Auburn, Indiana

     We left Amish country for Auburn, IN on Wednesday. Having a dry day, we spent the afternoon doing laundry and much needed deep cleaning in the motorhome.

     In Auburn it’s all about cars. Any make or model you choose, there’s a museum for it. We spent a couple days exploring some of them.

Our youngest grandson, Colin, loves cars. And he especially loves the Cars movies. He was pretty excited to see Grandpa driving Francesco

We actually found “Francesco” at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum.

This is a beautiful building that was originally the factory and showroom of the
Auburn Automobile Company.

 

      

The showroom is a masterpiece of art deco plasterwork and lighting.

 

    

And some of the cars are pretty nice too!

      

     

This was a favorite of mine. Jim liked the gear shift in the dash board. Looks almost like my Prius!

 

Jim was ready for a little road trip.

This is more my speed…an electric car…just like my Prius

There are also some other classic cars in the museum.

         

Like a T-Bird, Plymouth Prowler, Jaguar and Crosley.

         

There are some racing machines.

   

          

This one reminds me of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

An awesome “convertible”!

And my second favorite…very cool paint job.

We visited old town Auburn’s lovely town square.

We enjoyed more of the beautiful Midwest architecture and found a couple of things in the old hardware store…had to blow the dust off first.

        

We had some very tasty local cuisine…great Greek style pizza. As we were having lunch, the local high school band was playing across the street, in front of the county court house…don’t know why but fun.

Very near our campground was the Kruse Automotive Museum and National Military History Center.

 

I thought this was a weird thing to see in a car museum…no explanation that we could find. Jim thinks Mr. Kruse must be a hunter. They appear to be real.

A lot of exhibits in this museum are cars made for TV and movies, unique vehicles and displays.
Like the Car Cube.

And the T-Rex made of car bumpers.

      

A coach from Buffalo Bill’s show.

This is a Quadrovelocipede. Steam-driven and made of wicker. Looks like it should have pedals.

 

    

      

The Military History Museum was full of excellent exhibits of WWII vehicles. I grew up in the Air Force, my Dad being a pilot. Fortunately, he never saw combat. Being a communications officer as well as a pilot, we traveled to Japan and Germany after the war. He helped in establishing a peace-time U.S. presence in those areas.  I’m very grateful to those who’ve served in the military.
I sent a full set of our photos to our grandson, Bram, who loves military vehicles.  Especially WWII. I’m sure he already knows everything about all the exhibits I sent.

        

      

Some exhibits were actually scale models, like the Tennessee.

      

      

Good idea

 

      

And Viet Nam was included.

Boy have times changed.

  

Love this quilt.

   

Once again we had marvelous local cuisine. Scrumptious lasagna…mushroom and spinach with a creamy tomato sauce…maybe the best I’ve had!

And we moved on to the smaller Early Ford V8 Foundation Museum. Cars and collections from 1934-1954.

This stainless steel model was impressive.

     

There’s yet another auto museum on our list. The National Auto & Truck Museum.

They’ve started work on an outdoor exhibit that will be really cute when it’s done.

Something different about this museum is that they have quite a large exhibit of Hot Wheels, Die Cast and Pedal Cars. From top left in this photo they start really small and get larger as you go.

I liked this little bicycle with a side car. And the buggy with the fringe on top.

        

Checker Limo.

            

A clever idea…maybe.

     

We are a major Mustang family and Geoff works with rotary engine Mazda's. But we didn’t know about this. A rotary engine Mustang!

           

           

        

We actually didn’t see every single museum in Auburn but…we’re done. I told Jim that I no longer owe him for all the times he’s gone with me to a quilt shop

Today, we had a lazy day with no sight seeing. Tomorrow we head out for Terre Haute, IN for a couple of nights.

Wishing you a great day!
Pat