Mushrooms Around the Exploratorium
Led by Ken Litchfield of the Mycological Society of San Francisco
Did you know there are wild mushrooms growing within 30 feet of the Exploratorium's entrance? In this tour, visitors locate and identify local mushrooms, including shaggy parasols and chicken of the woods, and their life cycles, seasons, habitats, and characteristics.

Forensics Walk
Led by Peter Barnett of Forensic Science Associates
Forensic scientists use hard science and a creative imagination to decipher found evidence and discover what happened at a particular location. This tour explores a scene and investigates how forensic scientists recognize objects as "evidence" or ignore them as mere "stuff." What is it? How did it get here? Where did it come from? Visitors learn how to recognize objects as evidence, preserve their value, and individualize their unique history.

Poetry Walk: Noticing the Wor(l)d
Led by Sarah Rosenthal
We use words all the time without really thinking about them. Yet for poets and other creative writers, words are the basis of an art form. The key to using language creatively is paying attention. On this noticing tour, visitors use all five senses to notice our world, and our words, in fresh ways, and explore the connections between noticing and creating.

Palace of Fine Arts Architecture Tour
Led by Gray Brechin
Ever since the Palace of Fine Arts was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, it has reigned as one of San Francisco's most enigmatic architectural sites. Though originally built of flimsy materials, it proved so hauntingly beautiful that it escaped demolition to become as much a City icon as that nearby world-famous bridge. In the tour, Gray Brechin discusses the intentions of architect Bernard Maybeck, how the Palace unifies art and nature, and how it was repeatedly saved from the wrecking ball.

Gray Brechin is a geographer and architectural historian who has been fascinated by the Palace since he discovered it as a teenager in 1964. He is the author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin and Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream. He is presently a research fellow at the U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography. For more information, log on to www.graybrechin.com

Come to Your Senses at Crissy Field
Led by Park Ranger Fatima Colindres
Visitors experience the sights, sounds, smells, and flavors of Crissy Field. On this easy one-mile walk, visitors look for crabs, taste strawberry treats, listen to legends, smell the seashore, and even build sandcastles. For more information, visit www.crissyfield.org.

Blindfolded Walk
Led by Exploratorium Exhibit Developer Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough
Visitors heighten their awareness of and engagement with the sounds surrounding them by joining a guided Blindfolded Walk. Developed by composer, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, Blindfolded Walks encourage and foster "Deep and Active Listening" by removing the sense of sight from the experiential analysis of visitors and allowing them to focus their attention on sound. Participants are blindfolded and slowly led on a walk throughout the museum and its surroundings. This activity is an opportunity to sharpen one's ability to use sound as a tool for noticing, interpreting, and experiencing one's environment in new ways.
www.deeplistening.com

Topography Tour
Led by David G. Howell of the U.S. Geological Survey
The San Francisco Bay area has a tremendously rich and turbulent topographical history. In this tour, visitors travel back 100 million years with topography expert David Howell to learn about the forces and events that have shaped the Bay's striking terrain, discover how area rocks contain volumes of topographic data, and explore the tectonic forces still active in determining the future of the Bay.

Satellite images of Bay Area topographies (Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.)