Day Sixteen: Grand Island and environs

Today we stayed in Grand Island, more or less. My friend's family is originally from here, and she wanted to look around the city, and also Wood River, a small place west where her father was born.

But first we went to the Stuhr Pioneer Museum. It's a really well-done place, with lots of original buildings that have been brought together, re-enactors, and artifacts and displays. They have a gorgeous water feature with ducks and koi surrounding the main building, exhibits upstairs, antique cars and farm equipment, and a cowboy exhibit. It was too hot even in the morning to walk over the whole place, plus we had other stuff to do, but here's a sample of what we did see.



Two exhibits from the museum - a wagon and all the gear and stuff it would have carried, and a look at the root systems of native prairie grasses (why it took the new plow to break the land)






This statue depicts A Narrow Escape by two brothers.





Town - they cycle from 1890 to 1899.





One of the houses, and a room inside, and its garden







A wagon in the livery ("Whip soft, drive slow, pay cash before you go")



A mill for making planks



The 1st Learned Hose Company - volunteer fire fighters... sort of. Any man who didn't answer the bell was fined a dollar.



Inside the post office



The town hall



Here's a Pawnee mound



After Sturh we went to the Nebraska Wildlife Center in Alda, which is one of the places the sandhill cranes come in the spring. There were none here now, of course - I did see a blue heron - but the real reason we came was because this summer they started a little bison herd. Herdlet. Maybe we'll see some at Yellowstone, but just in case!







The word Nebraska means flat water, and Platte is French for flat.





Here's Wood River's cemetery (now surrounded by corn fields). We found my friend's grandparents, aunt and uncle, and great grandparents.