Shades of 1934 - Kansas and Oklahoma

We who experienced Central Texas's horrendous drought in 2011 are all too familiar with dry river beds and brown dusty pastures.  Not that 2012 has been all that much better for the area; there's still a long way to go before Lake Travis is back to its normal levels, and water resources continue to be prime concern.  The drought that the Midwestern states are going through this year, however, is creating a scenario that is eerily bringing to mind the Dust Bowl years of the 30's.  And we've been right in the middle of the incessant wind and blowing dust as we traveled through Kansas and Oklahoma the last couple of weeks.  The blowing dust didn't begin there.  Our first exposure to it was in Joliet, Illinois and continued through Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota.  We are oh-so-tired of it.  HeM fights a losing battle to keep the RV and the Saturn clean, and a fine powdery dust settles on the interior surfaces daily.  I-35 just south of the Kansas/Oklahoma border was closed one day last week when a dust storm caused multiple-car accidents.  Luckily that wasn't a travel day for us, but 2 days later we took that very route.  Let's hope there's some relief soon.

We stopped in Wichita, Kansas mainly because it was a convenient waylay point.  The RV park we chose is brand new.  It opened in July, and is not much more than an enhanced parking lot at this point, but it's paved and satellite reception is easy.

Sidenote:  It was in this RV park that we sat and watched the dust storm mentioned above as it developed--the skies getting grayer and grayer, then browner and browner.

We didn't really expect a lot from our visit in Wichita, and Wichita didn't exactly prove us wrong.  It prides itself as the Air Capital of the World.

We've visited aviation museums in other cities, and don't really need to visit any more--unless they have something we haven't seen yet.  We visited the Kansas Aviation Museum mainly because it has a B52 on display, and we had not seen a B52.

The museum does have a number of interesting items on display, including a number of pilot training simulators that have been used over the years.  There is one that dates back to World War II.  SheM's dad was a pilot in WWII, and we will be asking him if he did any training in one like this.

As do many of the Midwest states, Kansas has a tribute to the Plains Indians, this one in its Museums on the River District.

We visited the Wichita Art Museum.  It certainly doesn't compare to Chicago's art collection, but it did have an interesting exhibit that they titled "Pairings".   They juxtaposed pieces of art together that have some form of similarity, crossing artistic style and medium.  Here are a couple of examples, the first comparing paintings and the second comparing a painting with a sculpture.

HeM snapped this picture in the museum.  Was he pairing SheM with the sculpture? HeM says no!

Wichita has an area of town called Old Town.  It sounded like there may be something there to visit, so we tried.  However, the only thing we could find that was open was the Coleman Museum and Outlet Store.

After Wichita, the next convenient stopping point was Oklahoma City.  Again, fairly low expectations that were not disproved.  The RV park is nice enough--mostly paved roads and paved pads.  It's close to I-44, but the wind has been blowing so much, the noise is not an issue.

Oklahoma City is the capital of Oklahoma and we tried to visit the capitol building.  We arrived there at 4:30 on Sunday afternoon; they close at 4:00 on Sundays.  We did get some outside pictures.  Notice that the capitol does not seem to be very welcoming, quite a contrast to all the other capitols we've visited.

Of course, it's possible that the city is still operating in a security-minded manner due to previous events in its history.  We visited the Oklahoma National Memorial.  It is a sobering site.

We always like to check out the art museums in any city we visit.  The Oklahoma City Museum of Art is on par with the Wichita Art Museum.  The most outstanding exhibit they had was "Luminaries"--a lot of interestingly blown glass.

Oklahoma City has a mile-long canal downtown.  It's reminiscent of the San Antonio Riverwalk, on a much smaller scale.

Oklahoma City is the home of the National Cowboy Museum.  We didn't know really what to expect, but figured "what the heck".  It has a few permanent sculptures, a lot of present-day art that is for sale to the public, Native American crafts from the past 100 years, tributes to Hollywood cowboys as well as real cowboys, and a recreated old west town.  Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

Interestingly enough, they also had an exhibit of photographs from the 1930's Dust Bowl years.  Hmmm.

Next stop is Texas.  

Racing the Geese South; A Stop in Nebraska

On our drive from Sioux Falls toward Nebraska, we noticed that most waterholes were occupied by geese.  Assuming that they, like us, are en route south, we feel a bit of camaraderie with them and confirmation that it IS time to leave the north.  We made our own 'waterhole stop' in Lincoln, Nebraska.  And it wasn't a KOA this time, but the accommodations were very similar--gravel sites and mostly gravel roads, although some of them were paved.

