The Chapel @Air Force Academy

We went to the Air Force Academy yesterday and as you can tell I was taken by the chapel. It is really breathtaking. Beautiful outside, but inside it is very plain, so plain in fact that is what makes it so stunning. I know that doesn't make sense, but when you first go in it, the first thing that strikes you is the peace that surrounds you.

The organ was BIG, wish I could have heard it.

The alter background was marble and just invited you up to have a talk with God, I should say listen to Him.

Downstairs was the Catholic church and on the backside of it was a Jewish and Buddhist place.

I thought I got a picture of the stadium in here, but can't find it. The parking for the stadium was kind of plain, no pavement at all, it was like parking out in a big field with twine separating the rows.
The academy is big. I believe it has 18,7oo acres and had a lot of wildlife. Next time I will show the rest of the place.

Denver Mint & Capitol

Somewhere in those buildings you see is the Denver Mint. I wish I could have taken a picture of the outside of it, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I couldn't. I had checked on the internet when the mint was open etc., and it said reservations was recommended. But I thought, heck here it is school has started we probably won't need them. When I picked up brochures, it said reservations highly recommended. So went on line and sure enough, it was all filled for the time we were going to be in Denver, so expanded and couldn'tget in until Thursday and had to drive from Monument. It did say you could walk up early in the morning and try to get in. So Friday morning John and I got to downtown close to the mint, and found a parking place about 2 blocks away. By the way it was pouring down rain and had been ever since the night before. We walked up to the ticket booth and sure enough no one crazy enough but us was there. The rules were, (luckily I had read them) no cameras, purses, bags of any kind (you get the idea). John had to take his boots off, as the alarm went off when he went thru. (There are metal arches in his boots) The tour was great, had a great tour guide, he offered all sorts of info. He said that they loose money making the coins, like it takes 28 cents to make the quarters, but the paper money (which is not made there) it takes about 25 cents to make it. Last year they made a quarter of a billion dollars which went towards to federal debt! If anyone is ever near a mint, take the tour (be sure and make reservations!)

The capitol is very nice, the guy who drew it up is the same one that did Texas's. A lot of construction going on. Their legislators work 4 months and make 30,000 dollars a year. Unless they are on their death bed, they are required to be in the chamber to vote.

The wood around the door frames came from Arkansas and was hand carved. I believe it was ash.

One interesting thing they had was the circled of presidents. The last 7 have been painted by the same man.
All in all a very wet but rewarding day.

Aren't They Grand!!

I just never get tired of looking at this great sculpture. It is just mind boggling to see (again) how long it took and how many men worked on it.

John and I went up one afternoon. It had rained most of the time we were in Rapid City, but finally cleared up the day before we were to leave. Anyway we went up and spent about an hour and a half wondering around the place and then just sitting looking at the faces.

Washington was picked because he was the first president. Jefferson was picked because of the La. purchase (one of the reasons), one of the reasons Roosevelt was picked was because of his stand on saving the land for parks, and Lincoln because of the civil war and how he guided the country thru it.

Fitting background for that good looking guy!
Let me know how these pictures turn out, as I changed cameras and the pixels (or however you spell it) is quite a bit more. I chose the small for size of the pictures, instead of medium.

Black Hills of N.Dakota:T.Roosevelt NP

The Teddy Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND is very different from the black hill of South Dakota. A lot more vegetation and water. This is the Little Missouri River flowing thru the park. A lot of interesting about Teddy at the visitors center. I didn't realize he was moved into the presidents office after some McKinley was killed. Then he was elected after that term. Anyway there is a 32 mile loop thru the park, with several pull outs. It was a beautiful day to drive thru.

You don't see all this green in the badlands of S.D.

This is one of several herds of wild horses in the park. As you can see there are several colts. They looked in good shape.

There are about 350 buffalo in the park, like the horses this is a small herd. But unlike the horses they do not look in good shape. Very poor looking. They were not bothered by all the cars stopping taking their pictures. It was a fun day and as it turned out our last pretty day. A cold front came thru with rain (not enough) and wind. The high was 58 on Monday and today was 60 and suppose to be 38 tonight! Yikes it is time to move south ...... which we are tomorrow to Rapid City.

Enchanted Highway, ND

If you are ever going west on I-94 take exit 72 and travel 32 miles south down the Enchanted Hwy. Starting 1991 a man had a dream to make the town of Regent famous. So came up with an idea of creating these sculptures. The first one you see is geese in flight. You have to stand awhile at all of them to take in just how big they are; 110 feet tall and 156 wide is the dimensions of this one

This one called fisherman's dream was finished in 2006. IF you are a fisherman, will recognize all the fish.

Pheasants on the prairie is the name of this one and was created in 1996. Male is 40'high and 70' long

The family is the name of this one, created in 1991. The man is 45 feet tall and is held up by 16 telephone poles. By the way all the land was donated to put these sculptures on. Guessing the land donated for each piece is from 1 to 3 acres. Well worth the time to go see them. Best of all, in the town of Regent is a little place that has the best ice cream .... try the Swiss Chocolate.

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.