Monday, May 30 - Custer State Park

Last night, Jim looked at weather reports for today.  Based on predictions of morning rain, we decided that we would visit one of the two huge cave National Parks nearby, but hadn’t settled on which.  A recheck of the forecast in the morning showed the precipitation gone.  Outside, however, it was a bit drizzly.

We began our day with a traditional American breakfast at the Wrangler Cafe (eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and toast).  The weather had started to clear by the time we finished breakfast, so we changed our plans.

Under blue skies, we spent the day driving through Custer State Park.  South Dakota has done a spectacular job with this 71,000 acre wildlife filled park.  It rivals the great national parks that we have visited.  The park has a series of roads through different environments.  The first one we traveled on was the 18 mile Wildlife Loop road that took us through open grasslands and hills covered with pine trees.   

We pulled off at the first pond to take pictures of the scenery.   Ardith pointed out a father and a little child fishing together.  By the time Jim got his camera ready, Dad was gone, but the child (daughter?) fished for a few more minutes. The child was casting with a tiny fishing rod and mimicking the casting actions of the father was fun to watch.

There were numerous places with wonderful scenery that merited exiting the car to take pictures.  Once outside the car, the scent of pine was intoxicating in many places.  Due to heavy recent rains, streams were very high.  This is an early stage of the major flooding in the Midwest.

We got to see a number of animals along the Wildlife Loop.  The first was a shy deer. 

We watched prairie dogs in open meadow areas, and pronghorn antelopes.  Their mature males were alone and females and juveniles were in small groups.  

We also had a close personal encounter with a group of wild burros who came right up to the car to check us out.  The people in the car stopped in front of us were feeding them carrots out of the car window, against park rules.   

A pair of wild turkeys took their time crossing the road in front of us.  

The highlight as far as wildlife is concerned was stopping to watch a herd of bison walking slowly across the road and stopping to graze on the grasses on both sides of the road.  They do not move for cars so you wait until they are ready to move.  We were excited to see a large number of calves, and have pictures of them nursing.  There was one calf that Jim though was dead, but Ardith was doubtful.  We saw a number of herds of bison throughout the drive.  We saw over 500 bison, many of them at a distance, but plenty as close as is reasonable.   They keep their herd between 950 and 1450 with an auction every fall.

There are two visitors’ centers in the park and we stopped at both.  The guides are very helpful and the exhibits are well done.  Just before we went to the first of these, we stopped at a historical marker commending the Civilian Conservation Corps and the many projects they built in the area.  We recalled that Ardith’s father had been in the CCC and had done some work in the Dakotas.  We will look through records when we get home to see if there are any details.  The Wildlife Station Visitors’ Center was built by the CCC and is largely intact from their construction.

We ate lunch at the State Game Lodge in the park.  Calvin Coolidge spent an entire summer in this lodge while he was president. They serve a wonderful lunch buffet that included buffalo stew as one of the buffet items.  Jim made a purchase at the gift shop for his special collection (guess what). There are five lodges spread throughout the park and each one provides many options for enjoying the park.

After lunch we drove the 14 mile Needles Highway through the northern portion of the park.  It is a rugged and narrow road that has spectacular views through rugged granite mountains.  There are two tunnels that are so narrow that only one car can pass through at a time.  It was quite an experience to drive on this road but the scenery made it worthwhile.  

As we neared the needles, the beautiful, sunny 63 degree weather began to fade.  Clouds rolled it and the temperature began to drop.  We went to Sylvan Lake for a hike on the trail that traverses the lake.  We got to a place where the nice trail ended and you needed to go through a narrow gap in the rocks with water along the trail.  Ardith opted to return to the car.  Jim continued onward, climbing up rock formations and straddling impromptu springs.  The wind picked up a lot and it started to rain a bit.  When he got to the car, it was 48 degrees.

It was difficult choosing pictures from Badlands National Park.  This will be much worse, there are just shy of 200 pictures.  Ardith was kind to sit in the car while Jim went off on little photo jaunts.  She also did all of the driving today.

We returned to the Wrangler Cafe for a very light dinner: Jim had a chicken sandwich and Ardith barbeque beef on ciabatta and mashed potatoes.

Sunday May 29 - Western South Dakota

Two hours west of Chamberlain lay the Badlands, an area of phenomenally eroded, layered grounds.  The most scenic portions of this are incorporated into Badlands National Park.  

 The day is chilly, overcast and drizzly, but the scenery didn’t disappoint.  The thermometer on the car thermometer varied between 48 and 50 degrees.  Normal temperatures at this time of the year are in the low 70s.  The formations in the badlands come from wind and water erosion.  

