JEFF'S EXCELLENT SIDETRIP TO MINNEAPOLIS, JUNE 11-15, 2006
I'll just do the Minneapolis trip as one page.
I left Tuesday morning and planned to do some touristy stuff along the way. First thing was the Ellsworth AFB museum. Just when I got there they announced a tour in 20 minutes of the base and minuteman silo. I had just read that there was a missile silo you could tour, so I thought this was it. So I signed up and looked around inside the museum. The tour was of the base and a TRAINING SILO! Crap. But it was still interesting. And the base I hadn't been on in probably 30 years, so that was ok too. They have a nice collection of planes that I looked at too. They have a B-1, B-52, B-29, an O-2, and other good stuff. I talked to a guy who lives near the base, and he said the B-1's were 10 times louder than the B-52s.
Next I stopped at the Wounded Knee Museum in Wall. This was a tastefully done history of the Sioux interaction with the whites, which of course is not pretty. When I was there a guy who makes some of the stuff they sell was there, so I talked to him. He told me additional info. about Wounded Knee, as he lives right there. I bought a 3-dimensional dreamcatcher he made, plus a book on Lakota religion. Then I drove to Sioux Falls.
Wednesday I helped pop with some electrical problem on the roof of the main store. Then we drove around and looked at his properties. Then we went to "The Glass House", a chick flick movie. Didn't do a lot else, but it was warm.
Thursday I took off with a huge load of grapes and stopped first at Mound Park in Minnesota. This was pretty boring, as there was no mound, just a 10 foot outrcropping of rock. Zzzzz....
As an aside, I got some cool pics this trip of old abandoned farm buildings. For some reason I like taking photos of abandoned buildings.
Next was Pipestone National monument. This is a geologically unique place where there is a foot-thick layer of soft rock called, appropriately, pipestone. The native tribes considered the place sacred, and since every tribe wanted to use the pipestone, the area was off-limits to war. It's a pretty and interesting place and worth a stop.
One interesting thing here is a few huge boulders that were dropped off by a glacier. The rocks don't belong anywhere in the area, so the assumption is they were left behind by a retreating glacier. They're called the Three Maidens and of course there is a native myth about them, where some maidens hid under them and disappeared.
Next I went to a rock outcropping in the middle of nowhere called the Jeffers Petroglyphs. It's on the top of a rise and is basically a floor of rock. These were hard for me to see, even when there was a drawing right there showing what was in front of me. The guy there says it depends on the light how easily you can see them. Also there were scratches in the rock from the receding glaciers. Here's a hand.
There was a sod house along the way I planned to stop at, but I decided I was getting tired and wanted to get to Minneapolis by 9, so I just drove through. There was a big storm to my north obviously brewing, but I went east first and missed the rain. I heard people talking the next day that there had been up to 3 inches of rain in parts of Minnesota.
Also, there were quite a few wind turbines spread out all over southwest Minnesota. I didn't even know about that, so that was cool. I'm sure the farmers are happy to get rent from them too. There was talk on the radio that a 2nd electric plant near Aberdeen, SD was scheduled to be built. This was supposed to be good for wind turbines, because it required new lines to be put in, which the turbines could then use to distribute their power as well.
Friday morning I went to the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis and looked through their documents and books relating to Volney Mathison. This is the guy who "invented" the e-meter used by Scientology. Unfortunately, Mathison didn't always put a copyright date on his works, so I can't tell for sure on some ideas whether Hubbard was stealing from Mathison, or vice versa. I spent about 2 hours there, and then looked through the cool museum of strange electrical devices. One is where you hold onto a knob with your left hand, and a crank on your right. When you turn the crank, a greater and greater voltage of electricity goes through you. I got the dial up to 120 before I had to quit. I assume that's voltage?
Off I go heading to Iowa now, on the backroads as usual. I didn't really stop to see much because I was trying to get into Nebraska before dark. I went to Ponca, NE first. This is where my friend Ida grew up. Small farming town. There's a state park just north with strange new sculptures there, so I took photos of that. Then I high-tailed it to St. Helena.
St. Helena is just across the Missouri River from my grandparent's farm. Looking across the river, you can see the town's huge church steeple. I'd always wanted to go over and just see the town, and hopefully look at our farm from the other side.
