1. Museum of the Southwest - Midland, TX.
We visited the Children's Museum which is FREE on Sundays from 2 to 5 pm. Inside there is a child size town, a sound wall, and toddler/baby only area. The under 3 area has a fish theme and has lots of foam things to crawl around, over, under, and through. We visited in February and it was cold and windy but I imagine it would be a great afternoon stop in the heat of the summer as well (especially on a Sunday afternoon). My son also loved the many statues that were placed about the grounds of this museum. We did not have a chance to explore the other areas of the museum.
2. Monahans Sandhills State Park - Monahans, TX.
This place is good for all ages including toddlers. We visited the visitor's center where there was a display of local animals and when my son pressed the button, it played a recording of the animal's sound. Animal sounds and pressing buttons = FUN for my son. After that we walked the short nature trail outside the visitor's center. We saw bird's nest and footprints of animals on the trail but were only saw a bug or two on the walk. It was still impressive to my two year old who was thrilled to follow the trail ahead of us looking for bugs. We then followed the road out to the actual sand dunes. In a future visit, I would have thrown a bucket and a small shovel in for him to play in the sand. He had a blast climbing up and down the sand dunes. He even broke into song, "The bear climbed over the mountain, the bear climbed over the mountain...". We were lucky in that it had rained the previous night so the sand was not blowing around so much in the wind. We have the Texas State Park Pass so this was also free for us. If you don't have a park pass, it is $2 a person for people over age 13 and then you can rent a sand disk to slide down the dunes for something like $1 an hour. Very inexpensive and just simple fun in the sand.
3. Permain Basin Petroleum Museum, Midland, TX
This museum was very interesting to the entire group in which we were traveling. The exhibits are not geared toward toddlers but it was not difficult to entertain and have my toddler follow through the museum as the adults enjoyed the exhibits. There is a learning center in the museum but if you follow the suggested route through the museum on the brochure, you won't notice the learning center until the very end and for us it was too late for us to take full advantage of what it had to offer. The hallways are wide and we were there on a day when the museum was pretty quiet. My son enjoyed looking at the machines and pushing his stroller down the pathway. He also enjoyed the book corner with beanbags which is a nice break. There is also a race car that you can climb into and sit in. This museum cost 8 dollars for each adult so it was our most expensive stop. There is also an outdoor exhibit area which would have been a great way to run off some energy but the wind was blowing too hard the day we visited.
