Chapter 53 - Missouri, Kansas, the Dakotas
Dave and Helen Damouth
www.damouth.org
May 15, 2000
4/18 Leaving the Ozarks, we drive northeast toward St. Louis, initially north for 60 miles, mostly on SR 37. Then another 130 miles east on Interstate 44. On the way through Springfield, Missouri, we stopped at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, curious as to why AAA lists it as a tourist attraction. It's basically just another store that sells outdoor sports equipment - boats, hunting, fishing, camping, etc. But it's the biggest such store we've ever seen, and it incorporates an art gallery, a museum, two large freshwater aquariums full of native game fish, and a large salt water aquarium which we never found. We wandered for a long time, enjoying the museum (stuffed fish and game animals from all over the world), and the art galley of paintings, woodwork, glassware, and ceramics with an outdoor theme.
As we approached Waynesville, we were running out of daylight, and stopped at Roubidoux Springs municipal campground - full hookups, somewhat rundown, but conveniently located and nearly empty.
4/19 We decided to stay over an extra day to tour the Army Engineering Museum. This museum is in the middle of the Army's Fort Leonard Wood - a major training base and also the home of the Engineering School. The museum is basically a history of the Corps of Engineers, from its initial formation in the early stages of the Revolutionary War up through the present. It's an interesting history, well presented, and we learned a lot. The Engineers have led a risky life - building bridges under enemy fire, laying mines, detecting and removing mines, going onto enemy beaches ahead of an invasion to prepare the way, etc. The engineers are often out in front of the guys with guns, driving bulldozers instead of tanks, and carrying mostly wirecutters, mine detectors, and shovels.
In peacetime, they have diked and dredged the Mississippi River, built the Washington Monument, designed and built monumental power and flood control dams all over the country. Early in WW II, the Engineers built the Al-Can Highway, the first road across Yukon Territory and Alaska, to allow the Army to defend Alaska. We'll be driving that road (much improved since then) this coming summer.
4/19 Just down the road in Rolla is the U. S. Geological Survey's Mid-Continent Mapping Center. We spent a pleasant hour getting a personalized tour of their map-making operation. We saw some of the old methods and some of the new, as the whole place is in a transition period, gradually changing from manual methods to completely computerized generation and editing of digital maps. Their main role is in digitizing and updating the basic 1:24,000 topographic maps which cover the entire country and form the database which underlies most mapping applications in the US. We use the paper version of these maps on our wilderness canoe trips. The computer maps that we use with our GPS while traveling around the country are somewhat modified and simplified versions derived (by commercial companies) from the same USGS data. USGS supplies the maps or the underlying digital data to anyone, for a modest fee which covers the reproduction and distribution costs.
When it's time to update a map, the current technique is to digitize stereo aerial photographs, digitize the master map, and compare them on a high-quality computer screen, either side-by-side or overlaid. Where changes of river beds, construction of buildings and highways, or other differences are observed, the master maps are digitally modified, by drawing on the computer screen. It takes a month or more for one person to examine one of these maps and the corresponding photos, a small area at a time, and to make the necessary modifications. Each map covers roughly 50 square miles, so updating the entire country is a tedious and expensive process. Automated techniques which will be far faster are being developed.
As we left Rolla, we drove by the University of Missouri campus to see their half-scale model of Stonehenge. It was interesting to look at (and read about) the clever geometry, used by the Stonehenge builders to forecast astronomical events and maintain the annual calendar.) But the half-sized version didn't have the emotional impact expected from reading the accounts of visitors to the real thing in England.
When we arrived back at the campground, around 5 p.m., we were met by a city employee who was sent out to alert us to the several thunderstorm, hail, and tornado warnings in effect for the county for most of the evening. He also pointed out that our trailer was parked under some large old sycamore trees which had the reputation of being somewhat brittle. We moved the trailer!! We finished setting up in our new site (only 75 feet or so further out into an open meadow) just as the first thunderstorm hit. Two more thunderstorms rolled through during the evening, but the winds were modest, and we didn't see any hail. Even so, we saw several large broken tree limbs the next morning.
