In our research to find all the best places to explore we discovered a museum in Appleton, dedicated to Wisconsin’s paper industry. We had to check it out. We took a trip up to Appleton to visit the Paper Discovery Center.
After some wrangling with the desk clerk about how to process our MPM membership towards the admission, we were free to explore the museum. We had arrived right as the museum opened (our usual strategy), so we had the place to ourselves. Much of the museum consists of cardboard models of paper factories that were pretty cool to examine. And there were also history displays about paper, which our kids breezed by with little interest.
But there were two great highlights to this visit that made it worthy! First, a crawl through paper machine, which our kids 
loved climbing on! And second, a chance to make recycled paper! This was the most memorable and enjoyable part of the museum. A docent lead our kids step by step through the process of shredding old paper, adding color and glitter, and creating our own one of a kind sheets of paper to take home. What fun!
At check out, when we were picking up a few small knick-knacks from the gift shop, the receptionist surprised us with a free, large fold up cardboard tractor-trailer truck for our kids! What a great added bonus!