Pipestone, Mn

Before I tell you about pipestone, thought I would let you know what we are doing.

We are sitting at Bay Landing, a Thousand Trails park west of Fort Worth Texas.  Before we left Sioux Falls our Jeep broke down on a Wednesday, had it towed to a garage which said they couldn't look at it until Friday and rented a car from Enterprise for the week.  They had it fixed the following Wednesday and we left on Friday morning.  We had only drove it 2 days before we left and everything seemed fine.  We get to Fort Worth and are driving into Fort Worth and it does the same thing it had done before.  The skid light comes on and we start losing power.  We were able to make it into a church parking lot and called Coachnet our towing service.  It was like Da ju vu all over.  They couldn't get it in until Friday to even look at it.  So we had it towed to a Jeep center and rented a car from Enterprise for the week.   So here it is Sunday and still not sure about the Jeep.  I told Ed when it gets fixed this time we need to drive it on the highway before we head to San Antonio.  I am hoping since it's  a Jeep place maybe they will find the problem.  So here we are just waiting for news.

We visited Pipestone, Minnesota  before we left Sioux Falls.  Never had heard of it but we had some friends visit us that were staying there and told us it was worth the visit.

It was really nice place to spend the day. 

 

This is the Pipestone County Museum,
Beautiful building, made with the Sioux
quartzite.
 

Another building and it was trimmed with the pipestone

This was in front of a museum
The donkey is made out of metal

This is what  pipestone is know for, Indian pipes, this was huge
Ed bought one like this, only a lot smaller.  haha

This was in the fort, a huge trap, looked
like it was a real one

Fort Pipestone, an authentic replica of a Minnesota for,
which had a gift shop inside

Ed asked the gift shop sales person if they had a restroom.
She said yes and they had heat and running water.  It was very rustic
but someone had taken the time to paint the walls.

This was the handle

Water fountain inside the fort, do you
suppose that was original.

 

Than we visited the National Park of Pipestone.   Pipestone is a stone that the Indians mined and made their  pipes out of.       Only American Indians are allowed to quarry pipestone.                                                                 

 

From the Fort we went over to the Pipestone Monument

This is all quartz and they have to dig below this to get the pipestone.

They had path through the rocks.  We thought this was the pipestone, but
a ranger told us the pipestone is below this.

They  consider this place holy because of the Oracle. You would look
through here to see it.

Here is the face of the Oracle

Another face made by nature

Tree growing into the rock

They even had a small water fall

A frog trying to get comfortable

Such a pretty walk 

 

The Indians would hang these in the trees
as a memorial and their prayers.

 I thought these were hung by the Indians but Ed
thought it was the tourist. 

These were from the early explorers, they asked that
you didn't do it now.

Not sure how this guy make such neet lettering

This once formed one large bolder which was deposited here
by glaciers, now know as the "Three Maidens."

There is nothing in the area that matches their substance so
they say they were brought down by the glaciers and deposited here.

 

Nice day for a walk

 

 

So if you are ever in the area of Pipestone, Minnesota I would recommend it.  It's not a big tourist's area but we did enjoy it.       

 

 

Happy Trails    Ed and Lyn

 

 

                                                                                                                

Time Spent in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

We spent 5 weeks in Sioux Falls.  Since that is where we are residents, I guess we should get to know the area.  We did some sight seeing, some geocaching, some fishing and a whole lot of eating out.
Sioux Falls is a nice, clean city, Ed commented on how you never saw any trash on the streets.    For a city of over 160 thousand, the traffic didn't seem that bad.   The prices at the restaurants seemed to be a little more expensive than Elkhart, but we did find a Chinese buffet that had a reasonable lunch price that was really good.  We also found a pizza buffet, which is popular in this area called Pizza Ranch.  Another thing we noticed in this area were the roads are in good condition.  Indiana always uses the excuse for pot holes  because of their bad winters.  Well, we figure Sioux Falls has bad winters also but they don't have the pot holes. 

Two things we went to see were the Old Minnehaha County Courthouse, and the Pettigrew Home and Museum.  They were both free and had free parking.  I thought that was unique in this day and age when everything costs something, 

Pettigrew had been a South Dakota Senator, who
had done a lot of traveling and collected things
all over the world, and had a museum in his
house.  When he died he left his house to the city
of Sioux Falls



Beautiful house

This was a side entrance to the house where the museum was.
Pettigrew had a large collection of petrified wood and had it
put into the side of the house. 

It was beautiful and the pictures don't do it justice

This was the Old Courthouse, which they turned into a
museum

very unusual chair

Dentist chair

chair made out of horns.

These were some of our geocaching days.  For those that don't know, geocaching is where someone hides a container, big or small, and gives out the coordinates and you try and find it with a gps.  What we like about it is, we end up places we wouldn't normally go.

This is called a micro.  We seemed to have a very hard time
finding them when they are this small.  There is a tiny piece of
paper in there called a log and you sign it and put it back where
you found it.

Had to climb up to get this one, but was a fairly easy find

This one we couldn't find, hadn't been found for awhile, so
thought maybe it wasn't there anymore

This was the outline of the battleship South Dakota

A battleship without the actual battleship

This was a radar station in the center of the battleship.  We couldn't
find this one, so we were driving by one day and saw this couple
looking for it, so we stopped and talked to them.  The husband was
really getting into it.  They couldn't find it either.

This one was another hard one, I was looking everywhere.

This one was called Storage Wars.  It was at an abandoned storage lockers.
A lot of the lockers still had locks on them.  I wondered if the contents were
still inside. 

Makes you wonder what happened.  Looked like an earthquake had hit them.

This is where we finally found the cache.  This white pipe came off and there
was a jar inside of it.  We couldn't find this one either, the couple that we
met on the battleship told us where it was, so we came back to find it.  I had tried to
take it off the first time but thought it was permanent so gave up.

Had to go in the weeds for this one

This one was on the edge of a golf course.  We never found it either. 
Sounds like a pattern for us doesn't' it.

Ed had this one found before I even got out of the jeep. 

We found this area one day while geocaching and went back and spent the day.

This place had a little bit of everything.  It had some kiddie rides, go carts,
laser tag, miniature golf and some other things.  And the prices were
very reasonable.  The go carts were only $5 each.

Something I always wanted to do.

Trying to line up the ball.  I take my miniature golf seriously.

Very nice course, the whole park was nice

 A couple of pictures Ed took of the sky and just thought they were unique and wanted to share them with you.   

l

We are on our way to Texas.  We spent last night in Iowa, tonight in Kansas and tomorrow night in Oklahoma and than to Texas. 



Happy Trails.   Ed and Lyn


John 16:33  These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."