Road Trip 2014: 3rd Leg

Brookings, SD -> De Smet, SD -> Mitchell, SD

Little storm on the prairie.  For real.  It was 10 a.m. and dark as night.



 Unless you've read the books, this probably means nothing.  We went in there.  Didn't buy a thing.

 Couldn't skip the cemetery...

 Prehistoric Indian Village in Mitchell.  This place was fairly interesting.  I was most intrigued about the number of domesticated dogs these people evidently kept a thousand years ago.  Who knew?

 Lake Mitchell

 I wasn't expecting the Corn Palace to be under construction.  Seems like something their web page should mention.  It was really only the front and we got a whole lesson on how they had to send the onion domes to Minneapolis for repair, so I guess all wasn't lost.  I also didn't realize they decorated it over the summer to get it ready for their annual corn festival in the fall.  Silver lining = We got to see that?  No worries.  They were still selling corn merchandise.

Road Trip 2014: 2nd Leg

Illinois -> Wisconsin -> Minnesota -> South Dakota

 

"Photo Op"...what you should know is not all of my kids are ready and willing to pose at every opportunity.  It was early, so she accommodated the situation. 

 I should have kept track of how many Indian tribes we learned about today.

 

 Cheese Curds.  We'd never eaten them, but heard we must if we were going to be in Wisconsin.  They are like the state food or something.  Anyway...we got an order.  None of us were crazy about them.  1/2 an order would have been fine.


We crossed the Mississippi at La Crosse, WI.  Landing here was fairly haphazard.  It was on my plan, but I didn't actually pay that much attention to my plan to know about this lovely little place.  I need to go back and visit again.  Seriously, one of the cutest towns I've ever been to in the U.S.

 There are three rivers in La Crosse; Black, La Crosse and Mississippi.  I think that's the Mississippi in the background, but not totally sure.  Three rivers in one town is confusing.

This is the view from "Granddad's Bluff".  You can see three states (Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota) from up there.  Don't ask m what is what, because I don't know.  The views are incredible, though.

You have to know the backstory.  Jac got that plaid blanket for Christmas.  He has a habit of wandering all of the house wrapped in it (knocking stuff off counters in the process...highly annoying).  I started calling him Linus.  We stopped in Sleepy Eye to get a snack (deep fried jalapeno strips...for real) and there was Linus.  Jac couldn't get across the street fast enough.  Alicia was mortified.  "Who does that?"  "Is posing with a blanket on the side of the street really necessary?"

Uhh...yes.  It actually was necessary.  Because I wasn't leaving Sleepy Eye until I got the picture.

Sod house on the prairie...

I forgot how flat it is out here.  I mean, I remembered it was flat, but one forgets the extent of exactly how flat it is.  You can see for miles.  I'm convinced every tree was intentionally planted by man.  I'm not sure if we saw any trees for half of Minnesota that weren't part of an obvious line.

Some kind of prairie flower...

The other thing worth mentioning is we took some windy, little, two-lane (for most of it) road from Rochester all the way to Brookings, SD.  We did so under the guise it is called the "Laura Ingalls Wilder Highway".  I thought that whole tourist angle would be played up.  Not so much.  We drove forever until we came to Walnut Grove.  Know what's there?  Not much of anything.  There was a little museum, but it was closed by the time we got there.  Pretty sure we didn't miss much.

One of the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota

This one is for Ryan.  He relies on the GPS.  I hardly ever use it, because it either doesn't know where we are or takes us all over the world to get somewhere.  According to Sheila (We refer to the GPS as Sheila....Sheila is also my mother's name.  There's no relation between the two, just to be clear.), we were in the middle of nowhere.  For what it's worth, Sheila was right.  We were in the middle of nowhere.

Finally.  12 hours of travelling later...South Dakota.  We aren't driving a whole lot tomorrow.  That will be a nice break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Road Trip 2014

Maryland -> Pennsylvania -> Ohio -> Indiana -> Illinois...

We've seen all that before.  A million times.  Today, we will conquer new territory.

We left early and that driving made me tired.  This leg took 14 hours, because there is a ton of road construction happening in and outside Chicago.

Bought the kids a Chicago style pizza and went to bed.

One of them was supposed to join me, but I guess they were afraid to wake a sleeping bear.

Reset

1.  I stopped counting the days of summer.  The days go too fast.  It was depressing me.

2.  Some summers are different than others.  This is one of them.  Some, I have a lot of free time without a whole lot of pressing things to do.  Not this year.  New job.  Certificate expiration/renewal.  Approaching that halfway mark to the Doctorate.  Teenager who is on the brink of adulthood, but who doesn't have all the adult skills required to be independent.  Like driving.  I'm cool with all of this, just reflecting it's not a "lay around" summer.  I had one of those the summer before last.  It was really awesome.  This one isn't less awesome, just different.

3.  Reset.  Summer is when I do that.  This past year has been particularly hard which also tends to mean, for me, it was also a year of great growth.  The type of growth that wasn't pleasant.  I'm glad for it, but am also hoping I've been released from that process for awhile.  My current state is like that of a computer.  The window is flashing "Updates added, please restart your machine."  You know what I almost always do when that window is flashing?  I hit "Remind me later."  ;-)  I haven't been given full permission to hit that restart button yet.  It's coming.

The story of the last two weeks...I was feeling like not much of anything happened and then I started looking at pictures.  A sampling:

Pippi turned 10.  How could we not take her to the store to pick out a present and then follow that up with a party?

Damascus Days...this parade sums up what living in Damascus is like.  I say a lot of things about living in this fishbowl, but I don't want to live anywhere else.

 

Jac went to Boy Scout camp.



 

 

Fresh tomatoes started happening.  Seriously, summer is the best season.

 

 

 

Finished my practice bear/exemplar.  My new job comes with a knitting club.  I'm supposed to be teaching kids how to knit these bears for a service project.  You can read about that here:  Mother Bear.  I'm looking forward to the experience, but there are/were two things I'd never done.  1.  Teach kids to knit.  I can't wrap my mind around how that is going to happen in large groups.  2.  Knit a bear (or any kind of stuffed animal).  I can check #2 off the list of stuff I need to do.  Even if he is a little wonky.  My second bear will be better.  That's how it always works.

 

 

Every class I was taking ended.  Online and what I had to drive to/sit through.  All of them.  I am not currently taking any classes.  I am not even enrolled in any classes.  For the first time in what seems like a LONG time.  It feels nice.









 

Jac's room got a make-over from "little boy" to "teenager".  Not a huge fan of the futon, but I'm not sleeping on it either.



 



61 Days of Summer- Day #16

Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Holocaust Museum

 Photo op.  Sorry, E.

 

 Is that a skunk?

 

 A card making idea I'm stashing in the back of my mind for a rainy day.

 

 Chinese Quilts

An amazing use of fabric...

 

 Some random garden we walked through to get to the Holocaust Museum...where there was AC.  :-)

 

Hey, Grandpa....look!  The Dept. of Agriculture has a "corn garden" out front.





 

Trick photography gone a little bit wrong, lol.