To get to this 52-acre Mississippi River themed park (open from mid-April through October), you can either take a footbridge or the 180-passenger monorail for a .3-mile jaunt across the river. (Although it won’t seem familiar to your kids, you might recognize the monorail from a chase scene in the movie, The Firm.)

Once across the river, kids will definitely want to kick off their shoes and splash their way through River Walk, a five-block-long topographically correct model of the lower 1,000 miles of the Mighty Mississippi. They’ll learn that the river is the second-longest river in the U.S., and the largest by volume. Each adult step on the model represents one mile.

At the end of the model, the Gulf of Mexico is represented by a one-acre swimming pool, where you can rent paddleboats. The park also includes a Mississippi River museum (containing a 1870’s steamboat you can walk through) and an adventure center where you can rent mountain bikes, single or double kayaks, or canoes. Entry to the park itself is free, but you’ll pay admission to the museum as well as for the monorail (or any rentals).