Inner Loop 2010: Pioneer Auto Museum

Yours truly, hard at work on the blog.

We're in Murdo, SD, heading to the Badlands tomorrow morning. Murdo has one of the true gems we've come across. We liked it so much last year we included it as one of the few repeats this year.

Pioneer Auto Museum is nothing like what you would expect. It's the most non-museum museum you can imagine. Sure it has hundreds of old cars, but they are basically in barns, mostly labeled, not well lit, under leaky roofs, surrounded by other old stuff ... tractors, fire engines, farm equipment, old gas stations, telegraph offices, signs, oil cans, tools, a motorcycle owned by Elvis, Tom Mix's car, gemstones, a toy collection worth more than the cars, fossils, letters, juke boxes, games, guns, photos, records -- all scattered over acres and various buildings and shelters. Oh yeah, movie props (like a desk from "Dances with Wolves").

An older man (yes, even older than me) that I spoke with said he drove past Pioneer Auto a thousand times with his wife, never bothering to get off I-90 which passes within a few hundred yards.

He said his wife died last year. So with time on his hands, he pulled in this time. He so regrets never having done so before. Relatively nobody seems to know how great a place this is, including some people who are fairly new to the town.

I can't imagine any of you not finding this place fascinating.

The desk from "Dances ... ." By the way, in Deadwood, we'll be going to Kevin Costner's little restaurant/casino where he has many costumes and props from his movies.