As you enter the museum, a friendly gentleman dressed as a settler greets you and gives you the lay of the land. He stays in character and engages the kids. The kids looked at him like "are you for real?"- and he continued to play along.
After purchasing our tickets, we donned audio tour headphones and proceeded up the escalator into the museum that crosses up and over the interstate.
The audio tour walks you through different displays that educate about pioneering life and the many trails that passed through Kearney, the Gold Rush, and continues with the westward expansion of the highway system starting with the Lincoln Highway (1912) and continuing with the Interstates (1956). Many of the murals were painted by the same artists that designed Disney World.
The museum is well laid out, extremely clean and engaged everyone in our family. As we head back towards home, I especially appreciated the Lincoln Highway section of the museum that discussed encouraging Americans to see their country by driving and exploring. It was the growth of the Highway that helped develop towns, motels and fostered camaraderie amongst tourists. This has been our life for the past 7 weeks!!!
On our Summer to Remember 2015 adventure, we have met so many kind and interesting people along the way. If we had simply flown to Chicago to spend the summer with extended family, we would not have seen our Nation in the complete sense- the varying landscapes, beautiful sights, historic landmarks, and meeting people from different backgrounds.
As a side note- Kearney is also the site of the great sand hill crane migration. An estimated 500,000 cranes descend upon Kearney in March. It is supposedly an amazing sight to see.
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