Charles Schulz Museum

I had a free day and decided to drive over to Santa Rosa to check out the Charles Schulz Museum.  For those of you that do not know, he was the inventor and illustrator of the Peanuts comic strip.  The creator of my beloved Snoopy.  A major fixture of my childhood.  I don't think you can grow up being the child of my mom without having a little Peanuts in your blood.  My favorite movie was Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown! and it was the childhood movie (taped off the television on our VCR of course!) that would be played, hit rewind, and then played again... and again... and again. I LOVED that movie.

The museum is 2 stories with a revolving exhibit on the bottom floor.  The revolving exhibit was "It was a dark and stormy night..." which is Snoopy's favorite line in all of his writings and every book started with that line.  Walking around the museum tells the story of some of the ideas behind the strips as well as seeing some of the original strips.  You get a closer look at the story behind the unlikely friendship between a bird and a dog as well as how Snoopy's brother, Spike, came about.  Charles Schulz was from Minnesota but had moved to a small town named Needles, California when he was a kid and that was the basis for his comic strips with Spike.  Schulz lived in Santa Rosa for most of his adult life and chose to put the museum there where he spent so much time creating the comic strip.  It is across the street from the skating rink that he frequented and the café, the Warm Puppy, where he took breaks to eat breakfast and lunch everyday is still located there. Outside of the museum resides the kite eating tree, complete with Linus standing underneath it.

Kite eating tree

Anyone?

The famous Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown mural made out of comic strips.

Close up of the comic strips making up Charlie Brown's arm.

Charles Schulz' writing studio

I felt like a giddy little kid while walking through the museum. The museum only took around an hour to go through but it was definitely worth the $12 admission for any fan of the comic strip.