After leaving Scottsbluff, we stayed a few nights in Chadron, NE. You may be wondering why we spent soooo much time in Nebraska…well, we will be heading to South Dakota next, and we wanted to wait until the Sturgis Bike Rally was well over. Eventhough we were stalling, we really enjoyed our time in Nebraska – it really gave us a chance to get accustomed to the plains and feel more like locals than tourists. Northwestern Nebraska is mostly open land and large cattle ranches. You can see on the map just how remote the land is… 
Chadron is the home of the Museum of the Fur Trade, which holds the largest collection of trade guns in the world, as well as several exhibits.
Kit Carson’s gun
They have dedicated an entire section to the Canadian Voyageurs. I had never heard of them, but these guys were for real!
There is also a soddie out back that functioned as a trading post. The cool thing about the second owner of this trading post is that he supplied the Indians with guns during the Indian Wars. Check out the cactus growing on the roof…
They also have an Indian heirloom garden, and they offer seeds from it for sale in the gift shop.
Overall, this was a very well kept museum with different aspects represented than I had envisioned, we would recommend it to anyone passing thru the Chadron area.
