you will be visiting the Seaport.
Mystic Seaport’s mission: “Mystic Seaport is a museum that strives to inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience.”
A little about Mystic Seaport: “Discover maritime history firsthand throughout our re-created seafaring village that is bustling with the sights and sounds of 19th-century life. Climb aboard historic vessels, including the last wooden whaleship in the world, the Charles W. Morgan. Visit the Boathouse to captain your own rowboat or sailboat and take a cruise down the Mystic River aboard the wooden, coal-fired steamboat Sabino.

Explore interactive exhibits and see a working preservation shipyard in action. Watch interpreters demonstrate maritime skills and listen to chanteymen perform music of the sea and shore. Stroll through gardens that accentuate the beauty and historical context of the river and do a little stargazing under the Treworgy Planetarium dome.”

For additional information, including Hours of Operation,  check out their website at http://www.mysticseaport.org/ or contact the Seaport at 860-572-0711.

If you enjoyed the Mystic Aquarium and Mystic Seaport, you might also enjoy reading:

Plastic Ocean by Capt. Charles Moore. In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu with the sole intention of returning home after competing in a trans-Pacific race. To get to California, he and his crew took a shortcut through the seldom-traversed North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a vast “oceanic desert” where winds are slack and sailing ships languish. There, Moore realized his catamaran was surrounded by a “plastic soup.” He had stumbled upon the largest garbage dump on the planet-a spiral nebula where plastic outweighed zooplankton, the ocean’s food base, by a factor of six to one.
Moore’s sobering revelations will be embraced by activists, concerned parents, and seafaring enthusiasts concerned about the deadly impact and implications of this man made blight.

Titanic : Legacy of the World’s Greatest Ocean Liner by Susan Wels. The tragic fate of the Titanic is well known. But now, an astonishing wealth of new information about the people, events, and artifacts of that fateful night has been uncovered. Containing interviews, excerpts from actual passenger diaries, photographs, and replicas of items recovered from the ship itself, this book is published as a companion volume to the traveling 1997-98 Titanic exhibit.

(Borrow the pass for Mystic Aquarium and check out nearby Old Mystic Village with over forty shops of unique items and restaurants. Borrow the pass for Mystic Seaport and check out the shops in downtown Mystic and stop for lunch at Mystic Pizza, made famous by the movie starring Julie Roberts.  Make a day of it and borrow the passes for both locations since you are able to borrow two passes at a time.)