enlarge Photo courtesy Stephen Kress

Ayla Liss leaves the puffin burrow at Project Puffin.

enlarge Photo courtesy Stephen Kress

Model T rides are a regular attraction at the Owls Head Transportation Museum.

BEFORE YOU GO

Owls Head Transportation Museum: Route 73, Owls Head; 594-4428

Project Puffin Visitor Center: 311 Main St., Rockland; 596-5566 or (877) 4-PUFFIN (877) 478-3346)

Owls Head Light State Park: End of Lighthouse Road, Owls Head (follow signs from Route 73); No phone on site (call Camden Hills State Park, 236-3109 in season)

Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce: 236-4404

Want to take the kids to a museum – something other than a children's museum?

Route yourself to Owls Head Transportation Museum just outside Rockland. You won't need to stress about the little ones bumping into glass cases or touching the paintings (OK, there are a few), or whether even the older ones will feel too confined.

Hangar-like display space makes up much of this nationally renowned museum, which has more than 200 planes, cars, bikes, motorcycles, carriages and engines in its collection and often changes what is on display.

Better yet, you don't have to be a gearhead to love this place, where the focus is on vehicles and aircraft that pioneered auto and air transport. Like kids who are too young to read or too revved up to focus on placard text when they're out for a day of fun, you'll be wowed the moment you pass through the large lobby and by the gift shop to the main exhibit areas.

At least that was my experience as I found myself flanked on one side by a pair of oh-so-shiny, elegantly long Packard autos from the 1930s and on the other by an Ornithopter, a "flapping flight" aircraft usually spotted only in silent movies. With white turkey feathers tucked into the chicken wire crisscrossing the wood frame, it's meant to mimic a bird in flight.

I visited the transportation museum over Mother's Day weekend with my husband, Michael Hodsdon, and our 5-year-old son, Dima. We live up the coast in Belfast, about 45 minutes away, and made a day of our trip, hitting not only the museum but nearby Owls Head Lighthouse and the Project Puffin Visitor Center in Rockland.

Our first stop was across Main Street at Rock City Books & Coffee, an anchor of the midcoast city's hip but not too hip downtown. The large variety of strong coffee served here is roasted down the block at a sister business.

From downtown Rockland, we headed down Route 73 to the museum, just two miles from U.S. 1 in Owls Head at the top of the St. George Peninsula. Michael, a tugboat engineer and handy Yankee, has a definite gearhead side, and the little guy is under his tutelage. It's easy to imagine the two of them someday mulling the intricacies of the 28-cylinder 1946 Pratt & Whitney airplane engine in the display room off the lobby, where visitors will also find a massive industrial steam engine (16-foot diameter flywheel) constructed in 1895 in Rhode Island.

On this visit, needless to say, it was all about the bikes, biplanes and big cars (little ones, too). Some of our favorites: early motorcycles, much lither than today's models, arranged in a circle; a reproduction of a 1913 French Etrich Taube airplane with a seed pod-inspired wing design; a 1958 BMW Isetta 300, a tiny red egg-shaped car with three wheels and a door easily mistaken for a hood; and a cluster of bicycles, from the expected high wheelers to a super-size tricycle to a "boneshaker" with pedals on the front wheel to a 1901 Steffey motorbike, actually a bike with a motor attached.

Planning the next visit is something first-time visitors to the museum often start doing before they leave, notes Park Morrison, public relations director. That's largely because of the popular special events, held mostly in the summer and fall. A link to this year's events is at the top of the museum's Web site, www.owlshead.org. Museum planes and cars – 90 percent of the collection is operable – are driven and flown, along with visiting vintage aircraft and autos.

This year's lineup includes the "Fabulous '50s & Sensational '60s Car Meet" July 4 and 5; "Wings & Wheels Spectacular & Aerobatics Airshow" July 25 and 26; and a "Convertible Meet" on Sept. 20. Events aside from auctions always include Model T rides, museum tours, engine room demonstrations, pedal cars and planes for little kids to ride and children's activities like crafts.

"Over the last...