7/24/2014 5,000 MILES Palisades Park , South Dakota and Buffalo, Minnesota

Palisades Park, South Dakota

5,000 miles on the truck since we  started this trek!
July 21 - Route 90 takes us all the way across South Dakota to Palisades Park Campground on the Split River Creek on the Minnesota border.    These 50 foot canyon walls are lined with 1.2 Billion year old Sioux Quartzite rocks that are just magnificent.  The picture does not show it well but these beautiful rocks are all a dark pinky red!

July 22 - On to the Minneapolis area following Route 23 North through a township called "Hanley Falls".  It consists of a grain elevator at a train stop, a ball field, farm equipment museum and a few houses; population 1884 was 300, population now is about the same.  Didn't see any falls.  The town was named after a railroad officer, when they were establishing the grain elevator/train stops every so many

Hanley Falls, Minnesota

miles.  Not sure if John is related but fun looking up the town history.  Most of the mid-west landscape we have seen this trip is corn, soy beans or cows. For folks used to living on the coasts, it is hard to imagine how much land is under production in the middle of our country and how few people populate these states.  We see a few small family owned farms but mainly huge corporate lands under production.

John, Aunt Joanne, sister Barbara

July 22-24 - It was great visiting John's Aunt Joanne, sister Barbara and many nieces, nephews and grand-nephews in Buffalo, Minnesota.  We had a fun cookout and did lots of catching up on each others lives.  We stayed on one of the more than 11,000 thousand lakes in Minnesota called Lake Independence at the Baker Park Campground. 

John's dad (Jack) was an officer in the Navy Civil Engineer Corp and after retiring the family moved to be near Jack's parents in Minnetonka, MN.  We visited the house John's family lived in when he was in high school and what was left of the horse farm his family moved to when he went off to Dartmouth College.  John invited Debra to Minnesota to meet the family the first Christmas after we met.  Debra said no but then changed her mind, bought a ticket on the same flights he was on and surprised him with her packed suitcase, at the airport when he thought she was dropping him off.  He called his mom from the New York stopover to tell her to plan for one more.  His parents and family were delighted to have her and she had a fantastic time once she agreed to get out of the car.  You see, greeting our arrival was their MASSIVE German shepherd named Simon.  Deb heard this bark which sounded like an angry bear, saw him in the window and said she wasn't going in.  After some persuasion, she came in and by the next morning she was having coffee at the kitchen table with John's dad while Simon rested his head on her lap.