 The estimated erosion rate is an inch a year, but detailed studies have just begun.  There was a grove of cedar trees that showed the results of water erosion from higher places.  The trees were starting to get buried.

The erosion over the centuries has exposed huge numbers of fossils, including dinosaurs and mammoths.  The visitors’ center shows some of these.  It was too rainy to visit the fossil sites open to the public.

There are several places along the park road that have jagged formations on one side and lush prairie grasses on the other.  

 Jim got a picture of some far-off flowers that appeared to be crocus, but looking at the pictures and the park’s website on the computer showed them to be evening primrose.

Jim got a picture of a mule deer, one of a pair of bighorn sheep and one of the western meadowlark, which has a beautiful, lilting song.  It will be hard choosing among the many, many pictures for which ones to include in the blog.

Just north of the Badlands park is the town of Wall, which was named for a miles-long wall formation of the badlands.  The attraction there is Wall Drug.  Signs tout it starting hundreds of miles away.

 It is the Great Plains’ answer to South of The Border – a mixture of kitschy displays and merchandise with quick food.  This is Western themed.  Their dining rooms contain what they claim to be the largest private collection of Western art.  

 

 There were cowboy and Indian statues and large figures of local fauna – real and imagined.  An animated T-Rex roared and flashed and traumatized a little kid.

We are staying in Custer tonight.  It was 44 degrees with a heavy drizzle when we arrived in town.  The waitress at dinner tonight said that some folks that live about 5 miles away had 4 inches of snow this morning!  We had to cross through Custer State Park to get here.  There were a lot of pretty places, but we didn’t stop, due to weather.  We have now traversed 2046 miles. Jim, Ardith and Prius all seem to be doing well.

We are staying in the Mile Hi Motel for the next 3 nights.  It was probably built in the 1930s to 1950s.  The room is small but clean.  They have done their best to keep it up to date by having a flat screen TV, wired and wireless internet access, and a refrigerator.   The most important thing this evening is the heater.

Dinner was across the street at the Wrangler Cafe.  Jim had buffalo chili and Ardith had pork chop with mashed potatoes and green beans.  We shared a strawberry-peach pie which the cafe bakes in-house.  The food was good, solid American food.

Saturday May 28 Western Minn Eastern SDak

We did about half of our driving today on very good non-freeway highways.  This let us drive through some very pretty towns.  We did observe a strange phenomenon, though.  In the middle of great expanses, there would be signs for roads with names like 720^th Ave.!  

In one area of southwestern Minnesota, we saw hundreds of windmills.  As we neared the South Dakota border, we heard tornado warnings on the radio for an area we had passed through an hour earlier.  Checking on-line news the next morning, there was some crop damage from them and some damage from large hail.

We had lunch at a chain we had never been in before – Ground Round – in Worthington, MN.  Ardith had a bacon cheese burger and Jim had a bruschetta burger. Both were good quality.  

Our first tourist stop was to see the falls at Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  While there two wedding parties were being photographed.  

 We also went to the top of the observation tower: Jim by steps and Ardith by elevator.  Jim actually got to the 5^th story before Ardith.  As with other cities, the falls were the main reason for the growth of the city, but nearby factories were abandoned when electric power became cheap.  The city has made a nice park of the area.

Our next destination was Mitchell, South Dakota, home of the Corn Palace. For nearly 120 years, the people of Mitchell have been decorating the interior and exterior of the town’s exhibition hall with corn and other grains.  Every summer, except dust bowl and World War II years, the decorations have been removed and a new design put up.  It takes about 100 acres of grain to do each year’s decoration.  Fields are devoted to different colors of corn and special varieties of other grains.  There were photographs of most of the old designs and sketches to show how the designs evolved.

 

We walked 3 blocks to dinner at Anchor Grill.  On our way, we passed a shop that had an American flag made from plastic flowers and star in its window. The food was somewhat standard and was quite decent.  Jim had chicken fettuccine alfredo and Ardith had a Philly cheese steak on sourdough.  We had a waitress who was on her 5^th day on the job and hadn’t yet gotten into the routine of remembering things and being efficient with her trips.  She was pleasant, though.  After dinner we soaked in the hot tub and Jim swam in the pool.

Friday May 27 - more Minneapolis

The three of us went to The Museum of Russian Art, the only non-profit museum in the US devoted to Russian art, which is relatively new.  It is housed in a Spanish mission style former Congregational church.  They didn’t allow photography in the inside, but I pulled some images from their website for this blog. There were 3 exhibits currently running.  The first we pored over was called Shades of Red and featured paintings done by artists during the Soviet era.  It depicted the freedom given artists immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution, then the strictures imposed by Stalin on the style of art permitted which essentially lasted until the collapse of the USSR.  The 3 of us especially liked the one of the coal worker.  

