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| today's route |
I passed a billboard on US-212 (it runs east/west, came from Minnesota and continues into Wyoming) that said:
Eat Steak Wear Furs
Keep Your Guns
The American Way
That certainly is one point of view. (The spacing on this program is very frustrating to use.)
I passed more farming towns: Kranzburg, pop. 172, and Revillo, pop. about 100. All along the road I passed crops, cows, ducks in ponds, scattered wind farms, horses, scattered small farming towns, scattered farmhouses. This is definitely farming country.
I came to the large town of Milbank (pop. 3,154 in 2018), where gasoline was 5¢/gallon cheaper than in Watertown. Of course, gas had been 5¢/gallon cheaper in Watertown on Sunday and, inexplicably, it went up by today. I think Milbank may be best known for the Milbank Grist Mill.
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| Milbank Grist Mill |
It was originally built in 1884, then reconstructed in 2009. It’s 44’ high, and the 4 sails are 7’ wide and 30’ long. I guess it still works since the reconstruction, though not today, and they offer tours.
From Watertown I took a back road so I could go up to Big Stone City, pop. 467, and from there along Big Stone Lake, which is 26’ miles long and split in the middle between South Dakota and Minnesota. I passed lots of RV parks and small homes along the lake, as I’ve seen so often with waterfront property.
I turned off the road for Hartford Beach State Park because we’d been driving for a couple of hours and all wanted a break. Also because it looked like this was the only way I’d get a decent look at the lake since the road ran too far away and the view was blocked by the houses and such.
The “beach” at the state park was narrow and consisted of sand in some places and a sand/gravel mix in others. Grassy areas, a few picnic tables and lots of trees. Half the license plates I saw were from Minnesota (doesn’t MN have boat launches of its own?) and a fisherman I saw told me he was fishing for bluegill and perch.
I saw a pair of White Pelicans, a Belted Kingfisher, and a bird I labeled in my mind as a Kiskedee type. I have no idea why I thought that because I’m not sure I ever saw one, and it turns out they don’t get any farther north than far south Texas. But a similar bird that is here at this time of year is an Eastern Kingbird, so maybe that’s what I saw. Anyway, lots of critters. It was a pleasant place for a break.
The road didn’t get any less rural from there – I saw goats, a sheep farm, bee boxes. The state’s website that gives the status of highway repairs had warned me of several road construction projects in this area, so I’d planned a driving route that avoided them. Good thing I did because the road I would have taken was indeed closed, as the website had warned. So I took smaller roads but got to Sisseton without detours.
Sisseton, pop. 2,470, seemed like a metropolis in that rural farming area. The downtown area was a challenge for us because it was built on hills, but I found a relatively flat place to park for a few minutes while I went to visit a business called Deb’s Quilts.
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| Deb's Quilts |
It’s a small shop with not a lot of quilt-supply inventory, mostly just an array of slightly kitschy gift items. But I talked to Deb the owner, who looked like she was around my age, and asked why she’d started the business. She said she was in a quilting group that went from 6 members to more than 20 in a very short time. They all needed somewhere to get thread and things and there wasn’t any place in town for that. She said she started the business 4 or 5 years ago and opened the store about 3 years ago. She said she was still working at the school to get the health insurance (which meant to me she wasn’t Medicare age yet) and couldn’t wait until she was able to retire, so she could work at the store full-time. Interesting how people’s lives turn out.
Sisseton is also a county seat, a fact I stumbled on when I was driving around town.
This is an internet photo because the trees don’t
look like that anymore. Now they’re so thick and full that I
couldn’t find any angle that they didn’t block. Nice looking for
a little country place, huh?
Robert County Courthouse, built 1903
Sisseton is proud of the Nicollet Tower, which I found a short distance out of town along SD-10.
