Grand Island, Nebraska -
Lavish Museum of the Prairie Pioneer

I visited this place recently, looking forward to seeing all the things that were described. The place was nice (perfect for taking a stretch from the long roadtrip I was on), but I just wanted to point out a few things. First of all, there is an admission price ($6 for adults; I didn't notice the price for children/seniors). Second, because I was there in the off-season, none of the buildings/sites were open. Most of the sites mentioned are in Railroad Town (the vet building and the wood shop), which is closed during the winter. You can still walk around the grounds where these buildings are, but they are closed and there is no one in period dress telling jokes. Which brings up a good point: If you just stick to walking around the grounds, you can probably get away with not paying the admission price. However, I was able to tour the middle building which had a great Mormon Trek display. Again, nice place, it's just that not everything I expected to see was open until May 1. [Adriana Marmo, 04/03/2009]

I'm sure most of the year this is just a standard museum experience but if you go before the summer tourist season prepare to have your ears talked off. We would enter one of the pioneer buildings meaning to just take a quick peek but the volunteers were so lonely we couldn't escape. There were only three other tourists on the premises.The man in the wood workshop was telling my boyfriend and me dirty jokes. Don't miss the photo op by the outdoor jail and keep in mind some people (like my honey) will get grossed out in the vet building which has some explicit photos and displays. [Connie LaCook, 10/07/2002]

[RA: Leslie Vollnogle, the curator of collections, told us that the strangest things among the museum's 60,000+ items are a sheep's head and other animal body parts in jars in the "vet clinic" display.]