Head West Old Folks

Greetings from Steve's Awningless Trailer!

I will tell you about how we lost the awning in a bit.  But first I want to tell you about our last day and night riding with our friends Ann and Fred in the Bemidji, MN area.

Ann suggested we ride the Heartland Trail.  We met them with our trikes and had a delightful time.

In the evening Ann wanted us to come to the "cabin" where she and her family spent many summers.  

She gave us a tour.  The Cabin isnt a cabin anymore but has been added onto many times.  With many lovely views of the lake. She and Fred have an electic hookup for their trailer. 

She made us a lovely pasta dinner.  

Ann showed us a picture of her mother in front of the Bemidji Paul Bunyon Statue shortly after it was erected in 1937

And one of Ann as a little girl.

After we left that area we headed for the Sinclair Lewis Campground along the Lake Wobegon Trail.  It was a nice campground right on the trail and easy walking to downtown restaurants.

It was our first campground with a shower house that also had a big room as the storm shelter.

Our site was right on the lake.

It rained the first night.  I woke to water dripping in from the window over our heads.

That morning I walked to a gym about a mile away and Steve worked on repairing the leak.

He did good, we have been through a few rain storms since and I and my pillow have stayed dry... well except for the drool sometimes, lol.

The bandstand in the park has a beautiful mural inside.

We learned that fiction author Sinclair Lewis was the first American author to win a Nobel prize. 

My question is, how do you suppose someone aquires the name "Hole in the Wall"?

One night I heard thunder in the distance.  It seemed distant, so I wasn't worried.  But then the wind picked up. It was quite strong.  I jumped out of bed intending to bring in the awning.  But I wasn't dressed for stepping outside and Steve had added straps and stakes to hold the awning down.  

I reached for some clothes and as I was getting some on, Steve jumped up and opened the door.  Just then a gust grabbed the awning and bent one of the support arms.  There was no way to bring it in, and the way the awning was whipping was dangerous.  It could strike us or flip the trailer.  

We finished dressing and ran for the shelter.  I was surprised we were the only campers there taking shelter.  Everyone else, we noticed later, didn't have their awnings out.

Steve said,"From now on we bring the awning in when we leave the trailer and at night."  

👍 Agreed!

When the rain stopped, the lightening was like a strobe light as Steve worked to cut off the canvas.  Fortunately we had no damage to the trailer itself.

The next morning he worked at getting the awning supports off.  And all screw holes water tight.

It didn't take long.  Yay!  We still got to experience a part of the Wobegon Trail.

Steve laughed as he pointed out to me that the artist used nuts for the nuts.

I am glad we rode our trikes. But there were many places on the trail that had weeds and ruts down the middle.  We could have spent much more time and days riding because the Wobegon connects to two other trails with well over 100 miles of trails.

We only found one restaurant open and it was really packed on a Sunday morning.  We stood around waiting. A nice family invited us to share their long table.  Thank goodness!  He said that half the town was out of power due to the Awning-ripping storm so that was why it was so busy in the restaurant.

Somewhere in our travels in Minnesota we got to see the world's largest crow.  It's in Crow County.  It has all 50 state flags plus Canada and some territories flying.  A sign said that all the flags were donated by residents who came from that state or territory.  Pretty cool.

We were almost to our destination campground when we saw a sign for Pipestone National Monument.  We turned to check it out.

It is just outside of Calumet, where many of the buildings are made of the same quartsite that was in the pipestone mines.

In the visitors center we got to watch several Native Americans using the old techniques to create art and pipestone peace pipes.

Steve bought a couple turtles as gifts.  They were created by the woman on the left in the picture below.

We were really glad we made these two spontaneous stops.  We got to see the stone that explorer Nicollet carved in when he and his team went through this area.  it is still there on a bluff overlooking one of the cliffs where the natives dig for pipestone.

The National Monument is still a sacred place for natives.  They are the only ones allowed to mine the pipestone and they are required to do it with only hand tools.

The prairie in the area was absolutely stunning.  Only one percent of the original prairie in the US remains.  We could really tell the difference between this prairie and prairie restorations. 

Prairie Rose

Worm wart

Shoot, I had memorized four... can only recall these two.

Wr had planned on staying at a Harvest Host near Sioux Falls, SD.  But we couldn't find any to our liking that was accepting campers.

We were lucky to get a reservation in Palisades State Park in South Dakota. 

It was a nice shady spot on a hot day.  And the evening walk was beautiful.

Steve had never seen or heard a cicada before.  I found one dead, or so I thought.   When Steve touched it it still buzzed it's wings.  This is a rare year in which two different batches of cicadas are emerging, .mostly in Illinois, I think.

The next day we stopped in Mitchell, SD at the Cabellas store.  It is a destination store with lots of taxidermy and fun camping stuff. 

Steve bought a instant canopy to give us some shade this year. He says he will replace the awning with a manual one this winter.

Of course, in Mitchell y0u have to stop at the corn palace.

This mural on the outside of the building is made of corn cobs split lengthwise and nailed to plywood.  The murals also use different color grains.  All the colors are natural from the different colored corn and grains.

A crew was working on removing last year's murals.  Each year they put up new designs with a theme.  It cost about 150,000 a year to decorate the palace.

For 23 years it was Oscar Howe that designed the murals.  Now it is University art students.

That  night we stayed at a Tractor Museum in Kimball, SD.

We had big sky!

We toured the museum before they closed at five.  The volunteers were a couple of retired and bored farmers.

One told us that it was walking distance to the local ice cream stand. She devil that she was, tossing out temptations. 

