Minneapolis/Yellowstone trip '09: August 2009

Corny as can be! Imagine South Dakota, to Minnesota, to Iowa, to Nebraska - WOW that's a lot of corn. I was reminded of the time we flew a customer into Minneapolis, I think he was from Kentucky - some place south - and he commented on all the corn he saw from the airplane coming into the Twin Cities. Then he went on to allow as how down his way, they had it drunk up already!

We would drive down the highway, slightly elevated so I figure the naked eye could see almost 30 miles, each way. That makes a 60 mile diameter circle with nothing but corn, and 60 miles later a 60 mile diameter of nothing but corn and ....... get the picture?

From Albert Lea, Mn we motored to Grimes Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines. Cutty's Des Moines Camping Club, another Coast to Coast reciprocity place. Nice place but old and spots were very tight and difficult to maneuver. This stop was mostly just for shopping, supplies and laundry. They did have a nice little pond, great for dog walking and a couple of photos.

Having re provisioned, it was off to Omaha. Just makes you want to say "Mutual of Omaha" which we did and we did see their huge headquarter building. We stayed at a City of Omaha park and camp ground, N.P. Dodge Park. Excellent camp ground and wonderful park (including 3 contiguous soccer fields that worked perfect as flight fields :-)). Once again we were on, almost on, the Missouri River, camped I'm sure right where Lewis and Clark stopped.

We enjoyed the park and several flights there (oh yes, I flew the new airplane way, way up into a tree where it comfortably settled in, looking almost permanent. A ladder and some Wild Bill type lasso work by yours truly eventually rescued the maverick airplane and returned it to its rightful hanger!).

We went out on a grocery shopping adventure and discovered there is definitely a bad part to Omaha. The GPS guides you to a grocery store, but no commentary on neighborhood quality! It was one of those role up and lock the window and don't stop for ANYTHING type places. Luckily we did discover and find some really nice parts of Omaha, especially the older, all most majestic homes around the campus. We had seen a liquor store on the Internet advertising a vast array of beers and scotchs. It was a phenomenal place, unfortunately with phenomenal prices. We were introduced to Nebraska's "sin taxes" yikes, I'll tell you the taxes are a sin! Bad place to buy booze, although the selection did seduce us into one or two "Sunday" scotches (Sunday = special scotch night).

Deer came through the park every night, unfortunately just a few minutes too late for pictures. Wonder if they plan it that way. There were also thousands of fire flys, what a light show. Nice camp fire each night, deer to watch, fire fly light show, marshmallows to roast, pleasant temperature...how good does it get!

This little feller kept chitting at me, I guess he thought he had laid claim to this spot. So, once again I shot him, with my trusty D300! Has to be the reddest squirrel I have seen, guess that is why they call them the American Red Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) (I always wanted to do that "Tamiasciurus hudsonicus" thing!).

Here is the camp site looking out, obviously some airplane mending and rebuilding work in progress (what a place to work).

Next stop Henderson, Nebraska. Basically just a stop over, but we had some fun exploring Henderson, a small farm town, and just poking around.

They really packed us in here. The guy to the right of us in the picture went way to the right since he was on the end. The rig to our left had to jockey so our slide outs wouldn't hit! Oh well, the services were good and it was just one night. Note the corn in the background.

Now here is a sight you don't see every day. We are driving down this back road and are stopped and asked to pull over when we see a HOUSE coming at us.

We continued down this road, and then another and stumbled upon the town's old cemetery, so we poked about reading headstones. Still don't know why this is interesting but we sure do enjoy it. I think part of is the kind of "living" history, reading the names (names often signify the times), going somewhere not crowded, and also sometimes just seeing what was said about a person in the final recording. Interesting to see how many child deaths there used to be, interesting to see how, would chauvinistic be the word, the wording might be; a lot of "wife of so-and-so" and finally we notice it is very common for the surviving spouse to pass on within 2 or 3 years of the other spouse.

1872 was the first interment at this yard.

Shelle's maiden name is Hale (yes she is related to Nathan) so we had to capture this one. Look at the chunk of granite they used. The death date is 1909, 100 years ago, the stone has survived well.

Next we are off to Ogallala, Nebraska. Dang, this Nebraska is a long state. We chose Ogallala because of the state recreation area. The North Platte river was dammed to form Lake McConaughy, a very large reservoir, and below it, it actually empties into, is Lake Ogallala and a very nice camp ground. We backed right up to the lake for a great view, complete with splendid sunsets.

