School's out, now's the time to check out summer fun at Michigan State

EAST LANSING — It’s the middle of summer and with weeks left before the next school year begins, families might be running short of things to do that don’t involve a TV or tablet.

Michigan State University might have what you’re looking for.

MSU and its East Lansing campus are home to numerous free or affordable activities all summer: Cold sweet treats on hot days, perusing a huge collection of comic books, meeting unique and exotic insects from around the world … Michigan State has something to keep almost everyone entertained.

More than just books at MSU Library

While it’s heavily used for studying and research during the academic year, visitors can go on adventures and follow their favorite superheroes featured in hundreds of thousands of comic books any time of year.

The MSU Library is home to the world’s largest comic book collection. With more than 300,000 items, comic book enthusiasts or anyone looking for an entertaining read can get lost among the pages of thousands of American comic books or the more than 1,000 books of newspaper comic strips.

The collection also includes more than 50,000 international comic books from Europe, Latin America and Asia. It contains some comics that were published as early as the 1840s.

The comics can be read in the special collections reading room.

If comics aren’t your thing, the MSU Library includes a literature collection for children and adults that amounts to more than 2,800 books. Aspiring chefs can thumb through cookbooks from around the world in the cookery collection.

Visitors can also listen to more than 40,000 hours of spoken word recordings dating back to 1888 in the Vincent Voice Library, according to Holly Flynn, coordinator of outreach and engagement for the MSU Libraries. A highlight is spoken word visitors can listen to from every president from Benjamin Harrison to Joe Biden.

And there are gaming labs on the fourth floor with thousands of video games.

“We do have a lot of fun, unexpected things to do in the MSU Libraries,” she said.

Anyone with an MSU library card can borrow books, music, movies or other items. Michigan residents who are 18 or older are eligible for an MSU library card.

The flavors of summer

One of the most popular ways to enjoy a hot summer day at MSU is with a sweet, cold treat at the MSU Dairy Store.

The MSU Dairy Store specializes in delectable frozen treats, including a dozen different flavors of hand-scooped ice cream and rotating varieties of "extreme" sundaes and milkshakes.

This month’s specialty is a collaboration with the MSU Admissions Department called the Admissions Sweet Decision Cotton Candy Sundae, said Spartan Dairy Store Manager Aaron Weiner. It features two scoops of pink, cotton candy ice cream served in a waffle cone bowl with Pop Rocks lining the rim and it's topped with a cupcake from the MSU Bakery, a piece of real cotton candy and cotton candy crunch.

The most popular hand-scooped flavor is Spartan Swirl, formerly known as Sesquicentennial Swirl. It’s a cake batter ice cream with a green frosting swirl and cake pieces mixed in.

The store is busy during the summer, going through about 200 3-gallon tubs of ice cream each week.

If you’re visiting on a weekend, be sure to check out the MSU Dairy Store’s shake trailer parked outside of Anthony Hall which offers a menu of extreme shakes, as well as regular shakes and scoops. Weiner compared extreme shakes to bloody marys, but instead of being loaded with olives and celery, the shakes have sweet garnishes, like brownies and strawberries.

Tom Mayor and his family visited East Lansing from Dayton, Ohio, Friday for a college trip and stopped at the MSU Dairy Store for the first time. He quickly generated a strong opinion on the store’s ice cream after sampling a scoop of a chocolate and another of Tucker’s Scoop and Score, a vanilla ice cream with a praline caramel swirl and praline pecans.

“The ice cream is fantastic. Some of the best quality I’ve had since I was a kid,” he said. “Remember Baskin-Robbins? Better than that.”

The MSU Dairy Store is open from noon to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday at Anthony Hall, 474 S. Shaw Lane.

A stroll through the gardens

When you’ve licked up the last bits of your ice cream, you can walk it off on a stroll through 14 acres of lush, diverse gardens.

Visitors can spend a day strolling to see hundreds of new annuals, perennial gardens, a landscape arboretum and the 4-H Children’s Garden.

Professor William James Beal established the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden in 1873. It has become the oldest continuously operated university botanical garden in the U.S. and features more than 5,000 different types of plants. Descriptive labels identify each plant and share some of the plants’ characteristics. The plants are displayed in four collections.

In the Judith Delapa Perennial Garden, visitors will find a splash of different colors with flowering and non-flowering plants and ornamental grasses. It spans 10 island beds and 6,500 square feet.

A family favorite is the 4-H Children’s Garden. It features a pizza garden, maze and picnic spots. In the garden, children can learn about horticulture among dozens of themed areas.

Those and the other MSU Gardens can be visited free and located off of Bogue Street.

Learn about bugs

Visitors can see pollinators and other insects in the MSU Gardens. But they can meet them up close and personal at the MSU Bug House.

The MSU Bug House hosts a free open house on the second Monday of every month. Visitors will find displays crawling with bugs, insects and arachnids from around the world and have the opportunity to interact with some of their live specimens.

The MSU Bug House is located in Room 147 of the MSU Natural Science Building at 288 Farm Lane.

Open houses are scheduled from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday and Aug. 8. The open houses require advance registration. Learn more at www.canr.msu.edu/bughouse.

Visit MSU’s museums

MSU is also home to several museums that are waiting to be explored.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at MSU feature exhibits that rotate in and out through the year, including several summer exhibits, including the “Eli and Edythe Broad: An Enduring Legacy” show, which pays homage to the founders of the museum with displays of the works they donated to the museum in 2013, shortly after the museum first opened.

“Kahlo Without Borders” is another exhibit that will be open through Aug. 7. It features photographs of legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and her family, medical documentation from her stay in a Mexico City hospital, among several more features.

Large skeleton casts of dinosaurs are among the additional features visitors to the MSU Art Museum can find.

The MSU Museum’s Habitat Hall features life-size dioramas of major habitats found in North and Central America, including forests and grasslands. Each diorama includes hoofed animals depicting how they were able to adapt to the unique environments.

Standing next to the dioramas are a collection of skeleton casts tha an Allosaurus and Stegosaurus, as well as smaller displays offering more information on dinosaurs.

Both museums offer free admission, but registration is required in advance. Visit the Broad Art Museum and MSU Museum websites for registration details and information on upcoming events and programs.

Broad Art Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Visitors can check out the MSU Museum from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

“We are excited to be holding a number of fun and educational events on campus this summer,” said Mark Bullion, media and public information communication manager for MSU University Communications. “These unique opportunities allow us to provide on-campus experiences for the whole Spartan community.”

Contact Mark Johnson at (517) 377-1026 or majohnson2@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByMarkJohnson.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Five fun things to do at Michigan State this summer