Sightseeing attractions in Lincoln are limited.  We visited the capitol building, and took several pictures inside.  The interior is very colorful with mosaic murals everywhere.  The lighting was so low, however, that the colors are very muted in the pictures.

Outside the capitol, a statue of Abraham Lincoln stands in front of a carving of the Gettysburg address.

 Lincoln, Nebraska is home to the University of Nebraska and its football team.

We sent a picture of the stadium to family in Ohio (Buckeye fans, of course), to let them know that we were in enemy territory.  No worries, though, since Ohio State had just soundly defeated the Huskers with a score of 63 to 38!

Omaha is a short drive from Lincoln so we checked it out one day.  Bronze statues of a wagon train accompanied by a few buffalo and a flock of geese stretch over a series of city blocks in downtown Omaha.  It was fun to walk through, and, of course, we took lots of pictures.

The Missouri River forms the eastern boundary of Omaha, as well as the state boundary between Nebraska and Iowa.  Along the river, a bronze sculpture has been erected to honor the working man.

 

They have included some flood-level markers to help get a feel for the river's historic highs.  We've added our own scale marker in the form of SheM to show how much the river rose to be at the point of the hand and hammer in 2011.  The flood of 1952 was much higher than that.

 

 

One thing we noticed when driving through Nebraska's farmland is that almost every farm has an extensive irrigation system installed.  HeM commented that there must be a really large aquifer below Nebraska to support all that irrigation, and we wondered whether it was wise to be using so much of it this way.  A couple of nights after our drive, we saw a show on the History channel that reported on the Ogallala aquifer in the Midwest US and how its existence is being threatened by all the farming irrigation.  Our concerns were confirmed.

Our next 'waterhole stop' is Kansas.  We'll race the geese there.

South Dakota and a Slice of Wyoming

We turned our route southward as winter started nipping at our heels.  Watching weather forecasts, we figured (or at least hoped) that we would be able to spend a little time in South Dakota, so we booked 10 days in Sioux Falls.  We stayed at the local KOA (KOA's have been appearing on our list of parks a bit too frequently lately).  The park is a typical KOA--gravel roads and pads.  Our site was plenty long enough--we could have parked an additional couple of vehicles behind us.  Most KOA's are situated close to busy roadways; this one is very accessible to I-90.  In fact, it's a bit TOO convenient.  In the picture below, you can see the small rise behind us--that's I-90.  A lot of trucks travel on I-90 all day...and all night.

The main attraction in Sioux Falls is the park where the city's namesake falls are.  They are impressive, and we can only imagine how much nicer they are when the area has not gone through an extended drought, when the Big Sioux river sends a much higher flow through them.

We drove to the nearby town of Mitchell to see their famous Corn Palace.  The outside of the structure, including several murals with changing themes, are covered every year using local corn, corn cobs, and straw/grasses.  Due to the ongoing drought this year, they are doubtful that they will have enough materials to replace the entire surface of the structure, but have started working on a bit of it.

Still watching the weather, we decided to leave the RV in Sioux Falls, and drive the Saturn west across South Dakota to the Badlands, Black Hills, and Mount Rushmore.  If the weather turns dicey, we can vacate an area much faster with the car than the RV, so off we went.  South Dakota is a wide state--over 400 miles.  And most of the landscape looks like this.

But after driving through about 250 miles of that, the terrain begins to change.

And then suddenly you get to the Badlands, and all their splendor.

The imagination begins to create scenes from so many of those westerns we watched as kids.  And it's tempting to take a picture at every turn, knowing full-well that pictures rarely do the views justice.  But we took them anyway as we drove the 40-mile loop through the Badlands National  Park.  (When we invite you over to see a 'slide presentation' of our trip, you may want to have an excuse ready to politely decline.)

We spent a couple of nights in Rapid City.  That was our base to visit Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills.  The scenery in the Black Hills is so pretty we again found ourselves taking picture after picture.

As we approached Mount Rushmore, we took shots of it every time it appeared in the distance.

After viewing the monument, we had lunch in the cafeteria.  They offer buffalo burgers, so we had one.  Flavor is not bad, texture was very dry.  We prefer Whataburgers, with jalapenos.

Crazy Horse Memorial is a work-in-progress that seems to be moving at a snail's pace.  It is the life's work of one family that is determined to keep the project under private control rather than accepting any federal funds.  The entry fee to the memorial is rather steep ($20 for the 2 of us, compared to $11 for Mount Rushmore).  And the progress has been really slow--it was started in 1948 (HeM says that was a good year), and it is FAR from being completed.  Maybe some additional resources, if any are available, should be considered...just our humble opinion.

