Off to Minnesota

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Given all the wet weather this part of the country has been having, I suppose it’s not too unexpected to have a rainy day to drive from Sloan Iowa to our next stop in Minnesota. Split Rock Creek State Park is in southwestern Minnesota near the town of Jasper. It’s a relatively easy 155 mile drive up I-29 into South Dakota and then back east. As we have been driving through Iowa, we have started to see our first billboards for Wall Drug in Wall South Dakota. When I noticed the first one, I had Chris check to see how far away we are from Wall. At the time, it was about 435 miles! We will be heading near there in the next couple weeks and will likely see several hundreds of these billboards as we head west along I-90.

We arrive on a Sunday afternoon and nobody is working the office. It’s a small park with less than 30 campsites. We have a site reserved but the sites don’t have water so we drive the car back to the camping loop to determine where we might fill up for our six night stay. The place is practically empty with only two trailers still there and one of those is the campground host. We get water and back into our site. Our neighbor, the host, comes over to welcome us while we are setting up. It has been a very wet spring and a few trees in the surrounding sites have started to uproot and a tree removal crew will be showing up Monday morning. Fortunately none of the trees around our site are involved so we should be okay other than the potential for early morning chainsaw noise. 

That first night we had a frost warning and woke up to a chilly 34 degrees outside! Mother Nature has a strange sense of humor with Memorial Day just a few days away. That first morning, the park ranger came to check us in. Turns out there is a day use fee of $7 per day on top of the camping fee since we have two vehicles! It was cheaper to buy an annual state park pass than the day use fee for our 6 nights.

On our drive to Split Rock Creek just north of Jasper, we had noticed a property with a large number of windmills on it. Not the commonplace wind turbines for electric generation but old style windmills that may have been seen on farms in the past. The little we can find about the place, sounds like it is on a person’s private property but visitors are permitted to wander the grounds. Apparently the man’s wife wanted a windmill on the property and he ended up becoming obsessed with them. We drive there and park near the large outbuilding. There are easily three dozen windmills with the majority of them being different designs and styles of windmills. There was a slight breeze that made a few of them spin. 

Windmills Galore

Montgomery Wards Company Windmill

Southern Cross

Even More

Twin Windmill

Interesting Design

Reflecting Pond

Windmill Driven Sawmill

There are definitely some unique designs and all of them seem to be refurbished and in excellent shape. Across the road is a field with a herd of cattle grazing and scattered in with them are a large number of old windmill towers and parts. This guy seems to have a couple dozen more that might get repaired and erected someday. Nobody seemed to be home, so we didn’t get a chance to ask any questions but we did spend more than an hour just marveling at them all. We noticed a few of them have the blades chained to prevent them from turning. In one case it was attached to a sawmill with exposed blade. Probably wise to keep that one from spinning. This was definitely an unexpected bonus of this camping stop.

Unique

Iron Turbine

Wooden Windmill

Are We in Holland?

Windmill Drives Pump to Turn Water Wheel

Cattle Interspersed with Windmill Parts

Remember how I mentioned how wet the weather has been and how soft the ground was? Well, we noticed that the motorhome, which had been nice and level after setting up, was no longer level. I tried lowering the front jacks some more to remedy the situation but only heard a strange noise from the front hydraulic jacks. I head out to discover the two front jacks have compressed the gravel on our site and are now buried about 9 inches below the surface of the ground! 

Buried Jack! (Pad is 10" diameter)

The problem is that the jacks are driven down by hydraulics but only come up by the two springs. Even when we are on concrete, sometimes the jacks need a little assistance to come back up to the travel mode. I was figuring I would need to somehow dig out around the jacks but didn’t see how I could with the coach sitting so close to the ground. The sides of the holes had not completely caved in so I sprayed the cylinders with WD40 and pushed the “store” button while crossing my fingers. To my utter amazement, the jacks came back up bringing a little bit of the gravel along for the ride. The camp host went up to get a couple buckets of gravel and I pulled the rig forward and filled in all the holes. Even the rear tires had sunk in an inch or two. I pulled out all the pads we normally only use on very unlevel sites and backed onto them since I knew more rain was on the way before we were to leave. Then I used a couple of 3 foot long 2 by 12’s under the front jacks. Everything stayed level and had no problems upon our departure. 

Just north of us in the town of Pipestone is a National Monument. Pipestone National Monument isn’t named after the town but rather the town is named after the type of rock found in this area. Pipestone or catlinite is a reddish rock that the local indians have quarried for centuries to carve into lots of things but most predominantly into ceremonial pipes. The national monument was created back in 1937 but to this day, local indians are permitted to quarry the stone for their craft. Apparently the stone is relatively easy to carve with standard hand tools. While we didn’t get to see any actual work being done in the quarry, the video did a nice job explaining the history of the area and how the stone is quarried and shaped into pipes and other elaborate pieces. 

To get to the pipestone, the topsoil is removed then many feet of other (undesirable) rock needs to be removed until the layers of pipestone is I covered. The remarkable aspect of all this work is how it is done all by hand with shovels, pick axes and crowbars. At first I assumed that the reason for this manual process was more of a spiritual or religious nature but in talking with one of the artisans working inside the studio area, he said that blasting or using any heavy machinery tends to shatter the pipestone making it useless. There are many beautiful pieces on display with all a lot of them for sale to the general public. While they are nice, we really don’t have room to be carrying rocks around in the motorhome. 

