| Home/On the road/Hand papermaking/Maine Coon cats/Music we love/Bev's gallery/Feline rescue/They paved paradise/What I'm reading/In memoriam/Email us |
For previous entries, please click here. |
Bev's Journal We Proceeded On... Part II: The Journey West |
| 16 August 2002 Lake Mitchell Campground Mitchell SD We covered a lot of ground yesterday, and spent the night north of Sioux Falls. John was especially interested in the topography of the area we’ve been passing through. He was very excited to see hummocks several times along the road. Hummocks are mounds of earth formed by the debris carried along by a glacier. Typically, the land immediately preceding the hummocks will be flat for miles, then all of a sudden, you’ll see these strange-looking little mounds that make the land look like a giant has been playing in his sandbox. What caught my eye was the terrace farming on slopes, for northern Iowa/southern South Dakota is somewhat hilly. I was impressed that there appeared to be no wasted space in miles and miles and miles of corn and soybeans and whatever else they were growing. We are in the Sioux Empire (so called by the local newscasters) although, as yet, we haven’t seen much of an Indian presence, except for casinos run by several of the nations. We arrived in Mitchell in the early afternoon, and picked up our mail at the Mitchell P.O. – I had my brother send it along ahead of us via priority mail. At last, I have the lid for my new pressure washing machine, and I’m eager to try it out. Supposedly, the machine, which has a crank, can do a load of laundry in 2 minutes using a minimal amount of water. It has something to do with the pressure created inside the drum. We shall see. But I’m tired of going to the laundromat. The weather has changed dramatically – it feels more like October than August. One cold front passed through earlier today, bringing thunderstorms, and another is predicted for the wee hours. The winds have been strong and gusty all day, so we are glad to be off the road. Some of the other campers, who came in from the west, told us they had seen a rig in the ditch earlier today, and decided to get off the road. They didn’t know exactly how it had happened, but with the strong winds (up to 75 mph), it looked like the rig (a truck towing a trailer) had been flipped. The trailer was flattened, a total loss; the truck banged up, but not destroyed. The two people inside survived the crash and had been sent to the hospital. |