4/20 Three hours of Interstate 44 driving, to St. Louis. The first two hours weren't too bad - just the usual expressway - old, uneven expansion joints, lots of heavy truck traffic, strong winds, low heavy clouds threatening to rain any moment. The scenery is rolling hills - not quite mountains - still called the Ozarks, apparently. We stopped at the Shaw Arboretum. Because of the cold, windy weather, Whitmire Wildflower Garden was the only part we walked through. It is 5 acres of Missouri and eastern United States native wildflowers accented by native grasses, shrubs, and trees. The spring bloom is at its peak, and we very much enjoyed the great profusion of flowers, many new to us, in an attractive natural setting. There are miles of trails through other parts of the arboretum, but as we finished the wildflower garden, a cold misty drizzle began, and we decided to drive on. It rained the rest of the way to St. Louis, as the traffic gradually got heavier.
Our campground is across the Mississippi River in Illinois, directly opposite downtown St. Louis. The approach to the bridge, at rush hour, was not fun. It's an old bridge, with inadequate capacity for the traffic. Interstate highways 44, 55, 64, and 70 intersect at the west end of the bridge. Two of them cross on the bridge then split apart again on the east side. All of the traffic from our direction had to merge into a single lane which then made a very sharp right turn onto the bridge. Several exit ramps fan out on the east side, with little warning as to which lane we had to be in.
Somehow, with a little luck, we managed to be in the proper lane and got dumped onto a city street somewhere near our campground, in an old industrial riverfront section of East St. Louis. The map didn't quite agree with directions in the campground directory - apparently some streets have been re-routed and re-named. The verbal directions I had received when called the campground didn't seem to agree with either. Fortunately, traffic in this area was light and we could poke along trying to make sense of it all. We got to the RV Park with no wrong turns.
The Casino Queen RV Park is quite new and neatly maintained, but as is typical in urban setting, the sites are a little on the small side. However, the place is mostly empty (perhaps 15 rigs in a 125-space campground), so the small sites aren't really a problem. From our site, we have a nice view of the famous 640-foot-high Gateway Arch, just across the river. The RV Park is an adjunct to the Casino Queen gambling casino, located on a riverboat moored permanently on the riverfront. A hotel and auxiliary building on shore provide services and access to the boat, via a tunnel running under a street and railroad tracks which are built right along the river's edge. A buffet restaurant provides good, moderately priced, food. We've stayed at two other RV Parks associated with casinos and found a similar situation at each: In order to attract people to the lucrative casino operation, they provide good quality services at low cost.
To the east, we have a view of several very busy railroad tracks - the closest only 200 feet from our trailer. Within a few miles up and down the river, there is a large amount of heavy industry. A steel mill in Granite City has high piles of what we suspect are taconite pellets, extending over several acres. A coal-fired power plant is visible to the south of us. Up and down the highway, we've driven past numerous chemical plants. And there are many other such facilities which we can't identify. Chrysler has a large truck and car plant here (our own truck was born here). We drove past the transfer facility where a steady stream of transport trucks arrive, delivering loads of cars and trucks from the factory, and the vehicles are loaded on trains for shipment elsewhere. What these industries all seem to have in common is a vast need for heavy raw materials and an equally vast output of products, all of which flows to and from the area in steady streams of barges, trucks, and trains.
There are often two trains visible simultaneously from our trailer - one simply passing through, and the other shuttling ponderously back and forth on a siding, switching groups of cars onto other tracks which radiate in all directions like a giant spider web. The trains all move slowly in this crowded area, but they still thud over small irregularities in the tracks with an impact that shakes our trailer. Meanwhile, the north edge of the RV Park runs along another train track used by the electric MetroLink passenger trains - modern light-weight cars, which go past every 7.5 minutes. When our windows are opening, we can hear the Metro conductor announcing the next station.
Helen has a cold and doesn't feel much like sightseeing, so the first few days here were spent quietly at the trailer. Dave arranged to get some work done on the truck, which occupied most of a day. We took the trailer to a repair shop on another day to get a second opinion on the brakes, which aren't working to Dave's satisfaction.
On one day, we walked to the Metro terminal and rode it across the river, first to the waterfront area to visit the Museum of Western Expansion, and then a few miles west to the St. Louis Art Museum, in Forest Park. A ticket for unlimited Metro travel, including unlimited transfers to city busses, costs $4.00. Interestingly, no one ever collected our ticket, and there were no turnstiles and no visible evidence of any checking. We, and the rest of the crowd, walked on and off the train unimpeded. Do people actually buy tickets?
