Ocala, FL Indoor Activities

Thought it was opened just in 2012, the Harn Museum of Art's 26,000-square foot David A. Cofrin Asian Art Wing has quite a bit of history on its hands. There are nearly 700 works on display, all chosen from the museum's collection of more than 2,000 pieces. Dating from the Neolithic period to today, the pieces hail from countries such as India, Persia, Vietnam, and Japan.

Asian art makes up a quarter of the Harn's more than 10,000 works, which, along with travelling exhibitions, fill 32,800 square feet of gallery space. You’ll walk past African wooden masks, metalwork, and ceramics, as well as almost 1,000 modern prints, drawings, and paintings—including canvases by Claude Monet.

Breaking the tradition of many art museums’ “Do not touch” signs, the Bishop Study Center has exhibit-related objects that can be gently touched, though you are not allowed to break apart any sculptures in search of hidden treasure maps. Beyond exhibits, the Harn hosts frequent events including lectures, film screenings, live performances, and interactive programs for students and families.

At Salsa Caliente, expert instructors strive to spread their love of Salsa dance while introducing students to Hispanic culture. Stressing correct form, timing, and style, they lead groups through classes tailored to each individual’s skill level. They also offer private instruction as well as special sessions for upcoming events such as weddings. Salsa Caliente frequently opens its doors for special events, such as birthdays and quinceaneras, and hosts dance socials that allow students to mingle and explore a variety of dance styles, such as cha cha and merengue.

More than a dance school, IndepenDance Studio inspires its students to express themselves with acting, improv, ballet, and jazz classes for all ages and abilities. The studio’s owner, Mary Knestrick, draws on an extensive dance background that includes training from Broadway Dance Center and The Ailey School to lead her team of professionally trained instructors. The team inspires the next generation to grace the stage with acting, improv, and vocal training classes; ballet and jazz classes prepare students for a variety of small roles in teen dance films. Hip-hop and Irish dance classes activate feet bored from being kissed by doting suitors, whereas fitness classes such as Zumba, yoga, boot camp, and martial arts simultaneously shred calories and impart useful skills.

The Kika Silva Pla Planetarium's astronomers unfurl stellar maps and fascinating science films across a panoramic 34-foot viewing dome. Inside a 60-seat building, audiences gaze at the sky's celestial bodies as two planetarium projectors transpose images onto an expansive ceiling. A stirring score and sound effects further immerse viewers in the educational, absorbing spectacle above them, and with 19.5 million tiny perforations across the dome's surface, each sound and note flows undiluted into the audience's auditory systems as clearly as a bell that has taken years of elocution lessons.

To keep images crisp and realistic, the planetarium employs two very different projectors—a computer-controlled Goto Chronos and a Spitz SciDome digital projector. The Goto employs dozens of meticulously configured lenses to display crisp visuals of stars and planets as they have appeared over the last 10,000 years. The Spitz SciDome converts the planetarium's expansive ceiling into a giant computer screen, turning video and animations into breathtaking clips that dance on the ceiling like Fred Astaire's poltergeist.

Standing still in a cloud of free-flying butterflies, exploring the depths of a limestone cave, and gazing at the 14-foot bones of a 16,000-year-old Columbian mammoth skeleton—visitors can do all of this in just one afternoon at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Since starting in 1891 as a professor’s teaching collection of fossils, minerals, and human anatomy models, the museum has transformed into the home of more than nearly 40 million specimens, creating a library of life that features one of the world’s largest collections of butterflies and moths.

Reflecting the museum’s impressive collection of winged beauties, some of its exhibits focus on the butterflies and moths that, unlike humans, can survive long flights without eating a single package of peanuts. At the Butterfly Rainforest, more than 1,000 butterflies from 60 to 80 species take to the air among tropical trees, orchids, bromeliads, and waterfalls cascading into a pond that bustles with fish and turtles. Feeding stations with freshly cut fruit dot the 6,400-square-foot screened enclosure, letting guests get up close as the butterflies feast. Live butterfly releases daily at 2 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. let onlookers watch them fly into an outdoor butterfly rainforest, and among the indoor butterfly exhibits, curious audiences can peer into a rearing lab where staff unpack and sort newly arrived pupae.

Rounding out the museum’s focus on Floridian biosystems, the Northwest Florida: Waterways & Wildlife exhibit invites visitors to wander through a full-scale recreation of a hammock forest, and the South Florida exhibit takes guests down the peninsula with a mangrove boardwalk and a palm-thatched Calusa leader’s house. The museum's internationally acclaimed fossil collection includes highlights such as "shark jaw row," extinction dioramas, and full skeletal mounts and sculptures. Meanwhile, outside, petals unfurl in the wildflower and butterfly garden.

Generations of animal lovers come together to explore the winding trails of the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo, where more than 75 species inhabit displays that stretch across 10 acres of naturally wooded terrain. Run by a full-time staff, as well as Santa Fe College students, the zoo is home to a diverse collection of both native and exotic creatures, headlined by a lineup of family favorites that includes bald eagles, white-throated Capuchin monkeys, and small-clawed otters. While visiting, zoo-goers can lock eyes with endangered beasts or, instead of diving into a mall fountain to inspect the coins, study actual water-dwelling critters wading through the amphibian habitats. Sawdust trails make the zoo easy to navigate for wheelchairs and strollers, and an onsite playground entertains young'uns during breaks from uninhibited discovery.