While in Ogallala we did our usual exploring, some shopping and I finally got a haircut. Story book typical old fashion barber shop with barber pole and old fashion barber chair. Complete with all the gossip or local happenings or whatever you wanted to know. I used to do a little bird hunting and saw from about 3 dozen photos that my barber was a bird hunter too, so we swapped hunting stories even after the haircut was done. Fun! After that fun adventure, Shelle had a hankering for an A & W root beer float, and sure enough Ogallala has an A & W! Now I'm telling ya, this is down home stuff folks.

Here are a couple of shots of the camp site:

From the other side of the lake.

This is the water coming out of Lake McConaughy, into Lake Ogallala. Sure would like to know how many gallons per minute are coming out!

Roxy got to go for at least a daily swim, here retrieving the stick, one of our favorite games.

I love white pelicans and the lake had a large group of them, mostly they stayed in the less people populated part of the lake. Mixed in are some sort of duck and some sort of gull. They are all on a little sand dune, well off shore, nicely protected. Below you can see the water feeding into Ogallala, the white pelicans and some cows lazily grazing on the far shore.

Further down towards the end of the lake we found these nice Canadian Geese.

The first time we took the trip down to the end of the lake, we rode our bikes, fun trail, and only took the small Kodak for a camera. At the end of the lake I slammed on my breaks, I saw a beautiful Bald Eagle sitting like a portrait atop a tree. By the time I could get the camera out and working he took off, so better than nothing here is my eagle in flight.

Can't resist working in at least one flower, several of these decorated the lake near our site.

And a parting shot with one of my White Pelicans out for a sunset cruise.

We left Rapid City and drove to Chamberlain, South Dakota, really just a stopover. When we arrived we were very pleasantly surprised to find a great camp ground right on the Missouri River. Actually we were technically on a lake as they have damned sections of the river, both above and below us. What a marvelous setting (somewhat reminiscent, for those that know it, of Lake Pepin – complete with a little funky marina). Chamberlain we discovered was very significant in the Lewis and Clark expedition. They used Chamberlain as a staging area to stock up and prepare for their exploration down the Missouri and returned to camp here two years later. We are pretty sure they camped precisely where we did!

We were “entertained” by a tornado warning (not a watch, a warning!) and listened to the talking heads on the news scare us half to death. We did get some storming but no tornado, nor what I feared almost as much, no hail (they were talking about grapefruit sized hail).

Since the weather was moving east, as was our plan; we decided to sit out a day and stayed to explore the area. The area turned out to be a fun place and much prettier than I would have ever thought it to be.

Opening picture is a water tower. Water towers are so very common in Minnesota, yet this one was just a little uncommon so it gets to greet us.

As I said we did have some weather, but bad weather isn't always bad. Do you think that water tower might be full of gold? Look close for the second rainbow.

Here is our camp sight (our being us, Lewis, and Clark), smack on the Missouri.

Don't ask me why or how, but for some odd reason I befriended this wayward soul who had ridden his Harley from New York.

And I really liked his cool saddle bags (he told me each one would carry a case of beer!).

This is the bridge that normally goes into the town of Chamberlain, supposedly it is famous, although I could never find out why. They had just shut it down for some major rework, which made the trip into town a little longer.

Folks out for an evening cruise, enjoying the Missouri River and finally a nice day.

And we enjoy happy hour on the river.

Every once in a while we had to do a little cleaning, this is the end cap/front of the rig and one days worth of bugs.

Next stop on the journey was Welcome, Minnesota. Now hardly anyone has heard of Welcome, not even most folks in Minnesota. It is in the south western part of Minnesota and we picked it because it was a good stop distance wise and the park there gives us a reciprocity rate (i.e. cheap!) Welcome is close to the western Minnesota border and only about 10 miles north of Iowa so we figured someone thought it was a welcome center – nope. Named for some guy by the name of Welcome. We drove through welcome and also the neighboring town of Sherburn, very cool, very clean, very typical small mid-west towns. Just makes you feel good to drive through down town (all one block of it!).

Here is our nice little camp site, very comfortable and nice and quiet.

Downtown Welcome, almost looks like a movie set. Life might be just a little simpler here.