The Arch is an inspired and awe-inspiring design - a 640-foot-high inverted catenary. It is visible and impressive when viewed from out in the country, miles from the city. It is even more impressive when viewed from close up. It has a simple triangular cross section, tapering gently narrower as it rises. The walls are flat unadorned stainless steel, not highly polished. These partially-reflective surfaces catch and distribute the light in an amazing way - changing brightness and color with viewing angle. At night, it is visible in city lights. In the evening, it becomes reddish in the light of the setting sun. From certain angles, a portion of one surface will appear almost black, shading to grey and then white as the angle changes because of the tapering and curving catenary shape. As we travel around the area, we find ourselves frequently turning to locate the Arch to see how different it appears from each new angle.
The Museum of Western Expansion, located underground in the center of the Arch, was a disappointment. We're not sure quite what we expected and why we were disappointed. Perhaps, it's because the museum tries to cover such a broad topic that the coverage becomes very superficial. It nearly spans the 19th century. Most of the space is occupied by a series of photographs and simple dioramas depicting various aspects of the western migrations during the 1800's. There are little sections focusing on a few of the types of people involved - natives, politicians, explorers, fur trappers, and settlers.
The best part is the series of huge photographic enlargements, extending floor to ceiling and halfway around the perimeter of the large circular building, showing scenes from various places along the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition, accompanied by brief quotes from their diaries.
A miniature IMAX theater is included in the facility - also located entirely underground. The whole thing seemed scaled down from a "standard" IMAX - less seating and smaller screen. We watched a fairly new film called "Wolves" - a documentary about the re-establishment of wolves in Yellowstone Park and in an adjoining Indian Reservation. It's not quite the usual IMAX visual extravaganza (or perhaps we're just getting used to the intense impact of the wide-screen very-high-resolution photography). But it is a very informative and thought-provoking presentation of a controversial topic, and has a lot of interesting footage of the daily life of a wolf pack in the wild.
The Art Museum has a large and diverse collection, affording a pleasant afternoon, but with little that we found really memorable. For a change, the traveling special exhibition was one of the more interesting things. It showcased the work of Charles and Ray Eames - who were at the forefront of a revolution in industrial design in the 1940's and '50's. Their mass-produced molded plywood, (and, later, molded fiberglass/plastic) chairs are still imitated today. The exhibit showcased these familiar and successful items in the context of many other less successful designs, and also covered lesser-known aspects of their careers (including a period when Charles worked as an architect, designing homes).
We spent another long afternoon at the Missouri Botanical Garden. This is a world-class place - large, beautifully designed, and very well maintained. Its private endowment supports a substantial research organization as well as the park. The 14-acre Japanese garden is the largest we've seen, and is the most pleasing design of the many I've seen.
Like many botanical garden visits, this one was both too early and too late. There's no way to properly see such a place in one visit, because of the constant change with the seasons. The dogwood, azaleas, and spring bulbs were at their peak, and the winter pansies were still impressive. The rhododendrons were just beginning to open and many summer flowers were just beginning to show buds. We had time for only two of the three greenhouse/conservatory buildings, but enjoyed them a lot.
4/28 Helen went to the Washington University Gallery of Art to see their permanent collection of 19th C American art. Alas, it was all removed for the temporary installation of works of their own students - the works done to qualify for a Masters in Art.
The Laumeier Sculpture Museum was more interesting, with inside and outside displays. Unfortunately, many of the works were without any identification tags.
The Jewel Box in Forest Park was a delight - Jammed full of Easter Lilies, it was an overwhelming display. The 1920's Art Deco Greenhouse would have been interesting without any flowers. It is rare to see a greenhouse with any definable style at all. Perched on a vast green lawn, with a reflecting pool in front lined by pansies, it is easy to see why they call it the Jewel Box.
Dave spent most of the day on financial stuff - researching investment opportunities on the Internet in preparation for doing some portfolio rebalancing. Also filled out and mailed the paperwork to open a new checking account with everbank.com - one of several "Internet Banks" which do all their business over the net and have no "bricks and mortar" public offices at all. After we get a little experience with this new account, we'll post more details.
