Thursday, May 24.
After the Music Museum, we got to Sioux Falls in mid-afternoon and made ourselves at home via Valerie's hidden housekey. While Jeff is in Aberdeen, Valerie continues at her Sioux Falls probation officer job and keeps the house ready to show potential buyers. Dinner (Valerie is a great cook), visiting, and clothes-washing pretty well finished the evening for us all.
Valerie provided Susie with a protective shoe for her injured foot - Valerie had a broken foot not long ago - and that has proven very helpful. Susie continues to progress (this is being written May 27), but it remains to be seen if she will be dancing at Kaci's graduation party next Saturday. I took a picture of her multi-colored foot - mostly green and black - but she doesn't want me to show it.
Friday, after a couple of morning errands, we had lunch with Valerie, then headed north to Aberdeen. Here's a picture I shot while driving - looks kinda like a Microsoft screen saver. Do you see any bugs on the windshield? Lots of pretty shades of green in the South Dakota landscape right now. In the weekend USA Today there was an article about 15 destinations to see. One was South Dakota. Writer said take your kids and drive west across the state on I-90 just to show them how big this country is -- what it's like to have miles and miles of just grass and sky. Awesome! See Wall Drug!
It was cold and windy in Aberdeen - lows in 40s, highs in 50s the two days we were there. Jeff had gotten permission for us to park in front of the Holiday Inn Express where he is staying. We had dinner and he drove us around to look at the exteriors and neighborhoods of some houses he has looked at. A couple of places were located on a lake several miles out in the country.
We had planned to sleep in TuziTwo but as cold as it was we weren't too sure about staying warm enough without either running the generator or the batteries more than I wanted. So, we got a room in the Inn. WimpsRUs. Free breakfast with it, though.
Saturday it was even colder and windier. We went to Jeff's ShopKo store - the one he's now managing, the saner upper Midwest alternative to Wal-Mart and Target - and stocked up on some needed items. We then toured the city and countryside some more looking at houses for sale. There aren't many and they seem pricier than you might think - supply and demand at work. The town has 1% unemployment and Jeff says it is very hard to fill vacancies in his store. Valerie is coming up next weekend for some serious house-looking.
How windy was it? At one point we were driving along a highway, downwind, about 60 mph, and I looked to our right and above and there was a duck, flapping his wings as fast as possible and, it seemed to me, with a smile on his face. Having a great time. He stayed with us for a quarter of a mile. I kid you not! Also, Jeff said you generally see a lot of pheasants along the roads. Not today, pheasants were grounded by a high wind advisory.
There's a lot of water in this part of the state - lakes, ponds, creeks, marshes, and rivers. Jeff says a large portion of the country's duck population is South Dakota born and bred. He's looking forward to fishing and hunting opportunities in the area. Also, now, there's a lot of water standing in ditches and low spots in the fields. Three weeks ago Aberdeen had major flooding - same time as the Greensburg torndado, so it didn't get the publicity it might have. We saw many houses that were orange-tagged as unsafe for habitation. Mostly it's a case of basement walls being so damaged that the house may collapse. We said, Well, at least now you know what parts of town you don't want to buy a house in.
Here are some Aberdeen pictures Valerie sent us a couple of weeks ago -- probably not from their real estate agent. What's that motor home doing out there!
After we left I looked up Aberdeen in Wikipedia and found ironically that in the late 1890s it was known as "The Town in the Frog Pond" because of its proclivity for flooded basements in rainy times. The more things change, ... . When the city dug a ditch to provide drainage they hit an artesian pool that flooded the area they were trying to protect.
You will be interested to know that Wikipedia has a paragraph about the May 2007 flood. How's that for timeliness. Aberdeen had 5.8 inches of rain in a 24 hour period breaking previous record of 4.0 inches. Welcome to Aberdeen, Jeff and Valerie. I had told Jeff, though, that since they'd just had their 100 year flood, statistically speaking, there was nothing to worry about.
Actually, we liked the town - nice mix of old and new and not as crowded and traffic-clogged as the metropolis of Sioux Falls. We went out for Mexican food Saturday noon. Jeff shook his head: "What's an Albuquerque boy doing eating Mexican food in Aberdeen, South Dakota?" "Next stop, Fargo," I said helpfully.
Incidentally, the preferred label for Aberdeen is the Hub City, because several railroads intersected here.
We decided we wanted to spend Saturday night in the Inn, also, but they had no room. We waited until 6:00 pm, the cancellation deadline, but no dice. We called a few other motels: same story. There are many flood victims still in motels, plus FEMA agents, and this is both Memorial Day and graduation weekends. There's a college here - Northern State U. There's one campground in town, but we checked twice and it had no slots available. Went to Plan C - Jeff slept on the fold-out couch in his room, we slept in his bed. Worked fine for one night. Helped us get an early start on Sunday morning. Heading for Grand Rapids, MI, around the top, i.e., - via the You Pee (Upper Peninsula). Will be a three-day trip, about 1000 miles.
We've now been on the road a month. The trip mileage odometer got messed up, so I don't have an accurate mileage reading. Too bad there's not a statistician around here. Be home in just over two weeks.
Cheers,
Rob and Susie
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