I
didn’t take this photo because I didn’t stop here. I couldn’t
figure out what it was or why I should stop - it looked like a
fire-watch tower to me. I still don’t know how it came into being,
but I can say its point is, apparently, that from the top of its 80’
climb, you can see 3 states: South Dakota, North Dakota and
Minnesota. It was named for a French mapmaker who charted this area
in the 1830s. Since it’s inconceivable that I would have climbed
those 80’ of steps in the absence of a flood or something, it’s just as well I didn’t bother to stop.
Nicollet Tower
I turned south on a county road for 6 miles to get to Fort Sisseton Historic State Park and tonight’s campground. On the way I passed a small pond with about 2 dozen pelicans – amazing sight in such an area. I also saw cormorants and Great Egrets in this and other ponds around here.
At this campground once again, there was no staff in view and no campground map so I drove around looking for the waste tank dump, without luck. I finally saw someone who looked like he worked there and flagged him down (oddly, he didn’t seem to want to stop, but he did) and he told me they had no dump station there, that I’d have to drive back to another state park I’d passed on the way here. I’d already been traveling for 6 hours and was pretty tired and hot, and the idea of driving all the way back to an unknown campground to find this dump station (based only on his word) was disheartening. But I really didn’t want to put it off until tomorrow, so back down the road I went. It turned out to be more than an 18-mile round trip to and from this dump site. And even then I got really lucky because at the other campground – Roy Lake State Park – I was able to flag down some park employees for directions, and they guided me to it – and without their help I would never have been able to find it. Turns out that Roy Lake campground is in 2 sections, one a mile down the road from the other, and it’s in that 2nd section that the dump station was. No maps at that campground either so I would never have found it.
I was pretty peeved by the time I got back, because the Ft. Sisseton guy had made it sound like it was a no-big-deal hop-skip-and-jump trip to that dump station. It took me the best part of an hour, thanks to those roadways.
However, one nice thing did happen. I happened on a turtle crossing one of the roads and I stopped, wondering if I should help it across. But as I watched, it kept on walking across and I had the happiness of seeing this turtle make it all the way across before anyone else came along. I’ve worried about those turtles I’ve seen at other times and whether they were able to make it safely all the way across the roads I’ve seen them on. Seeing this guy make it gives me hope.
Even though I was tired and the day was hot, the dogs still wanted a walk, so I took them over to the nearby site of Fort Sisseton. The main reason I’d wanted to come here is that I’d read this fort was one of the best preserved such sites in the nation, and I wanted to see what that looked like.
Established in 1864 and used until 1889, the fort site now includes 14 of the original buildings. The fort is also known for having Buffalo Soldiers stationed here 1884-1888. Of course, these buildings didn’t retain the well-preserved appearance in my photos after sitting empty for so many years: in the 1930s, the WPA restored much of what we see today, but the exterior walls were still mostly intact, and even some interior walls. I didn’t stop at the visitor center because I had the dogs with me, but this is what I saw outside.
The signs here show quotes from this Andrew Jackson Fisk, who was stationed here. I found his comments as much or more helpful than the signs - and I guess these folks did too since they've included them. 
overview
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| North Barracks |
Parade Ground
I thought it odd that the caption of the photo on the sign speaks only about the flagpole. Okay, it’s interesting that the flagpole in my photo (barely visible silhouetted against the left-hand clump of trees) is the original, but I’m much more interested in the Indian women in the foreground of that photo – who they were and why they were at the fort – but the sign says not a word about them. And the photo is, after all, a photo of them, not the flagpole.
Library/School
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| Hospital |
Stable
The sign tells about the first stable, built of wood, that collapsed in the snow. I’m not surprised this stone stable has lasted so many years – it certainly looks sturdy.
There was also a watch tower that I’m sorry I didn’t get a photo of. It was basically 2 boxes, built one on top of the other, but the top box was set at a 90° angle to the lower box, so the people inside could get a 360° view. I don’t remember seeing that anywhere before.
The only other people at the campground either stayed in tents or in cabins and seemed interested only in fishing – they all had fishing skiffs.
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