4/29 A few days ago, I started to rotate the truck tires - a maintenance task I do about every 6000 miles. I discovered a deep split in the inner sidewall of the spare tire, which I had apparently not noticed during the last rotation (or perhaps the split didn't open up until after the tire was moved to the spare position). I quit rotating, made some phone calls, and headed off to a Goodyear dealer for a replacement. The dealer said it was road damage, not a manufacturing defect, and refused any warranty coverage. I paid full price for a new tire and didn't push the issue, since it didn't really matter - the tires have about 40,000 miles of use and the warranty (pro-rated by tread wear and based on list price) wouldn't have paid much anyway.
After a couple of days of rain, today dawned bright and clear so I went out to finish the rotation task. The second tire I removed also had a split - also hidden on the inner sidewall and appearing quite similar to the problem with the first tire. At this point, I did what I should have done in the first place: I crawled under the truck with a flashlight and carefully inspected the inner sidewalls of all the tires. I found yet another split sidewall. Calling around to find the right tires in stock led me this time to a different dealer, who took one look at the tires, said they were definitely defective tires, and went off to calculate the Goodyear warranty adjustment. It turned out that the dealer's sale price was better than the warranty - adjusted list price, but it was interesting to hear such different opinions from two dealers.
All four tires (purchased almost two years ago in Calgary, Canada) have now failed - one last summer and three now. The good news is that none failed catastrophically while we were driving and we got this out of the way before heading to Alaska
By lunchtime, I was back to the trailer with tires installed. The weather still looked good, so we headed out on a long scenic drive. The first stop was Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, about 10 miles east of St. Louis. This was one of the largest of the cities established by the Woodland culture around 700 A.D., and was occupied by the Mississipean culture, from about 800 to 1400 A.D. At its peak, about 1250 A.D., the city housed 20,000 people, making it bigger than London at that time. Trade routes were wide-flung and active. Artifacts from the area include objects manufactured from Gulf of Mexico shells and Lake Superior copper. The museum and interpretive center is housed in an impressive modern building and does a good job of presenting the story of this World Heritage Site.
We headed back west to the Mississippi River, stopping at Lock 27. At this point, the 8-mile-long Chain-of-Rocks Canal cuts across a wide bend of the Mississippi. The lock only has an elevation change of about 7 feet, and is big enough to handle barge lashups three barges wide and 1100 feet long. Probably because of the small elevation change, the north end of the lock does not have traditional swinging doors, but rather has a barrier which slides straight down into a groove in the bottom of the lock. The south end has the usual doors, and they extend far above the normal water levels - presumably for flood control. While we were there, a large barge (actually, 15 barges lashed together, 5 long and 3 wide) began to enter the lock. We tarried to watch - again amazed to see a 1000-foot-long behemoth smoothly threaded into a lock that is only a few feet wider than the barges.
From Lock 27, we followed the "Great River Road" for about 35 miles up the east shore of the Mississippi and the Illinois Rivers, enjoying views of the rivers and the picturesque small towns along the rivers. This is tourist country, and most of the towns had been dolled up, and had numerous antique shops and boutiques. We were more intrigued by the occasional industrial areas along the river - massive old buildings, some decayed and some still housing active businesses. The northeast bank of the Illinois River along this stretch is often quite high - occasionally a sheer limestone cliff. The highway runs along the base of the cliff, quite close to the water. The small towns are located in occasional breaks in the cliffs where streams have eroded gentle valleys.
A few miles west of Grafton, we crossed the Illinois on the Deer Plain Ferry. West of the river, the route was a fascinating twisty little road through a hilly peninsula. After the wide river vistas, the intimate scale of this rural landscape seemed to take us back 100 years to a simpler time when distances were covered by horse and wagons. The area looked prosperous and neat, but it also seemed peacefully serene.
The Golden Eagle Ferry, similar to the Deer Plain Ferry, took us across the Mississippi River into Missouri. These small car ferries are unlike any we've seen before. They consist of a flat barge, just big enough to hold about 15 cars - three rows of 5. Attached to the down-river side of the barge is a little tugboat. The bow of the tug is permanently attached to a swivel at the center of the side of the barge. The rear of the tug is free to swing 180 degrees to push the barge in either direction. At each terminal, the barge is pushed straight in. To exit, the tug backs out, pulling the barge, then swings its stern around and resumes pushing the barge, often with the stern of the tug angled somewhat downstream, pushing the barge up against the strong current. The tug is always pointing the direction it is moving, except briefly at each end, but the barge itself never has to turn around - the cars drive on one end and off the other. It's a cute arrangement, well adapted to the strong river current.