Pipestone Samples

Ornate Pipestone

Beautiful Stone Carving

There is a walkway that loops around the area outside. The ranger had warned us that the bridge at the far end of the loop had been knocked off its foundation during a spring flood so it really isn’t a loop until it gets repaired. The loop was short enough that we just walked both halves of it. This was an interesting stop and we even learned a few things.

Fast Flowing Creek

Waterfall

Native Prayer Cloths Tied to Trees

Panoramic View

We got a bit of a walk in around Split Rock Creek late in the afternoon since there was a storm coming thru and the next day was to be rainy with high winds. There is a dam at the one end of the creek forming the lake that would get used if the weather wasn’t so crappy.   On the rainy day, I drove into Sioux Falls SD planning to get a haircut and an oil change. It was quite a windy drive and was quite glad I didn’t have to be driving the motorhome. The Jeep dealer had a long line and when I asked about getting in, they told me their computer system was down and they were unable to do any work. I went to get a haircut next and had better luck. I tried the dealership again about an hour later and they were still down and might be up this afternoon or tomorrow morning! I decided not to wait and headed back to camp to see if any more trees had been uprooted in the windstorm. The following day had less wind but was still rainy so not much sightseeing was attempted.

Delicate Flower

Bridge Downstream of Dam

Dam at Split Rock Creek

Our last two days turned out to be fairly pleasant and we had this Minnesota State Park Pass that was itching to get used before we head out of the state. Blue Mounds State Park isn’t too far away and we had almost booked the campground there instead but at the time, Blue Mounds was without water and it wasn’t clear if or when it might be restored. We drove through the campground and it looked reasonable and we could have fit into many of the spots. But we had come here for two things: a hike and the hopes of seeing bison. They have about 100 bison on the prairies within the park. We first head to the observation platform but they were all quite a distance away. We were able to count about 55 of them in the nearest herd but another herd was visible even further out but too far to count.

Distant Bison

We figure we would get our hike in with the hopes we may get closer to them or they will move closer to us. We start out on the Upper Cliffline Trail for about a mile before doing some switchbacks to the Lower Cliffline Trail. This trail is also a paved bike loop but alas our bikes are back at camp. After a little bit, we head up the Bur Oak Trail which works it’s way about halfway between the upper and lower trails before arriving at the southern visitor building. There is an old rock quarry along the way and the climb is a little bit of a workout. The visitor center was closed and based on its look, it’s unclear whether it is still being used and just too early in the season for it to be open. The building’s design was quite interesting since it appears to be built into the side of a cliff and may even use the cliff as the back wall of the building?

View of Cliff

Mile Markers Along Bike Path

Rock Climbing Anyone?

Old Stone Quarry

South Visitor Center at Blue Mounds SP

Building Merges Into Cliff

On the way back we follow the Mound Trail which is adjacent to the bison prairie. In season, the park has a large off-road vehicle to take people on tours out into the prairie. It’s only $10 per person for a 90 minute tour. They apparently follow a route as opposed to just heading toward a herd of bison but it might have been a fun thing to try but Memorial Day is still a couple days away. Our loop worked out to be about 4.5 miles. When we got back to the car and had lunch, we attempted to do another trail on the north side of the park but didn’t get too far before finding the trail closed and under reconstruction after a washed out bridge. Heading out, there was a lone bison near the viewing platform but as soon as we got out of the car to see if others were nearby, it wandered off apparently camera shy. We did some detours driving back to camp and came across a tiny roadside chapel. It was open and may be able to hold a dozen people at best.

Camera Shy Bison

Waterfall at Blue Mounds

Tiny Chapel

The next day we head northeast to Camden State Park. They have lots of hiking trails but the park ranger warns us that many of them are flooded or quite wet. Her recommendation was the Dakota Valley Trail being at higher elevation, it was probably the driest hike as long as you like some climbing. It was a nice walk that was about 2.5 miles long. We have noticed “Hiking Club” signs along some of the trails in the few Minnesota state parks but it wasn’t clear what they were used for. The one on this trail even provided a password. Maybe to prove we were there? 

Waterfall at Camden SP

Password for Hikers

We had brought along our bicycles and cycling gear with the plan to ride the Camden Regional Bike Trail. It’s a 10 mile, paved path from Camden SP up to the town of Marshall MN. We only knew about the bike path from the dozens of geocaches hidden along the path. It had turned into a nice day after starting out cloudy and looking like rain. We changed into our cycling clothes and headed out after lunch. There was a serious hill getting from our parking spot up to the trail but the trail itself had mostly gentle rolling hills. A few miles into the ride, we realized we had the benefit of a pretty strong tailwind. Chris was willing to continue a bit further but convinced her it may be wise to turn around sooner than we had planned. We ended up getting in a 14 mile ride. 

Trains Passes Us on Bike Path

Birds Waiting for the Mail

By the time we arrived back at the campground, it was just about full. Of course is was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend so it might be expected. This turned out to be a nice stop and did get us one more state in our count of states we have camped in. We realize there is much more to see in the state of Minnesota but this will need to suffice for now and we will work in an extended stay to the state during some future travels. Now it’s off to South Dakota for nearly a month.