I spent Friday, 5-24, in Dickinson and mostly off the bike, where I had a chance to rest and take my bike to Steffan Saw and Bike to try to fix my cranky front derailleur, which won’t reliably get into my lowest gears. I spent 90 minutes or so at the shop, where Jason did his best to help solve the problem. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get this working right, but Jason did find me a new odometer (to replace the one I lost on I-94 on Wednesday) so I can keep track of my miles each day.

Steffan’s started out as a saw-sharpening business, which later expanded into bikes and lawn and garden equipment sales and service. They quite generously have made it a practice to give immediate attention to cyclists touring through the country who need bike repairs and will charge them only for parts but not for labor.

In this photo, we see Randy Steffan (the shop’s owner), Jason, and a young man whose name I didn’t catch. I was surprised at how busy the shop was, mainly with guys bringing in weed whackers, but also a few folks needing bike repairs.

On the way back to my hotel from the bike shop, I toured an outdoor museum of old buildings that help tell the history of this area. The collection reminded me of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI. In one of the displays, I learned that there were a number of Germans from Russia who settled in this part of North Dakota. Apparently, these ethnic Germans had been invited by Russian rulers over a 100-year period beginning in 1763 to settle in an area of Russia that includes territory that is now in Ukraine and involved in its war with Russia. In the mid-1800’s, however, conditions for these German immigrants to Russia deteriorated and nearly 300,000 of them sought a better life in the United States, often in lands that were opened to homesteaders. Depicted below is a Memorial Pioneer Stone House erected by the Germans from Russia Heritage Society.

The Nord-Dakota Herold was a local weekly German language newspaper serving the large immigrant population in the area that first began operations in Bismarck in 1907 and moved to Dickinson four years later. During World War II, the paper changed its name to the North Dakota Herold and began to be printed in English to avoid anti-German sentiment. The paper continued to be published until 1962.

The significant influence of other immigrants to the area can be seen in additional exhibits in this outdoor museum. This Czech Town Hall was built in 2001 as a memorial to Czech immigrants to the area. Originally from Bohemia, the ancestors of these settlers had migrated to Crimea and south Ukraine to escape war and poor economic conditions. When their children and grandchildren experienced some of the same conditions there, they found their way to the United States.

This photo depicts a Scandanavian stabbur that was built as a tribute to Scandanavian immigrants to the area. The stabbur is a granary and storehouse in Scandanavia and was often the most ornate and picturesque building on a farm. Apparently, stabburs from the Middle Ages still stand in Scandanavia, but today, stabburs in Norway are commonly repurposed as guest or summer cottages.

This museum also includes relics from many years before the influx of European settlers. Sixty million years ago, forests of redwood and cypress trees covered the area. These trees were buried in the mud of flooded rivers and were petrified in the silica-rich ash that emanated from volcanic activity to the west. Miners in the Binek coal mine, founded in 1918 by Frank Binek, a Polish immigrant, began to discover these petrified stumps 70 feet below the surface. During a 25-year period, Frank’s son Ted collected over 100 of them, and 12 of them are included in this display.

Next to the museum’s outdoor display is an indoor Badlands Dinosaur Museum, which includes this full-scale skull cast replica of a skull found in 1966 about 200 miles west of Dickinson. It was the 17th cast made from the original; the 18th and 19th casts were used in making the movie Jurassic Park.

I picked up this flyer showing that my next stop on this trip, Medora, N.D., is the site of the 38th annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering this weekend. Maybe I will have a chance to check this out. I have about a 40-mile ride to Medora tomorrow (Saturday).

P.S. I thought you might find it interesting to know that the snack store in the lobby of my hotel, the La Quinta/Wyndham in Dickinson, helpfully includes this freezer for guests to store their pheasants. So helpful! (Marty, I thought of you!)