Frontier Village and other stuff - Day 853 (Yr 3, Day 120)

Jamestown, ND

On Friday, Mitch only worked until about 1:00.  I had all the cooking pretty much under control and got my workload down to a reasonable point, so that we were able to take a little time off -- from 3:30 until 5 -- to go down the road and visit Frontier Village and the World's Largest Buffalo.  Unfortunately, the herd of buffaloes, including the rare albino one, were not around; probably moved to a warmer location for the winter.  The stagecoach rides and Wild West shootouts was also closed for the season.

Frontier Village is a replica of a town that would have existed in the pioneer days.  Although the town itself is a replica, the buildings are real and were moved here from various locations around the state.  They were all closed, but you could peer in the windows and see that they were set up exactly as they would have been during their time.  It's unclear whether the doors are open during the summer or if they're always closed.  Here are some of the buildings.  Other than the fire house, we weren't able to get any good pictures from the windows.  Oh well.

  
 

Photos from inside the fire dept (old time equipment):

  

 More stores in the town:

               


Jamestown is known for the statue of the World's Largest Buffalo, and it is indeed large.  Here is a photo taken from a distance, and then right next to it: one of Mitch standing next to it, and me on my urb-e under it.  You can probably see it from Google Earth (or Google maps, satellite view)



      

Also caught a photo of my cutie:




There was also the National Buffalo Museum, which I suspect is all things buffalo related.  The cost, however, was $8 per person and there was only 10 minutes left to closing (they were still going to charge us), so we decided to pass.

The town itself was rather small, although there was a lot of walking between areas, so we rode our urb-es.  It was an ideal place to do so.  Unfortunately, something happened to mine (we're troubleshooting today; there may be a loose connection to the battery), so I had to walk mine back to the truck.

Today is being spent on various projects.  One, of course, was troubleshooting the urb-e, and the other is taking down the sukkah.  We probably should wait another day, as today is the final day of sukkot, but since Mitch will be working all week from 6am to 6pm (and with his walking 5-10 miles a day, he's beyond exhausted when he gets home), and next Sunday is the day before we pull out (hopefully-see below) so we need to use that for road prepping, today is really the only day we have to do it.

While driving around town on Friday, I noticed a lot of white smoke coming out of the exhaust while we were driving (the engine was warm).  Not sure if this is something serious, so we need to bring it in to a mechanic before we tow.  Again, because of Mitch's schedule this week - and he cannot take time off - I have no clue when we can bring it in.  Probably Friday afternoon, and they can work on it Saturday, but it may not be ready on Monday so I'm already anticipating a delay.  Oh well.  It is what it is and we can't tow 1600 miles with a potential problem.  Better to check it out now.  We'll still have a week before Thanksgiving so barring anything else, we can still get to Raleigh on time.  We could also push the driving schedule and do more than 200 miles and stay in rest areas.  Only problem with that is that I still need to work at least 1/2 days and I need electricity to do so, although as long as we have enough propane, we can probably run the generator a few days as we can be self contained if need be.