Au Revoir South Dakota

Webster SD to Ortonville MN – 58.5 miles
Average Speed -13.5 mph

Last night at dinner we had a piano player who specialized in songs from our parents’ time. Robert thought they were more from our grandparents’ era. Although it wasn’t a sing-along, there were several people who went to the piano and sang without the aid of words. I thought all these songs were the type that required a bouncing ball flashed on a screen above the words. At least the people, many of them fishermen, were having a good time.

We decided not to start out too early as we only had 50-odd miles to do. It’s funny that 50 has become a low mileage day. It turned out that we did closer to 60 miles today, but we had a wonderful ride along a country road today.

The map showed a dark line just above Route 12, so we left the highway and rode along this very nice highway. We didn’t miss the big cracks or the lack of shoulder that we experienced early in the day. We both thought of our rides to BG, although the terrain was a bit more rolling. The most remarkable aspect of today’s ride was the appearance of trees. We really haven’t seen many trees for the last few hundred miles.

We had lunch at a 50′s diner in Big Stone Lake, just on the other side of Ortonville. After lunch, we had an unpleasant climb up to Ortonville, but it wasn’t anything that we hadn’t done before.
At the top of the hill, is the Big Stone County Museum, which we stopped at when we saw the interesting buildings on the grounds. The idea was to take a quick tour of the place. Our quick tour lasted a few hours. Earl, the director, gave us a tour of a bird museum, which has a collection of all sorts of birds done by a local taxidermist. I don’t know how quickly a taxidermist works, but this guy obviously spent much of his life taxiderming these different fowls. Earl knew every type of bird that was in this massive collection.

Some are the birds that we have seen along the way – mallard ducks, which we often inadvertently flush from the grass, making them look like those in the hunting pictures displayed on many a wall. Just today, our hearts stopped when a pheasant took flight from the tall grass near the road. They don’t realize that we don’t see them at all until they decide that we have threatened them.

Just today, the octagonal school house was placed on its foundation at the museum. Neither of us recall ever having seen an octagonal school before. This one was moved from another spot as was the church on the grounds.

We aren’t sure of our route into Minneapolis. It looks as if we will have a few long days ahead of us. Before we know it, we will be out of this state. South Dakota flew quickly by. Maybe any state crossing from now on will seem quick relative to Montana. We now feel that we are making progress. We are in Great Lakes territory, which is very familiar to us.