Ron & Elena's 2011 Travels travel blog

We saw many farmers out harvesting wheat today - I'll bet these...

Around here the farmers even cut and bale the grass along side...

And today we found "The World's Largest Buffalo"! Makes Elena look like...

It's made of concrete over a steel framwork.

We didn't see the bison herd or the legendary white buffalo but...

Ted

 

 

A few views of the buildings in Frontier Village.

 

 

 

 

 

This nicely preserved railroad station was the first one in Jametown -...

The surveyers building is a museum of instruments surveyers used through the...

This case has a fine collection of the earliest pocket calculators from...

1929 Chevy truck.

 

And still some nice late summer flowers.


(Ron Writing) This morning we left our nice overnight spot at Pleasant Lake National Wildlife Refuge heading east on US-2 for a few miles and then US-281 south to I-94 at Jamestown, ND. It was an uneventful drive through several small towns and long stretches of rolling farmland. Along the northern part of this drive there were also many ponds and lakes. This part of northern North Dakota seems a bit like Minnesota. When the water table is so high, the low area gets filled with water. All the ponds and lakes have many ducks and other waterfowl.

The farmers are very busy with harvesting wheat and baling hay and straw. The beans and corn will be next for harvesting.

We arrived in Jamestown around mid-afternoon and decided we still had time to tour Frontier Village. Frontier village is a recreated prairie town with an assemblage of original old buildings most of which are furnished with period items. At the same location is the World’s largest buffalo monument, a herd of about 50 bison including three extremely rare albinos, and the National Buffalo Museum.

We toured Frontier Village and saw the buffalo monument but did not have time to tour the museum. The bison herd was off in a part of their pasture not visible from the viewing area so we didn’t get to see them either. Maybe we’ll try again tomorrow – white bison are pretty special and if you don’t believe me just ask a Lakota Indian!

We’d never heard of Jamestown, ND before this trip but we’re finding this town of about 15,000 people to be a very pleasant and interesting place. The famous author of western books, Louis L’Amour was born here and spent the first 15 years of his life in Jamestown. Another famous person, Peggy Lee, singer and jazz legend, was born and lived here through her high school years.

Weather: Overnight low was 62°, Today it was mostly sunny with highs in the mid 80’s.

Mileage: Today - 141 miles, cumulative since leaving AZ on 4-6-11 – 12,322 miles.

Tonight’s stop: Jamestown, ND, WalMart Supercenter.

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