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Fargo - (Continued)

Outside the visitors center is Fargo's Walk of Fame. We've visited walks of fame in other cities across the country and always have fun with them. The one in Fargo was a little different in that the hand and/or footprints were not necessarily of those who called Fargo home at some point in their life. These were imprints of visitors to Fargo. The one that made us smile was that of Barney the Purple Dinosaur. We did not spend a lot of time looking at the Walk of Fame because of the nasty weather. The cold, blowing rain was coming at us diagonally thus rendering our umbrellas useless.

Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center

 

wood chipper from the movie "Fargo"

 

 

 

From the Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center, we made the 10-minute drive to West Fargo to see Bonanzaville U.S.A.. This is another impressive product of a historical society. For this attraction, it is the Cass County Historical Society who has done an incredible job of preserving the region's history. The word bonanza means a large amount of something desirable according to Google's dictionary. The name Bonanzaville is fitting given the attraction sits on 12 acres of land containing a multitude of collections. It has a main street representing the pioneer days of North Dakota. People have actually donated historic houses and had them moved or reconstructed on this street in Bonanzaville. In essence, there is a collection of 19th and 20th century Cass County homes ranging from modest log cabins to extravagant houses. We were able to walk through Fargo's first home, a log cabin dating back to the late 1800's. In fact, we explored several modest homes. The thing that surprised me was that most of these small, basic structures actually had an upper level. We were allowed to climb their steep, narrow staircase to see the upper floor. By contrast to the simple homes, we were also able to walk through the elegant 19th century home of David H. Houston, a successful inventor. His had several bedrooms, elaborate craftsmanship, and quality furnishing.

The collection of houses was not the only things we explored in Bonanzaville's Pioneer Village. We checked out the historic establishments along the main street such as the barbershop, courthouse, creamery, general store, etc... All these places were stocked and furnished according to the period they represented. There were signs providing information on how/when the building was used and who donated it to Bonanzaville. I felt like Traci and I were in an old episode of The Twilight Zone as we explored the village because there were no other people around. I am assuming the nasty weather had something to do with it. The rain eventually stopped during our visit and the temperature actually made it into the 50's. We began to see other tourists but only about five people.

Bonanzaville USA - Pioneer Village

 

courthouse from 1906

 

 

home of successful inventor David H. Houston

 

Fargo's first house

 

 

general store

 

playing from a hymnal I found in the church

 

When I say Bonanzaville has collections, I'm talking about several warehouses worth of collections. We explored the airplane warehouse, the tractor warehouse, the car warehouse, the train warehouse. In addition to the warehouses, there are museums dedicated to exhibits such as telephones, women's suffrage, and law enforcement. I imagine a person could spend a month at Bonanzaville if he/she decided to read all the posted information for each exhibit. As for Traci and me, we spent three hours there skimming and browsing the place before we had to make our way to airport for our flight home.

Bonanzaville USA - Collections

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting checked in for our flight home was easy at the airport in Fargo. It was not very busy. In fact, at the time Traci and I went through security, we were the only passengers. There were far more TSA personnel than the two of us. I struck up a conversation with one of the security screeners as I was putting my shoes back on and to my surprise, he told me the airport actually does get quite busy at times. He told me Traci and I happen to check in at the right time.

having fun with the airport selfie machine

We would be flying back to Washington Dulles Airport via Chicago O'Hare Airport. Traci and I had some time to kill before our flight in Fargo was scheduled to board so we finished of the Gigi's Cupcakes we purchased the night before and then had some fun with the airport's selfie machine. We ended up having more time to kill than we anticipated. Our flight to Chicago got delayed. This type of thing seems to happen every time we do a weekend runcation and need to connect in Chicago. Knowing the delay would put us in jeopardy of missing our connection, I spoke to the United Airlines host in charge of our boarding. He was kind enough to assign Traci and me seats in the 3rd row of the plane so that we could be among the first to deplane when we landed in Chicago. Fortunately, there was no need for us to run across the huge Chicago airport like we had to do on our last two runcations. Our connection to Dulles was also delayed. Even after we boarded our flight to Dulles, we sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes waiting for the 20 planes ahead of us to take off! It was after 1 AM when we landed at Dulles. I was so sleepy at work for the next two days but I am still thankful to have had another opportunity to travel. Main Page...

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Magnet Purchased on this Trip: (click to enlarge)

Entire fridge magnet collection...
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