Wife and I took off last Tuesday from Tulsa headed to a little place I went to as a child called Pioneer Village in Minden Nebraska. The trip overall was a little over 1000 miles and the highlight was the Pioneer Village Museum. We left on Tuesday and spent the day at Pioneer Village on Wednesday then headed to Marysville Ks. Thursday morning to spend the day to see my dad and daughter then Left for home on Friday. We stopped at a couple other places of interest along the way.
https://pioneervillage.com/Pioneer Village was fantastic, much like I remembered it as a child. It is a bit run down and some of the hospitality services they once had have been closed down like the restaurant and motel but my understanding is they've been working to repair and restore much of the property to its former glory. The campgrounds are available and I've read many of the camp sites are very nice since they've began the restorations but we didn't go there so I cant say how nice they were personally. One thing to mention is we were there on a nice cool day and as we entered the guy suggested we go to the buildings with 2 stories first as they got hot later in the day so they may not have AC in all buildings. Doors were open and fans blowing in every building we went into and we were very comfortable all day. But that may not be the case if it's 100+ deg out.
Pioneer Village took us the entire day to go through. There is just so much to see from tractors & implements, cars, trucks, household goods & furnishings, electronics, appliances, planes, trains, motorcycles, musical instruments and on and on. There's something there for everyone's interests.
This is not really Valk related as we took the other bike but none the less if your riding or driving a cage in the area of Minden Ne. I highly recommend stopping in to Pioneer Village if you have time. Admission was $15 for adults so very reasonable.
The route we took minus a couple detours.
Made it to the good life Tuesday afternoon. Lot of very nice looking corn & bean fields in Ne. Farmers are gonna have a good year up there from what i could tell from all the fields.
On Wednesday we headed to the Pioneer Village. Here's a few pics. This is a very small sampling.
On Thursday we altered our trip and pretty much went straight south from Holdrege Ne. to get to US 36 where we came across and stopped at a Historical Marker of the Geographical Center of the 48 contiguous states. While there a nice couple on a 1 month journey of their own from Michigan to Wyoming stopped and took our picture for us. We chatted a while then went our opposite directions. The actual center was about 4 miles from the Historical Marker and as we were running behind we did not actually go the the true center which was near Lebanon Ks.
On our way home on Friday we took a short detour to see the Little House on the Prarie Museum just South of Independence Ks. It's just a mile or two off 75 so if your driving by stop in and visit. We've been there several times but my wife loves the story of the Ingalls' travels and it's a nice little out of the way place to visit and relax for a bit. They don't have much, a School, Post Office, resemblance of a log cabin they lived in, a couple wagons, a hand dug well and the farm house converted to souvenir shop / information. Admission used to be donation but is $5 now so still worth it just to see a bit of history being preserved.
From there we headed home with nothing more of interest. It was a great trip overall. I was a bit apprehensive before we left due to what I had read online about the decline of Pioneer Village in some places online. But I was very pleased once we were there. I hope they are able to continue to restore & rebuild the facilities. I'd hate to see a place like that go by the wayside with all they have to show.