The weather turned much colder while we were in western South Dakota.  In fact, they experienced their first snow of the season while we were there.  It wasn't a lot, and it was mostly at the higher elevations, so we extended our stay by one more day so we could see a small bit of eastern Wyoming.

Our first stop was in Sundance, WY.  This small town claims that The Sundance Kid stayed in their jail for a short time, and adopted his name from that.  They even have a statue of him on their main street.

From Sundance we headed to Devil's Tower.  This national monument is truly impressive; and it's especially fun to see the landmark from the Close Encounters movie.  In fact, seeing the rock formation up close, I'm surprised that Richard Dreyfuss was able to climb it. But, anything is possible in Hollywood. :)

We spent our last night in Sturgis, SD.  After driving through the town, we decided that the Knuckle Saloon was the place to have a beer and imagine what the town is like when all the bikers roll in for the annual motorcycle rally.

As we left western South Dakota and headed back to Sioux Falls to pick up the RV, we mourned a development that is destroying so many of the pine trees in the Black Hills.  A beetle has moved into the area and is very quickly killing many large stands of trees, leaving many bare hills.  The forest service is fighting them as hard as they can, but the beetles are winning.  A very sad situation.

After Sioux Falls, we're continuing a straight line south toward Texas.

A Sentimental Journey to Lake Park, Minnesota

The furthest north we went this year was to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota which is 40 miles east of Fargo, North Dakota.  We chose this destination because it's near the towns of Lake Park and Moorhead, Minnesota.  SheM's family made several trips from Texas to Minnesota as summer vacations to visit grandparents here in the 50's and 60's.  Mom was born and raised in Lake Park, and spent her young adult years in Moorhead.  And it was in Moorhead that Mom & Dad met during World War II.  There are many 'Mom' memories in this area of Minnesota, and this was a fitting year to make the trip.

The RV park is one of the nicer ones we've experienced.  The streets and pads are paved.  Our site was far enough off the highway that road noise was not an issue.  There is a busy railroad within hearing distance, but that didn't really bother us either.  There is a very nice golf course that is affiliated with the RV park, and its 19th hole (Izzo's) gave us easy walking access to pizza and beer.  We would stay here again if only for the easy access to the pizza and beer. (A note of interest:  There are plenty of liquor stores around here. Every small town has at least one, very prominently advertised, overshadowing most other signs in the town.  Larger towns have a liquor store on almost every corner.  Not much to do in the tundra during winter we guessed.)

We went to Moorhead and found the house that Mom lived in when she and Dad exchanged courting letters during the war.  We found a bridge that dates back to the 30's which may be the very one where they met.  We visited the University of Minnesota at Moorhead where our good friend V from Dallas attended and graduated so, so many years ago.  We drove into Fargo and found the train depot where 8-year-old SheM remembers arriving with Mom and sisters on one of the train trips from Texas to Minnesota.  The depot has been nicely preserved, and is now home to various offices.

We visited Lake Park, population 790.  We found the old farm house where Mom was born and raised, and where so many summer vacations were spent.  The ownership of the house has changed hands too many times for the current residents to recognize Mom's name, but they were very gracious in letting us walk around the property and snap a few pictures.  We found the cemetery where SheM's grandparents are buried.  And we had lunch at the Lake Park Cafe, imagining that it's the very one where Grandpa went every morning to visit with friends; it's certainly old enough to be the one, with it's 50's and 60's furnishings and decor.

SheM wanted to share with HeM some of the highlights of tourism in this area that she remembers from her childhood.  The main one is the state park at Lake Itasca where the headwaters of the Mississippi are.  One can claim to have walked across the Mississippi after stepping across the stones at the river's beginning--a claim that SheM, the child, took great delight in repeating to friends back in Texas. So we have now both walked across the Mississippi, not to say we walk on water, you understand.

The trees had just started to turn their fall colors while we were there.  We hiked to a 100-foot fire tower there in the park, and climbed it for the view.  HeM made it, huffing and puffing and sweating, to the top; SheM, partially conquering here acrophobia, was very happy with the view a few stories from the top.

An outing to Lake Itasca always included a stop in Bemidji to see the statues of Paul Bunyon and the Blue Ox.  There are family photos of SheM in front of the statues at different ages; now we have a picture of HeM with them, too.  Frankly, he was not as impressed with them as he may have been at age 6 when the stories of Paul and Blue were popular with kids.

So we left northwestern Minnesota on September 30, and just in time.  We saw on the weather a couple of days ago that they have now experienced their first snow there.  We'll be making our way back to Texas over the month of October.