Driving Home Day 2 (Nebraska Prairie Museum)

The next day we stopped in Gothenburg, NE to go Machette's Station, a Pony Express stop. 

It was very fast, but didn't take long or off our path far. Seriously, someday I'm going to travel the whole length of the Oregon Trail, or least the Mormon Trail.  

And then we spent FOREVER at the Nebraska Prairie Museum near Holdrege, NE.  Which, by the way, I spent forever searching for, because I didn't remember the name, but thanks to the power of Google and my history of where I've been, it was saved.  Weird and kind of creepy, but useful.

I really didn't expect much, I just wanted to break up our trip more, but it was our favorite stop!  (This coming after I rambled about how much I love all things Old West).  And it wasn't just me, tshe boys loved it too.  

It just was surprisingly huge! And so many random different things. 

There was a WHOLE mini town with different shops.  This was the toy store. 

The radio store. 

The telephone office.  My kids mocked me and called me old because I remembered using "old" rotary dial phones.  Yay.  

Hat store. There was also a men's haberdashery, hair dresser, barber, (yes, seperate), general store, dentist, movie theater, doctor's office, post office, etc, etc, etc.  It was huge and so fascinating.

Then was a section with just different household appliances through the years.  Which doesn't sound cool, but it really was interesting.  So above is an early washing machine.

Stoves and ovens.

Refrigerators and iceboxes.

And vacuums.

Then there was a whole section about WWII and the German POWs that were shipped to the prairie states and put to work on farms.  Apparently it was top secret and not well known even to this day.  I knew about it because my grandpa and my great-grandpa both had German POWS working on their farms during the WWII.  

And then vehicles. 

This was in the WWII section. 

All types of barb wire.

Cowboy tack.

All sorts of games and toys including a crokinole board. 😊

Overview of the farm equipment and vehicles.   One of my favorite parts, I didn't even take pictures of.  But it was living room/bedrooms from each decade from like 1900 to 1970.  It was so fun to see!  

Outside they had a church, farmhouse, and schoolhouse.   This was a merry-go-round in the schoolyard.

Oh and a train.  We had a picnic out there for lunch.

The house was cute.

I want to learn to spin!

The chapel was pretty, very Scandinavian.

I loved the lunchboxes and kids' caps.

I liked that the schoolhouse included details like the stove and the water dispenser.  The whole museum was like that, just SOOOO many details.

The schoolhouse.

This is what it looked like around the museum.

And then we were back in Kansas.  I should mention, because this comes into play later, but my car was acting up on the drive to Wyoming, but became even worse on the way home.  It stopped accelerating when I would put on the gas to say, pass a car or go up a steep hill.  And when that happened the air conditioning would go off as well, and it would take about a half an hour and then it would go back to normal.  No bueno.  It stressed me out the whole drive home.