Capitol of N.Dakota:Bismark

Yes people, It is a sad time when I have to have pants on because it is so cool. AUGUST and pants weather.
But I digress, as you can see the landscaping on the grounds is just beautiful.

As also you can see that N.Dakota has built a very unusual capitol building. It has 18 floors, the house and senate are on the 2nd and the rest is gov. offices. Speaking of the house and senate, they meet only every other year (odd) for about 80 days and are paid 125. a day . The rest of the time they are paid 321. a month while they are in office.

In the basement is the Teddy Roseavelt Wall of Honor. Several famous people such as Angie Dickinson, Peggy Lee, Eric Severid (newsreporter),Lawerence Welk. But I chose to show you this lady. She was named American Mother of the year in 1968. She was married to a farmer from Velva,N.D. and they raised 18 children. 10 sons who all received college degress and 8 daughters; 6 of whom also attended college. Her husband died in 71 and she is (or was) active in church and community activities.

The capitol was started in 1932 and finished in 34 at a cost of 2 million. It kind of reminded me of the 50's inside, kind of art deco style. The parking was free and rv friendly.
On to Dickinson and Medora area in the southwest part of the state.

Headwaters of the Mississippi

This is a spring fed lake called Lake Itasca. The lake is located in Lake (appropriately enough) Itasca State Park. It is about 44 miles from our rv park. Bill and Marilyn rode their motorcycles as it was a beautiful day. The town we were in is Mahnomen,Minn. It has a casino there w/a rv park that was much cheaper than the one in ST.Paul-Minn.

Where the water spills over the rocks is the start of the Mississippi River. I believe the map showed that 41 percent of the rivers east and west flow into it. It was a great map, didn't realize how much water flows into it as it makes it way to the gulf.

There is a place there you can take your shoes off (or not) and wake across, John chose not to, but as you can see below, Bill did.

Great day and beautiful country.

MN Capitol - Gold Medal Flour Museum

I see right now I should have cropped this picture, oh well MN"S capitol is very beautiful, I would rate it about third. The guy that designed it also designed the ARK capitol. You know this is one of the few capitols that has no guard checking your purse etc. Anyway we caught up with the tour and got to go out where the Quadriga is.

I hope you can see the horses, women and the guy herding everyone. I thought it was kind of neat what all of this represents. Horses: power of nature, earth, wind, fire, water; 2 women: civilization and the man: prosperity.

While we were up by the Quadriga, I took this picture of St.Paul's cathedral. It is just breath taking. Drove to it and I went in, explored it. There was a man playing the huge organ, very peaceful and quiet. To finish off the day we drove over to Minneapolis and toured the Gold Medal Flour museum. It is headquarted in Chicago now. The museum was quite interesting. You get on a freight elevator and it takes you to each floor and explains what went on in making the flour. Of course the mill burned in 1965 and it has been redone only to give you an idea what went on using film.

Later in the week we went to Mall of America. Not much to report on that except it was just like most 3 story malls except bigger and has an amusement park in the middle of it. John said it was awfully noisy to him. But of course screams from the park didn't help that. I can't image what it would be like on a Saturday.
We leave Sunday heading north. Our next stop is going to see where the Mississippi River starts as a spring. Probably won't be much to see, but you will see what we do!

A Day at the Races

We are close to Canterbury Downs at our rv park, so decided to go and take Bill and Marilyn (they have never been to the horse races) and our good friends Mitch and Barb (who just happened to be at the same park). Mitch is the one who broke his wrist playing pickleball (I devoted a whole blog to that episode). I called Jeanette (a "second daughter "who grew up with our kids during the summer) and she called someone at the race track and got us a table.

Marilyn, Barb and I pooled our money and had a great time betting, choosing horses by their name, or color or the way they looked. The men were more serious, bought a racing form and studied the way the horses ran before and didn't do any better than we did. Bill did come out a winner, he said he made ten cents and then found a quarter.

Canterbury is a very pretty race track, here is John explaining to Barb and Mitch something about the saddling paddock.

What a great looking bunch! Mitch said he knew a great hamburger place and was he ever right. Sadly Barb and Mitch are leaving this morning. It was fun being with them and I'm glad that his wrist is doing better.

Cranberries @Warrens,WI

We didn't really know that cranberries grew in WI and was pleasantly surprised by this cute little town. I'll have to tell you about our campground. Poor Bill and Marilyn they have followed us into some peculiar campgrounds. (I used that word instead of crummy) The campground was nice, but thought you were going to the endof the world. We got set up and ventured into town, of course it didn't take nearly as long to get back into town. By the way I found the cmpgd on our WI map. Looked it up on the internet and it sounded fine. Sure enough it was. Anyway we toured the center, very informative and put together very well.

This is what a bog looks like. When the berries are ripe, they flood the bogs, so they can harvest them. To water them they have sprinklers scattered thru out.

These berries won't be reay until Oct , different variety. They are usually harvested late Sept. The ones that are harvested for the fresh fruit are dealt with differently than the ones for juice ones for canning.

We stopped by the market and the farmer took us to his bog and showed us the plants close up. He was really nice and seemed to enjoy our questions. We bought sweet corn and tomatoes there. It was the best yet.
This our last stop in WI, it is a very fertile state and very friendly people! I thought dairy products was the main crop, but we found lots of corn and soy bean farms. I would like to see it after they have harvested the corn, would really change the looks.
On to MN and new things to look at.

