Tuesday, Aug 29…
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| Main Building Lobby |
Today we visited the Stuhr Museum of
the Prairie Pioneer, a collection of art, video, artifacts and a living history Railroad Town that preserve
the legacy of late 19th century pioneers. The architecture of the main
building is sleek, spacious and inviting. The artifacts range from a prefab
jail cell w/ a porcelain-lined cast iron chamber pot to primitive electric devices
such as curling irons and instruments for electro-stimulus therapy. All are
beautifully displayed. We took our time, and I especially enjoyed the stories
of 3 African-American pioneers – one a German-speaking barber, and the others a
freed slave and his son, both doctors of mixed repute.
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| Mail Carrier, c. 1900 |
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Main Street, Railroad Town.
(RR Town is like a prairie Williamsburg) |
NOTE: (We only visited 2 sections of this 200-acre site, the main museum bldg, and the antique machinery barn. Families w/ children would definitely want to see RR Town, which usually has docents in period costume interacting w/ guests.) Below are a couple pics from the antique machinery display.
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| Early 1900s thresher - the complexity parts is reminiscent of Rube Goldberg. |
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| Early tractor & plow |
After a quick drive through RR Town,
we headed into Grand Island proper to find some lunch. Turns out The Farmer’s
Daughter Café does a pretty good job. I skipped my usual Pepsi so I’d have a
little room for a real chocolate shake from the Coney Island Lunchroom (1933). Greg
& I shared this, but I was still way too full afterwards, so I needed (and took)
a long walk when we got back to the MH. (I actually felt crummy the rest of the afternoon... lesson learned???)
Postscript Pics from Greg...
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| (Again, just to clarify the size of these tractors. 😃) |
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| Pretty fancy for a tractor. |
BelatedBlogPics... Yesterday's post was so full I
forgot to include a few pics from my evening walk Sunday. There's a nice park,
splash pool, and skate park across the street from us, so I circled the (small)
lake a couple times.
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Gobbling Geese in Evening's Glow.
(it was prettier in real life) |
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| (Not sure why she's here.) |
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| A Rim of Ducks (and feathers galore) |
Are you going to swing north into South Dakota for the Badlands and Black Hills? Most of the fun roads aren't much fun with the RV, but plenty of parking at Mt Rushmore for it and Crazy Horse. I'd visit both.
ReplyDeleteWind Cave is pretty cool also.
Park the RV, and take the M3 on Iron Mountain Road, very fun drive. One of the first places I drove an E30, my friend's almost new '89 325i 5spd with sport package and autox rubber on it, only had 11k miles on it at the time, fell in love with the E30 back in 1990.