The first of the two ferries is operated by the State of Illinois and is free. The second is operated by a private contractor and costs $4.50 for a car or pickup truck, or $5.50 including a 4-wheel trailer. This seemed a rather steep price for a car (the river is only a few hundred yards across). But it would have been a real bargain had we been towing our 35' 4-wheel trailer. We might have been able to manage it with the trailer, although the ramps down the river bank were a bit steep and I'd have worried about bottoming out at the transitions onto and off the ramps.
Back in Missouri, we found ourselves on a rutted and bumpy gravel road for a few miles, changing to a narrow blacktop road for a few more miles, and then joined SR 370 - a limited access expressway. This side of the river is quite different than the Illinois side - very low and flat - rich black farmland, with the faint green shoots of new crops just beginning to be visible. On SR 370, we soon reached St. Charles, crossed the Missouri River on a big bridge, and almost immediately found ourselves in the St. Louis metropolis. It took another half-hour of urban expressway driving to get back home.
During the afternoon, we crossed three major rivers - the Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi. All seem about equally large at this point, and all are navigable. Before the railroad era, these rivers and others which join them upstream, provided the principal access routes to most of the interior of the continent. So it's easy to see why St. Louis, located at the confluence of these major transportation routes, became an important city very early in the history of the country.
4/29 Today, we drove 250 miles straight west across the center of Missouri. We're roughly paralleling the Missouri River, but the river wanders widely and we only see it twice - once in St. Charles, on the edge of the St. Louis metropolitan area, and again about midway across the state. The terrain is rolling hills - alternating between forest and pasture. The forest is somewhat scrubby, presaging the open prairies a bit further west, and we see no signs of commercial logging. We started in Illinois, a few hundred yards west of the Missouri border, and ended In Kansas City, a few miles from the Kansas border.
We chose The Campus RV Park, in Independence, Missouri, because of its central location, large sites, and instant phone hookups at the campsites. It turned out to be even nicer than we expected. It's well away from major highways and, for an urban location, quite quiet (except for a busy railroad a few blocks away). There are only about 30 campsites, stretching in a single row, with many acres of attractive park on both sides. This is a church-operated RV Park, and "The Campus" refers to a private park surrounding a cluster of buildings comprising the world headquarters of the church.
Dave is spending a lot of time on-line celebrating the luxury of having our own direct phone line in the campsite (an extra $1.50/day, but worth every penny of it) by catching up on a bunch of Internet activities - working on our web site, doing some investment research, gathering more information for this summer's Alaska activities, etc.
While most people are talking about megabit-per-second Internet connections with DSL or cable modems, we still get excited about having a consistent 40 kilobits per second for a few days. This is one aspect where nomads are still seriously handicapped relative to our stay-at-home friends. High-speed two-way satellite Internet connections are promised for the future - but the specific availability date always seems to be a year away, and specific prices haven't been announced, so I remain skeptical.
4/30 The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is a huge, very impressive building, a "beaux arts" design dating from 1933. It is one of the few old art museums we seen which was built as a coherent whole rather than being built too small and then suffering a sequence of mismatched additions over the years. There are many architectural and artistic details throughout the building that make it a joy to simply walk around in. The art collection it houses is also impressive and wide-ranging. A large display of Thomas Hart Benton's work was impressive, and pointed out that he was a Kansas City native. The largest Henry Moore sculpture collection outside England is also housed here - partly inside and partly scattered over the many acres of landscaped grounds.
Helen's favorite sculpture(s) were the two 30' shuttlecocks tossed onto the vast front lawn, as if giants had been playing badminton there. Created by husband-wife team Oldenburg and van Bruggen, they seemed perfect for the setting. We remembered a previous monumental work by them which we saw in Minneapolis, and described in that trip report - the 60' "Spoon with Cherry".
5/2 A day trip to Powell Gardens in Kingsville, MO proved disappointing, but only because the island in the middle of the lake was undergoing major reconstruction, which spoiled the landscape views from all vantage points. This garden is probably a crowd-pleaser in mid summer when it has lots of color. A free bus circulates every 15 minutes, with stops at the picturesque (wedding) chapel, various meeting room buildings, the Café Thyme, and several big flower beds.
