I found out about this place in Leland, Mississippi when I was looking for potential stops on our trip. It sounded like a goofy, fun museum, and we decided to stop. It turned out be be an adventure of a sort. For starters, a huge storm had ripped through the area just before we arrived. When we stopped at the Hampton Inn in Indianola, Mississippi, the computers were down, and I had to fill out a paper form to register. The town was rather lean when it came to dining choices, so we opted for Burger King and ate in our room. Another storm blasted through in the night, but things were calm in the morning. When we went downstairs for the hotel breakfast, they were out of a lot of stuff. We could tell that it had been the exact same choices that we’d been given every morning of our trip, so we weren’t too disappointed. We had a couple hours to kill, so we looked for a breakfast place. There was a spot in downtown Greenville, but when we got there, the neighborhood and the restaurant both looked sketchy. We backtracked 12 miles to the McDonald’s in Leland and ate there.
We got to the Kermit museum about 20 minutes before it opened. It was immediately evident that it wasn’t a large place — certainly not worth a night in a hotel (we were only three hours from home), and three hours of time-wasting on a Wednesday morning in Mississippi. But we were there, and this was very, very, very likely going to be the only time we were in the area.
The front of the building looks nice enough, but when we peeked around the side, the back looked like it was about to fall into Deer Creek.
The reason the museum is here, or so we were told, is that Jim Henson was born in Greenville and lived in Leland for a time as a kid. He used to explore along the banks of Deer Creek, and that’s where he got the idea to create a frog character — or so we were told. The actual reason the museum is here, of course, is that this part of Mississippi has nothing to offer tourists, so this was created to encourage people like us to stop. And it worked. We spent our tourists dollars in two restaurants and a hotel just to see the museum.
I don’t mean to disparage the museum. What there was of it was fun. It consisted of one room with some photos and signs about Henson and his life, a lot of Kermit and other Muppet/Sesame Street character collectibles, and some Kermit photo ops. The lady who worked there was very friendly and probably a little lonely.
If I understood correctly, this (below) is an actual Kermit puppet — one that was used in some of his appearances on Sesame Street, The Muppets, or somewhere. If I didn’t understand correctly, it isn’t.
We read everything, looked at all the photos, took advantage of the photo ops, bought some swag in the gift shop — all of which took about 20 minutes tops — and then headed home.
To borrow a line from Samuel Johnson — It’s worth seeing, but it’s not worth going to see.