This museum in Santa Rosa is a gem. Take your time to explore it, it is not widely advertised.
The exhibits at first floor changes (I think every six months). This time there were exhibits from NASA. Apparently, Snoopy was symbol which NASA adopted for their Apollo 10 mission (astronauts orbit around the moon, but did not land) and onwards for all their missions. So there was quite a history with NASA.
There was a wall mural created in the museum of 3500 cartoon strip tiles. The tiles are organized in such a way that they made a popular cartoon strip. It was mind-blowing. Do chat to volunteers there; most of them were personal friends to Charles Schultz.
There was an education center on second floor, where you can do sketches and cartooning. 2nd floor did provide a glimpse on Charles' life. To be honest, I only started liking Peanuts series just six months ago. Before that I just was not able to appreciate it, in fact that used to be only strip on Sunday newspaper which I would not read. I was not just getting the humor. However, 6 months ago, I watched a DVD of his strips with Prem (Prem loved it), and there was a 5 minute interview from him, and everything clicked. Charlie Brown is the story of the cartoonist who had a hard childhood, he was bullied and did not fit in among other kids, and CB was not a happy kid. He put that in cartoon, and even expressed some of his adult life lessons through the strip.
He drew cartoons for 50 years and died in 2000. He built a world class skating ring in Santa Rosa, where he spent last 30 years of his life, besides other things. Skating Ring is just across the road from museum, and there is Warm Puppy Cafe, this where he used to draw ideas and do breakfast and lunch. We ate there, and came to know that skating ring was designed by his wife based on some Switz architecture, it is unique, and you can see it while eating from the cafe.
The food was good in cafe, and you could see where he used to sit and draw cartoons. Skating Ring, Indoor tennis courts and baseball diamonds are few of the things which he did for Santa Rosa. He was active through out his life and played all these sports, and created tournaments for over 30, over 40, over 50 age groups, and participated in those.
In the museum, there is a holographic ring outside (which I think most of the visitors missed); there is a big screen movie theater and replica of his studio. It was very inspiring, in the sense, that here is the man who knew that he wanted to be cartoonist at age 5, and went on to impact lot of people's lives, his township, just doing that. He was Californian, came from a very simple background (his father owned a barber shop), who loved outdoors, sports and created a beautiful life around it. It is all there to see and experience.
We ate dinner in down town Santa Rosa and walked around Rail Road Square.
Before I forget, there is a snoopy labyrinth outside of museum, do not forget to walk it. Prem walked it 4 times. We took breaks, went for lunch, came back, and went to see three 30 minutes movies. We came back around 10 PM.
All in all, great experience.
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