Circus Museum Day

As you can see we are all excited about going to the circus. We got there just in time for the circus performance. It consists of a lady acrobat, jugglers, elephant, clown and the jugglers and their whole family doing a family act. The lady acrobat also sang. After the performances everyone came out and you could take a picture of and w/them.

There are about 5 buildings, some have some hands on things as John is demonstrating below. One building has all the costumes that were used, one has the history of the Ringling family, one building has lots of circus wagons, that are just beautiful as they have been restored to full color!

The town of Baraboo is a unique little and they are proud of the museum. When we were leaving the museum there was a LOT of little people (pre-kindergarden) that had come. There is a great playground area for kids. If you get a chance go to this great place.
On to the cranberry bogs.

Wisconsin Capitol

I must say that this capitol compares to PA.'s capitol. It was started (after a fire burned the first one down) in 1906,finished in 1917 at a cost of 7 million dollars. Today it is worth 12 billion. But all the gold, French and Italian marble one can see why.

When it was built, electricity was available and the disigner realized that it would use a lot, so put a lot of windows and glass floors in it. In this picture notice along the edges that have gold on them.

Notice all the windows and the gold edging

This is the Senate and I put this in because they use no pc's. Only state that we've so far that doesn't use them. They don't even have a electric board that shows how they vote. The house does. Also unusual that the state supreme court is in the capitol. Very beautiul building and the tour guide was great.

Sand Crane Preserve cont....

This blog should be AFTER the next blog, but as you all know sometimes this blog has a mind of its own. Anyway we went to the preserve after the boat tour. They have 35 types of cranes here at this preserve. Our favorite was the hooping crane. The preserve is very nice and they are expanding the crane paddocks, or whatever you call them, I guess pens would be better suited.

This was a beautiful one from Africa a black crested crane. I had lots more pictures, but didn't want to bore you. If you are ever this way, be sure and stop.

It has been several years since we have been to the dells. Reminds me a lot of Branson and Pigeon Ford.
They have a LOT of water parks and pizza places, of course it is a big family vacation spot. Next is circus museum, that may mean all day! more later

Wisconsin Dells/Sand Crane Preserve

Wellllll ....here is our happy little group awaiting the start of our Dell riverboat tour. The little girl and her sister (yes I said sister) acted ugly, so kind of put my little group out of sorts. But soon got over it, as the dells were so pretty. Just for y-i dell means layered rock. The following pictures really shows what that means. The day was just beautiful for boating , kind of cool, altho the tour guide talked about how hot it was. We just kind of snickered.

The tour guide said that this rock has had more pictures taken of it than any other rock. Now she didn't go to say in the world, the states, Wisconsin, or this river, but it is pretty cool.

I don't know if you can tell about this rock, it is called the pancake. Very unusual formation.

Most of you may not know it, but I love rocks, all types, shapes, colors ....... well you get the picture. John always supports my search for THAT rock, but deep down his motto is: when you've seen one rock, you've seen them all.

Harley Factory and Museum

This the Harley factory where they make the engines for the bikes. It is in Wauwautosa, WI a suburb of Milwaukee. It lasts about an hour and is free! Of course you pay for it when you go into the souvenir shop.

This is the front of the museum. It has only been open since July and is it beautiful. The cost is 16 dollars to get in, or 12 if over 65. Some of the bikes like below, we thought had been restored, repainted etc. but come to find out they are in original shape: color, paint etc. Some belonged to the owners and some were acquired from individuals.

I hope you can read the year of these two bikes, there were so many I had a hard time picking one to show.

This was one of my favorites, the side car. One of the displays they had was a pc moniter. It had a list and a picture of each engine that Harley has made. You touch the picture of the engine and it comes up with a description of that engine and then a tab that says touch here to hear the engine. Well I had a feel day with that one. My favorite was made in 57, but I don't remember what it was.
Well worth you time if you are ever in this area. The museum is about 8 miles from the factory almost right down town. No telling how much the land cost. Ample free parking and easy to get to. (It wasn't for us but that is another story)

Training Camp Ordeal

Here is the famous stadium and is it gorgeous! Very clean and everyone that worked there acted as if they were glad you were there. You can't imagine the amount of Packer stuff that was selling in the store. 2 cashiers going as fast as they could and 2 long lines of people patiently waiting .

Marilyn and I looking refreshed and rarin to go, not knowing we had a mile hike in front of us to get to the practice field.

I don't know what John and Bill was looking at (I'll have to tell Bill to wear a hat as his head causes to much reflection), but it was not at the football players.

I had it in mind that they would practice at like a high school football stadium, that's what happens with preconcived notions. Between the fence and the street is some bleachers that are about 4 seats high and they are scattered up and down the street. I have no idea how early you would have to get there to get a seat by the offense. John found us some down by the far side of the defense. Thank goodness people were still buying souvenir stuff. Of course it was one of the hottest and most humid days we'd had. But was well worth the trip. I really enjoyed it and it was fun to see the stadium in person.
To add more pleasure to the trip, went to Sam's.
We will have moved close to Milwaukee (these names are killing me) by the time you read this. Our next tour will be the Harley factory and museum.
By the way will have to correct something, in a past post (acouple ago) I said it was a picture of Lake Superior, but was Michigan. Figured I would have several comments on that, come on you people get the maps out and see where we are!