The second exhibit showed early photos of special buildings in and near St. Petersburg.  Peter and I have both been there, but nearly 20 years apart.  We compared our recollections of several of the buildings.  The third exhibit was the favorite of the 3 of us.  It displayed porcelains from czars and czarinas, beginning with those from Czarina Elizabeth who was the main force behind starting the porcelain industry in Russia.

Peter directed us to the Midtown Central Market, housed in the ground floor of a classic former Sears Roebuck store.  It is a great place for exploration of various cultures.  Some of the signs are in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Hmong, Somali and Arabic.  About half the stores are food stalls with a wide variety of standard and ethnic foods.  Ardith chose a veggie pizza.  Jim and Peter went to a place with East African – oriented food.  Peter had the veggie delight – a combination of rice, veggies and an East African curry.  Jim enjoyed a camel burger and mango juice.  The proprietors said they sold the only camel burgers in Minnesota.  Jim had never had one before.   None of the food stalls offered fountain sodas (well, here the word is pop).  There was a wide variety of bottled and canned drinks available.

There was also a variety of clothing and knick-knacks being offered.  Ardith showed Jim some brightly colored silk shirts and he opted to buy a blue one.

As we were driving from the market to our next destination, Jim pulled into a semi-legal parking place and popped out of the car to take pictures of several murals at the intersection he just passed through.  Some of the neighborhoods have lots of murals.

Our next destination was the University of Minnesota, where Peter works as academic advisor for the Art History and Anthropology departments.  He showed us both of his offices and introduced us to several people in the departments.  We got a great tour of the anthropology labs from the guy in charge of the labs.

Peter had arranged for us to go to the James Ford Bell collection in the largest library on campus.  This is the collection of objects from before 1800. We had a good chat with Margaret Borg from the staff. Since Jim especially enjoys maps, she brought out 2 volumes of a 12 volume atlas published in Germany in 1611.  One of them is of the Americas and the other Germany, the country of Jim’s ancestors.  We were permitted to pore over them as much as we wanted without gloves!  Ardith had originally thought we might have to have Margaret turn pages for us.  

 Margaret also brought out a “portolan chart” that was made in Genoa 1489.  This is a type of navigation chart that shows reasonably accurate information about harbors and hazards, features lines emanating like radii from a circle, and shows a compass.  This chart was quite large and was stored in its own box.  We were also permitted to touch this, but did so very little.  It was made of a very heavy material.  The map covered all of Europe, some of North Africa and much of the middle East. The writing was done so that it could be read from the nearest edge.  There were small flags, emphasizing places that were under the control of Genoa and Venice.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Columbus consulted this very chart before his first voyage to the new world.  

The German atlas had perhaps 100 maps of the German-speaking areas of Europe with a few that covered larger areas.  Some were highly detailed, showing tiny villages.  The maps of the Americas were very sketchy away from coasts, since very little exploration had yet been done there.  We spent over 2 hours combing the wonderful maps.

After that we popped into a nearby yarn shop, where Ardith made a small purchased, then went off to the Mapps Cafe (which features maps on its walls) for beverages.

The Black Forest Inn – a German restaurant – was our last stop for the day.  Peter’s friends Karen and Andy were there to perform at the restaurant’s Spargelfest, a week plus celebration of asparagus.  They have a special menu of asparagus dishes, from appetizers to dessert.  This can be viewed at http://www.blackforestinnmpls.com/pdf/sparg2011.pdf. Jim had the pastry wrapped spargel appetizer, while Ardith and Peter stuck with potato pancakes.  For our main course, Jim and Peter both had spargel peroges (pirogues) while Ardith enjoyed the spargel and ham.  For dessert, we shared a hazelnut torte and a sacher torte.  While the asparagus was wonderful, we were saturated with it and not ready to venture to the spargel and rhubarb strudel.  We were totally stuffed with delicious food.

Our motivation for going there was to see Karen and Andy (a.k.a. Dreamland Faces) perform.  In this guise, Karen play accordion and Andy alternates between accordion and bowed saw.  They played music that had German roots.  We really enjoyed the music, though other dinner patrons did a lot of talking.  After their first set, they joined us at our table for their entire break.  Karen’s day job is with the Minnesota historical society where she often deals with old maps.  When they were in Washington this winter, they visited my map curation efforts at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum.  Karen said that she regularly uses the web site I built to give folks access to those maps.