Russell Military Museum - Hooper And Whistle

We hope y’all had a most wonderful Mother’s Day! We delivered Saturday morning, drove about 300 miles to the truck stop to hang out until our Monday morning pickup. We were surprised to find three other Skelton teams parked at this same truck stop. This is an extremely rare occurrence. We do not have very many teams running in the US. We pass each other on the highway and see each other occasionally at a shipper/receiver, but rarely at the same truck stop. We visited a bit with the other couples then each did our own thing for dinner.
Sunday, Mother’s Day started out lazy and wonderful. Heard from both our boys first thing! Be still my mamma’s heart! The weather was kind of gloomy, low clouds nearly like a heavy fog. It had rained overnight so everything was wet. We planned on visiting the Russell Military Museum that is just down the road from the truck stop and knew the weather would clear up, so lazy morning it was for us.
Russell Military Museum is an indoor and outdoor museum on 8 acres with a fascinating collection of almost everything military. Most of the items on the inside were collected from the actual individuals that owned them or their families. It is a self-guided tour with many items having a description. However, if you happen to be there when it isn’t so busy and are able to grab the owner, Mark Sonday be prepared to be blessed with some amazing stories! His enthusiasm is contagious and his stories are fantastic! What a wealth of knowledge and history he shared with us! One of the other Skelton teams, Henry and Frankie joined us on our visit. They are such an awesome couple and it was super fun to share the adventure with them! This is such a cool place and we highly recommend stopping in if you have the chance. They have a website and a facebook page, visit either for more information.
Dinner options are very limited, either cook your own, purchase grill items, or the Country Pride restaurant in the truck stop. Country Pride won the vote. We invited the third team, Scott and Mary to join us. The fourth team had left earlier to make deliveries. What a rare treat to have a meal with more than just us and with people we share more in common with being we all work for Skelton and 5 of us were active duty military and the 6th was the supportive wife being with her husband prior basic training through all 22 years of his career. It was so enjoyable sharing stories and talking about more than just trucking! What a special day we had!! It was so very awesome getting to meet more of the teams we work with and spend so much time getting to know each other! Awesome people they are!!
It was a great day!

: The beginning of the inside. The pathway weaves in, out, and around all the displays.

: The great debate, real, fake, movie prop?

: A memorial for the fallen service men and women

: Another donated item to the museum. How awesome to know that it was used during the war and is now on display for all to see!

: The owner purchased this motorcycle through the mail order military surplus auction in a 10 crate bid when he was a teenager. He rode this for many years. One day he was chased down by a man in a truck. Try as hard as he might he was unable to get away. The man chasing him was the original owner of the motorcycle. They quickly became life long friends. The framed photo in the background was given to the museum by the gentleman who owned the bike in the war.