There it is, on a hill on the south side of town. It's huge, since the town only has 78 people!
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way down to the river at the town (private farmland), so I settled for a boat launch a few miles west. I couldn't recognize anything on the other side, unfortunately.
I spent the night in Norfolk.
Saturday I planned to play tourist on back roads and get to Galena by 9pm. First stop, Tilden, NE. This is where L. Ron Hubbard was born. I went to the library and looked at their folder on Scientology. It's about 2 inches thick and has documentation and stuff from both Scientology and critics. Mostly it was informational stuff about the church rather than anything to do with the actual conflict from 1997 when the church tried to pay for a park in town that would be a Hubbard Memorial Park. The town was split over taking the money, and eventually they rejected it after a bitter fight. There are apparently still hard feelings in town about that.
I found out Hubbard's address and took photos of the plain house, then drove around town a bit before heading out.
Going through Neligh, I saw an old mill building that looked cool. It's now a museum, so I took the tour. This big structure is left just as it was when it closed down. It was powered by a turbine in the river that turned all the gears and pulleys in the mill. There are so many chains, pulleys, chutes, and tubes all over it looks rather Rube Goldbergish. But it was fun.
Next was Clearwater, Nebraska. It's just about 20 miles west of Tilden. They're celebrating their 125 year anniversary this week! I talked to a local some, took photos and left. The local guy told me that the fossil digs north of town were cool, so I headed that direction.
Today it was 106 or higher at every bank sign that I saw. One said 111, but that was probably off. There was also a strong wind from the south almost the whole day.
The Ash Fall Fossil Beds are pretty neat. I got lost finding the place and wound up driving on horrid gravel roads. They put too much gravel on the road bed, so it's dangerous to go too fast. :( Anyway, this is a place that was coverd up to 8 feet deep in ash from a volcano explosion in Idaho! At the dig site there had been a pool where elephants, rhinos, horses, camels, and other animals had congregated and suffocated from the ash fall. They were then covered by the ash and preserved. They've left the animals just as they found them, so you can see an entire bison skeletan intact lying on its side, and dozens of other animals right there as well. That volcano explosion must have been huge to send so much ash there. Mt. St. Helens sent over just a dusting. There was mention of a deposit from a Yellowstone volcano about 1/2 million years ago, but I didn't read closely enough about that one.
I decided here to change my course from going through Nebraska to going through South Dakota (back roads, of course). This would let me cross the Missouri River twice in places that I haven't been. So I went to the Fort Randall dam. Fort Randall was right below the dam, but all that's left is part of a church some soldiers built.
I drove over another bridge on the way to Winner. All along the river is information about Lewis and Clark's expedition that went through here. At this point one of their party had gotten lost from the rest. He thought he was behind them on the river when in fact he was ahead. He kept pushing forward until he was exhausted, so he stopped and waited for some fur traders or somebody to come by. Instead, Lewis and Clark had caught up to him.
Going west from Winner I thought I was on Highway 44, but actually I was on 18. Suddenly, the highway just ended! There was a "road closed" sign and the road was all torn up. There had been no warning anywhere that this was going to happen, nor was there any detour sign. So I took a gravel road going north and wound up on 44.
All these back roads were just similar views; rolling hills, wheat or corn fields, cows. Sometimes an abandoned farm. Small dusty towns. Very little traffic.
I got to the Badlands just before sunset. The sign at the entrance said the ticket office was closed, so I just drove in. I got a really nice photo just at sunset.
But now my camera card was full. So what happens? I go around a corner and there is a deer and 2 fawns crossing the road, as if they owned the place. I stopped and whimpered as they walked by me nonchalantly, assuming, I suppose, that I was going to take their photo. But I COULDN'T!!! Waaa!
I got to Rapid City about 9pm. Going west on Jackson Blvd, there were 2 deer and 2 fawns crossing the road near the park. The fawns appeared to be thinking "jeez, I hope mom and dad know where they're going."
I got to the cabins about 11pm, just as John was walking by to feed the cats. We chatted a while and he said that day was the first day he ever knew it got to 100 degrees in Galena.
1600 miles on the car.