From Welcome we took back country roads through Minnesota farm land, an enjoyable diversion from the busy freeways (busy being relevant, nothing even close to L.A. traffic – how are we ever going to adjust to that again?). We stayed in Prior Lake which is just south of Minneapolis, at the camp ground next to Mystic Lake Casino, a huge American Indian casino. The choice was not due to the casino but due to the proximity to our good friends Kris and Bob Ruminsky who stood up for Shell and me at our wedding.

The rest of our stay is almost a blur, not very interesting from a travel log stand point but pretty exciting if you like to watch seniors party! We were in the Twin Cities for 9 days and partied every single night, several lunches and a couple of breakfasts. Whew, what a whirlwind tour, but what great fun. We simply could not see everyone we wanted but we sure did get to see a whole bunch of our very good friends. After 4 days we moved to Eagan, another Minneapolis suburb to be close to our friends Roger and Marilyn Tarbet who we have known for years, originally through our Minnesota boating (Lake Pepin). The camping park we stayed in, Lebanon Hills, is a county park and very nice. While almost right in the city, the park looks and feels like the country.

Here is the site at Lebanon Hills, we picked a ton of wild raspberries right in front of the rig.

And this is a pond right on the property, great place to walk dogs! (By the way, we saw wild turkeys - the real ones, not the drinking ones - and at night just tons of fire flys, great fun.)

So what all did we do while in Minneapolis? A quick summary, excluding vast amounts of partying, would go like this: visited Shelle’s original home and neighborhood/bought two new RC airplanes/flew airplanes/visited our Burnsville home/picked wild raspberries/visited with Shelle’s cousin Beth/Roxy met Fynn, Roger and Marilyn’s Portuguese Water Dog (their 3rd, so they did not copy Obama, it was vice versa!)/Shelle had her hair done – I guess this is noteworthy, it seemed so to Shelle/saw Bob and Marie Murray, Joe Sterk, Jan and Tim England, Chris Hazen (Englby), Pat Vessey, Bob an Kris’s daughter Andrea and her new Husband Bob, and our wonderful Burnsville neighbors, Dee and Dale Means.

And here is the new airplane, a T-28 Trojan, modeled after the real airplane flown by the navy and other services and even countries.

Roxy got to meet and play with Cally (sp?), Kris and Bob's dog and Shay their daughter Andrea's dog. Shay, the tan/red lab, is just a puppy and what a handful!

And then, Ms. Rox met Mr. Fynn, another handful.

And here is the nice gentleman Mr. Fynn trying to help Roxy walk, what a nice guy. Wonder why Roxy didn't like the help, I mean really didn't like the help.

Next adventure was to visit with the Tate’s, George and Kay. I worked with and for George for many years and in addition we became good friends and stayed so after George left Honeywell. George always dreamed of owning a large parcel of land and being able to situate within to have privacy and a place to run his dogs. A few years back he realized his dream and bought a section of farm land, 640 acres! He and Kay have been working diligently since the purchase to improve the farm and build it to their specs. On the way up we stopped by George’s company (he is the U.S. rep for Dungs, a high quality German valve manufacturer) and toured the facility. We got to say hello to son Erik who is now the CEO of the company, as George is retiring at the end of the year.

The farm is in Shafer, Mn. north east of Minneapolis and it is awesome, really cool. We went into the town of Shafer for lunch and as you would guess George and Kay knew everyone and vice versa. We parked next to a pond the Tate’s built and considered it one of our better camp sites. Roxy loved the place as the rule was we don’t need no stinkin’ leashes.

Here we are at one of our favorite camp spots next to Tate Pond. There are actually fish in that pond.

This is the road into the Tate's, George subs out some of the land to a corn farmer, and below the road continuing up to the house past the fantastic looking red barn (what else, right?).

And here is the fantastic, comfortable, wonderful house that George and Kay built.

One more shot of the old red barn.

Our last stop in Minnesota, now on our journey home via lots of camping in Colorado, was Albert Lea. Albert Lea is at the southern border of Minnesota and we stayed at the county fair (not an unusual place to camp, most State or county fairs have camping facilities and normally at a pretty good price). Nice facility, interesting little town and we found a kids practice rodeo in the evening to keep us entertained.

Here is the camp site at the fair, pretty nice.

In closing, here are some of the kids from the rodeo. They ranged from very, very young up to 21. It was great fun to watch and some of the kids were really cute. It was twilight to dark and I didn't have the flash, but you get the idea.