This presidential archive on the University of Texas campus (www.lbjlib.utexas.edu) is a serious research library housing millions of important historic documents, photographs, audio recordings and movie footage preserved from the 36th president's life and career. Even so, the one exhibit most people tell their friends after touring the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum is an unnerving animatronic LBJ effigy that lip-syncs to recordings of Johnson spinning tales and cracking jokes.

Other exhibits at the museum trace LBJ's colorful life and eventful career, including a replica of the Oval Office during the Johnson presidency, a stretched 1968 Lincoln that served as a presidential limo, a 1910 Model T given to Johnson by Henry Ford and an astonishing collection of artwork, jewelry and other items presented to Johnson as gifts of state.

The austere, modern structure faced with travertine marble stands a block west of Interstate 35 between 26th Street and MLK Boulevard. Admission is free, and the museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Christmas.