 MONDAY |
TRAVEL DAY |
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We are expecting visitors tomorrow! We first met VerJean and Winston at the Big Meadows Campground of Shenandoah National Park in "Virginia in September of 2018".
Then just by accident we ran into them again while camping at Cedar Breaks Park in "Georgetown, TX in March of 2020", just before COVID-19 became a household word. We spent a few days apart before they camped next to us at Speegleville Park outside of Waco, TX. Then we split up for almost two weeks before they came to camp next to us at Palo Duro Canyon State Park outside of Amarillo, TX.
We were both kicked out of Palo Duro two days before our reservations were up when all the Texas State Parks closed due to COVID-19. We spent two days at a private park (just outside of the state park) before we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.
Now here it is 15 months later in "June of 2021" and we find ourselves once again in the same part of the country so we planned another meeting. This time at Indian Creek State Park in the northern central part of "South Dakota".
Each meeting is only for a couple of days and then we are each off in a different direction. It sounds like the kind of friendships we were hoping to create when we started traveling across the USA. When we left our long time friends behind in South Florida we didn't know if this would be possible.
All of this began because we introduced ourselves to them on a cool night in the mountains of Shenandoah, back in September of 2018 and invited them over to share a campfire.
There are two places on our short list of things to see at this stop. The first one is the "Walleye Up" statue on the Missouri River just outside of Mobridge, SD. If you are interested in learning more about the artist I'll include a link here. 
Apparently catfish and walleye are the two most sought after fish in the Missouri River. I've tasted plenty of catfish back in South Florida at Catfish Dewey's, but to my knowledge I've never tried eating walleye. I hope to change that before leaving the Missouri River area.
Our next and final stop is at the Sitting Bull Monument located on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation outside of Mobridge, SD. This stone carving was created by the same artist who would begin carving the Crazy Horse Memorial near Mount Rushmore in western South Dakota.
I'm including a link to a great explanation of why Sitting Bull's remains were moved to this serene location overlooking the Missouri River in 1953, after spending over 60 years buried somewhere else.
Since most of our lives have been shared with this blog they knew pretty much what we've been up to. So much of the night was spent hearing about their adventures and just getting caught up with each other in general. Around 10:00PM it was just beginning to get dark out and we finally called it a night.
This morning at 8:00AM I saw Winston sittiing outside with his laptop so I walked over to see what he was doing. He and his wife travel around in their home-built 20 foot conversion van, so he spends a lot of time outdoors instead of sitting inside like we do.
We chatted for a couple of hours and planned our day together.
Around 2:30PM we both got in our separate vehicles, because neither of our vehicles are set up to transport four people at the same time, and we showed them the Walleye Up statue at the edge of town. While we were there a woman from town stopped to chat and told us the artist had other statue in town, this one a tiger, located outside of the local High School to represent their school mascot, the Mobridge Tigers.
Next we were off to see the Klein Museum on the outskirts of Mobridge. This a history museum of Mobridge and holds many antique objects, such as photographs, newspaper articles and even displayed several lifesized dioramas of a 1920's barber shop, dentist office, post office, school classroom and other everyday scenes.
There were sewing machines, adding machines, printing presses, toys, cameras, and many other items from their eary days of existance. There was much more than we could possibly see in the hour and a half that we were there. All of this for the modest price of $5.00, which felt more like a small donation rather than a real admission fee.
Once we left the museum we headed to a restaurant that opens at 4:30PM for dinner and guess what, they have a Walleye Dinner, complete with rice pilaf or a baked potato and an all-u-can-eat soup, salad and desert bar. Y U M M Y !
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