5/3 A day trip to St Joseph, Missouri took us to the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art, a modest-sized delight - an old mansion which has been restored and modified for museum use, and a tasteful three-story addition on the back, which blends smoothly with the old building. The art collection (mostly oil paintings) spans a fairly wide range of periods and styles, and is carefully selected and nicely displayed.
Also in St. Joseph, the Glore Psychiatric Museum is one of those places that sounded so improbable that we just had to see it. It is housed in a small part of a complex of old buildings started in 1874, and called at that time the State Lunatic Asylum No. 2. The core of the collection is a display of the equipment and furnishings used in this, and other psychiatric hospitals during the 1800's and first half of the 1900's. There is also a section tracing the history of the treatment of mental illness, beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries, when much mental illness was assumed to be possession by evil spirits and treatment often consisted of violent exorcising of the spirits, often resulting in the death of the patient. The burning of "witches" in colonial America mostly involved the destruction of schizophrenic or other mentally ill persons.
5/4 Kansas City to Junction City, Kansas was another three hours on I-70. We expected Kansas to be flat, but this portion is gently rolling hills, varying from around 1100 feet elevation in the valleys to 1350 feet on the hilltops. Trees are becoming scarcer, but there are still plenty of trees in sheltered or well-watered places, so the true prairie country is still somewhere west of us. Many miles of I-70 are under construction, with traffic limited to one lane in each direction. Fortunately, traffic is relatively light and continues moving at or above the 60 mph posted limits through the construction areas.
We spent nine days at Milford State Park last year, and even after a year away it felt familiar and comfortable when we arrived today. We're attending the third annual Oz get-together of the RV Club. It's smaller than last year, with about 18 RV's attending. Last year's event was almost twice as big, and was too big for us - we left without having met some of the attendees, and were often disappointed to hear about interesting happenings only after they happened.
We enjoyed getting reacquainted with people we met last year or on other occasions, and also had the opportunity to make new friends. Except for one trip into town to pick up our mail at the post office, we've stayed at the park, relaxing and joining small gatherings for wide-ranging conversations. We gorged on potluck food both Friday and Saturday evening.
The park is pleasantly rural and woodsy. One evening, while sitting at the communal gathering site, we watched a large wild turkey run across the open space in the middle of the campground. A few days after we left, some of the folks who stayed on reported seeing a bobcat run through the site in the evening.
5/8 US Highway 77 led us almost straight north from Junction City to Lincoln, Nebraska, nearly 5 hours of driving through rolling rural farmland. We're on the prairies - with trees found only in sheltered valleys where ground water and protection from the winds allows survival. Many of the hillsides have been plowed and planted. Contour plowing gives the hills an artistic swirling pattern. Crops are just sprouting - neat rows of delicate leaves extending just an inch or two above the ground. This creates an interesting multi-tone effect. Where we view the fields at a grazing angle, the new green is intense. As the angle changes, the green fades out until as we are looking down on the fields, the green is almost invisible and we see only dirt. The pastures are a really intense green, now that the new growth has finally covered most of last year's dead and grey foliage.
Along the way, we stopped at Homestead National Monument, commemorating the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered 160 acres of free Federal land to settlers who agreed to clear, plant, and build a home. The park is located on the site of one of the first homesteads allocated under this law, and includes an 1867 house moved from another nearby homestead. We learned a lot about this massive migration. The site also preserves a piece of tallgrass prairie, which is being encouraged to revert to the way it was before settlement. The grass is indeed tall, with some of last year's dead stalks still standing 7' high.
Lincoln, probably because it is both a university town and the state capital is a pleasant, well kept, comfortable-feeling town. The university campus was a pleasant place to walk around, particularly since several acres of campus surrounding the library and the art museum have been turned into both a botanical garden and a sculpture garden. A wide variety of trees and shrubs were planted (and labeled). Large modern sculptures were scattered on the lawns between buildings. The art museum itself is a very interesting modern white stone building, classically proportioned but with elegant, simple, contemporary styling. The display space is not large, and two galleries were closed in preparation for hanging a new exhibit.
5/9 Spent the night at Sexaur park in Brookings, South Dakota, quite surprised to find ourselves, on this north-south trip, at the same campground we stayed at last fall when driving west to east - weird coincidence. It's a nice park. Attracted by a noisy soccer game, Dave walked to another area of the park to watch for a while. The caliber of play on these teams of 10-year-old boys was surprisingly good - substantially better than I remember from when our children were this age, two decades ago.
