"One of the things I like best about offbeat museums are the folks who founded them. I mean, someone who collects toasters, asphalt or barbed wire may not be the most conventional person on the block, but I'll bet they won't be the dullest either. However, this kind of passion and dedication doesn't often get passed along. Thus, many of these intensely personal museums don't survive the death of their founders.

Some offbeat museums have unconventional locations. The World-Famous Asphalt Museum doubles as Scott Gordon's office at Sonoma State University in Northern California, where he is an assistant professor of computer science. Gordon claims that his office/museum ``contains the most select holdings of any asphalt museum in the world.'' A claim no doubt hard to deny. Visitors are welcome to view pieces of asphalt from highways around the country during Gordon's office hours."