I had seen pictures of this newer statue.  We stopped at the wayside at the Missouri River and there she was!  Lovely.

We walked a path and across the river we could see the area where Lewis and Clark camped both on their way to the Pacific and on their way back.

The SD waysides have these cement Teepees that are lit up at night.  I took a picture inside of it looking up at the blue sky.

There was a museum there with information about the Lewis and Clark adventure.  I learned some things but can't recall them now.  Such is life at 71.

I had warned Steve about the Wall Drug signs.  I think we saw the first one in Minnesota.

We also saw a sign for a Mexican restaurant, "Mexican food so good, Trump would want to build a wall around it."

All the corn and soybeans, tons and tons go to cattle or to gasoline.  It seems, though we don't know for sure, that none of it goes directly into people's mouths.  Seems so inefficient.

We stopped at the 1880s village where some of Dancing With Wolves was filmed.

We made it to the Badlands!  We had four nights reserved!  We were glad we did.  It was so spectacular!

The Cedar Pass Campground within the National Park had campsites lined up on either side of the road parallel to the road.  We were glad we had an electric site.  We ran the air a few times.

We went to an evening program on dating of the soils in the area.  Followed by a fun and entertaining star gazing program.

The Badlands was under water when the Dinosaurs roamed the planet so there aren't any dinosaur fossils, but there is the Mosasaur!  

The erosion is happening at about one inch a year.  So they don't tell you to stay on the trails.  Your footprints will be washed away in the next big rain.  It took awhile for me to gather up the nerve to go off trail.  I could get lost among all those dirt mounds.

Outside the visitors center we saw a few cars with grills full of grass hoppers.

In the visitors center are paleontologists doing the work of cleaning found fossils.  In the Badlands they don't dig looking for fossils, they wait until rain uncovers them.  

Visitors are told to.report any suspected fossil findings and their location.  Don't move them!  They do dig around a found fossil if more of the animal is suspected to be found.  One of the rangers said she took four reports in one day.  That is common, she said, and she isn't the only one taking in reports of possible finds.

The picture below is Steve talking to his mom while we hiked up a slippery, steep trail.

We attended a Ranger talk and I asked her about these lines that don't seem to go the same direction as the millions of  years old layers.  She said it was a good question and the scientists have not figured it out yet, it is a mystery.

We arrived for a Ranger talk at a parking lot and there was a big horned sheep next to the parking lot!

The ranger told us scattered poop is a big horn.  If the poop is in a pile it is an antelope.

After the ranger walk, the buck was gone and there were two females and two babies.  This made the ranger happy.  She said the park had lost 75% of the big horn in the park due to a virus.  They were monitoring and trying to re-grow the population.

Below you can really see the layers from the different periods.  65 million years ago to 25 million years ago.

Yes, it got hot and dry in the Badlands.

Steve was so happy to finally see a wild Buffalo in the park.

See the big sky?  The moon was out so we couldn't see the milky way.  We set the alarm for 2:30 and got up and walked away from the lights of the campground restrooms and there it was, a huge honkin' view of the milky way! 

Speaking of the milky way.  The star program said that proportion-wise the milky way is the size of a quarter and the earth is inside the "O" of "In God We Trust".  And the O is about the area that contains all the stars that we can see with the naked eye.  

And there are other bigger galaxies out there.  Mind blowing.  When life gets stressful, think on that.  Our problems, our lives, are teeny tiny in perspective.

We think we found some bones.  I took a picture and pinned the GPS coordinates and reported it to the park.  I don't know if they are fossils or recent bone pieces. 

See the toad the same color as the rock he is hopping on?

Here are some pictures that Steve took.

He thanked me for planning a stop in the Badlands.  I was really glad I did it too.  

It is nerve racking when planning a route.  We were way up at the Boundary Waters and then we went South to hit the Badlands and the Black Hills instead of cutting across North Dakota and Montana.  Choices, I am grateful to have choices.  Sometimes deciding is hard.  This time I made the right choices.  We have enjoyed these places.  

We both loved the Badlands.  The last night we went for a short walk off trail watching the colors and shadows change with the fading light.  The moon came out.   Oh my!  No man made noises.  In a dead end canyon.  It was freeing and lovely.

That is enough for now.

We are now in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Where we have driven the wildlife drive twice and enjoyed watching wild burros and mules and Bison.  

We have had fun watching Buffalo here.

We are going to four-wheel it tomorrow and then on Wednesday we head out on a four day bike tour taking our time on the George Michelson Trail.

I am excited.  

Oh, and I wrote some of this while sitting in the laundromat in Custer, SD.

The Lost Sock.  Remember this place, Kathi and Kay?   

Last time I was in The Lost Sock it was cold and rainy and the Fab Four (that is what we called us four couples) were riding into Custer shivering and soaked.   We changed clothes in the bathroom of The Lost Sock laundromat and washed our cloths while our sag wagon brought us hot chocolate.

Good times!  Love you guys and our shared memories. ❤️ 

We are happy, Steve just figured out how to make homemade pizza on the grill.  Yum!

Oh!  And I am shopping for something to live in Florida.  Something cheap but comfortable.  I don't like leaving Inverness each year not knowing where I will house myself when I return the next fall.  I don't like having a place where entertaining and hosting others depends on the weather cooperating. 

Will it be a condo?  A trailer?  A piece of land where I can park and plug in a bigger trailer?  It is just for a few years... while we travel.

Ideas?  I am hoping for about $100,000 with low expenses.  Lol.  We will see.   Windermere is awesome but still to pricey right now.