510 On to Fargo, North Dakota - a long drive through open rolling agricultural country that gradually rose to the north-south continental divide (at about 1900 feet above sea level), and then began dropping as we continued north. At the top, we passed near (but not quite within view of) the long, suggestively named, Traverse Lake. It appears that this is where early northbound travelers traversed from the south-flowing Minnesota River (whose water goes to the Mississippi River) to the tributaries of the north-flowing Red River of the North, whose water ends up in Hudson Bay.
At the highest altitudes, the land was primarily shaped by massive glaciers, about 20,000 years ago. The soil is full of rocks, which were smoothly rounded and then and dropped by the retreating glaciers. The melting ice left odd-shaped potholes and ridges. Agricultural use was mostly cattle ranches. Around the periphery of this region, the fields have been cleared of rock and plowed. The occasional big piles of rocks in the middle of the fields remind us of New England, although on a far vaster scale. Some of this region is dominated by rolling "dunes" composed of fine wind-blown yellow-brown loamy soil called "loess" - extremely fertile soil. The hillsides were all contour plowed, creating interesting visual effects, and some were decorated with earth berms which followed the contours, further reducing erosion.
5/11 We've finally realized we're in the northland. When we arrived, we discovered that the Lindenwood Park Campsite, operated by the city of Fargo, doesn't officially open for the season until May 12. But one section was in use, and some workmen, busy repairing the campground office, told us we were welcome to stay, and could self-register using the night registration box. When we stopped to get fuel in Fargo, a few blocks from our campsite, we found that the diesel pump had five buttons. The one on the right selected the usual #2 diesel fuel; the left button selected #1 diesel - a more refined, lower viscosity, fuel (also more expensive and lower energy content) which, unlike #2, won't solidify on below-zero winter mornings. The buttons in-between selected various blends of the two fuels for intermediate conditions. The new cars sold here have not only an engine block heater but also a battery heater.
The Plains Art Museum is a tasteful renovation and remodeling of a three-story turn-of-the century warehouse building originally built by International Harvester as a sales, display, and distribution center for farm implements. Much of the original wood-beam interior structure has been left exposed. A massive skylight illuminates a 75' open space which has been cut down through all three stories.
The art collection itself was less interesting to us - mostly aggressively contemporary work by artists from the Great Plains area.
5/12 We've been stocking up on staples and checking the truck, getting ready for northern Canada and Alaska. The truck spent a full day at the Dodge dealer, getting new brakes all around as well as all fluids and filters replaced. An expensive day, but we now won't have to worry about anything except engine oil for another 15,000 miles or so, which just might be enough to get us back to civilization. So this morning, we're on our way into Canada. The border crossing is an empty spot on the map where Interstate 29 becomes Provincial Highway 75, near where the Red River of the North defines the border between North Dakota and Minnesota - no towns on either side of the border.
As we drove north to the border, the weather steadily deteriorated. Further west, it's snowing hard. The Trans Canada Highway is closed across Saskatchewan, with low visibility, high winds, and 5" of blowing snow. We drove through intermittent rain and a strong gusty crosswind, but saw only occasional snowflakes. The wind may be the strongest we've driven through. On several occasions, a gust blew our side mirrors back flat against the side the truck.
This part of the border is so featureless and sparsely populated that it wasn't accurately surveyed until 1876. Not that surveying is difficult on this flat empty plain, but rather that hardly anyone cared enough to bother. The major landmarks we saw were agricultural - grain elevators strung out along the railroad, and two huge sugar beet processing plants.
We're in the Red River valley - rich soil, but low and subject to flooding. The highway generally follows the railroad, straight except for gentle detours around the occasional little village. The river is out of sight - meandering back and forth a few miles east. But the river's presence is obvious - the occasional cluster of farm buildings is surrounded by a levee. We read that the river collects a great deal of water from the snow melt further south, but then backs up and floods the valley because Lake Winnipeg (into which it flows) is still blocked by ice.
The border crossing was uneventful. We declared our collection of alcohol, well in excess of the allowable quantity, but were passed through without paying duty. The customs agent warned us repeatedly of the major fines if we had any pepper spray and failed to declare it.
Another 60 miles of wet driving brought us to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where we'll stay a few days, seeing the sights in this large and interesting city.