Visit Part 2: CAT Visitor Center

Next we headed to the Caterpillar Visitor Center.  Even though I've lived in Peoria for 12 years, I'd never been.  I love new experiences in my own town!  The boys LOVED it.  And the adults got in on the action too.  The entrance to the museum is through this huge machine here:

There is actually a movie theater in it where you go on a ride in the machine to see how it works.  The front of this is the actual machine, while the wheels are plastic because the machine itself is too heavy and would fall through the concrete!  All the facts about this one machine that CAT makes were fascinating. 

There were tractors that you could actually climb into and pretend to drive.

The boys were trying to push me over!

When I said that even the adults got in on the action, I wasn't kidding.

There were simulators where you could experience driving a couple of the tractors.

These are the fake wheels to the actual truck!

We sometimes have a morbid sense of humor in our family... Apparently, Michael later told Grandma, "don't worry Grandma, the wheels were fake, so we wouldn't actually get run over."

John is almost as tall as me!!!

We had to drag the boys away, even though they had already been on every tractor two or three times!

Next up, a fun evening...