Welcome back to Have Geeklets, Will Travel, a summer travel series that will help you think up cool travel plans that will appeal to both kids and adults. From geocaching expeditions in your backyard to factory tours in far-flung states, we’ve been providing ideas all summer long to get you out of your house and on the road for great adventures.
As summer wraps up and this series draws to a close (don’t worry — it will pop up again from time to time, and you can always access the archives to gather travel ideas), I decided to go with a trip that we haven’t yet taken; one that we keep throwing out there as the perfect place to take our budding geeks: Silicon Valley. More specifically, the Intel Museum.
I mean, sure, we’d swing by the Company Store at Apple Headquarters and stock up on t-shirts. Even if we couldn’t get into the actual office space, I’m fairly certain that it would blow my son’s mind just to stand on the campus. And we’d go to the HP garage just to see the outside. In other words, we’d swing by all the landmarks that make up Silicon Valley.
But the Intel Museum in Santa Clara sounds like the perfect factory tour. Their website states:
See what it’s like inside an ultra-clean, highly automated silicon chip factory, and connect with technologies that give us new ways to work, learn, play, and communicate. The Intel Museum is 10,000 square feet of fun, interactive learning for children and adults.
Kids get to try on the white suits worn by workers to keep contamination out of computer chips. There are hands-on exhibits, such as one that allows you to spell out your name in binary code (Melissa is |01001101​|01100101​|01101100​|01101001​|01110011​|01110011​|01100001​|00001101). With more than 30 exhibits, it sounds like a destination unto itself.
Hopefully we’ll make the pilgrimage by next summer. When we do, I’ll obviously write about it in a future installment of Have Geeklets, Will Travel.
You should also go to the Computer History Museum, just down the road in Mountain View.