At last! On our first walk this morning I got to see a shooting star! A wish fulfilled just by seeing it. The sky was amazingly full of stars.
 |
| route map |
The first piece of the drive got me back to Montrose, which I’d passed through yesterday. From there I turned east so I could pick up a state highway and almost hit 2 fawns.
The mom ran across the road not far in front of me, then the twins suddenly appeared at the side of the road. Then they hesitated, then ran into the road, then stopped in my lane, then kept following mom. Meanwhile, I’d started braking when I saw the doe because I’ve often found that one deer leads to another. What I wasn’t expecting were babies who didn’t know what they were doing. When I saw them I really tried to brake – but a vehicle this size doesn’t stop on a dime (note to people who pull out in front of large vehicles – don’t) and I was barely able to stop in time. I don’t think those fawns were 6’ away from my front bumper by the time I’d gotten us stopped. The water bowl I keep on the floor for the critters didn’t just slide forward, as it often does. This time it slid all the way under the passenger seat up to the front of the cab. First time for that.
I was so distressed by the near miss that I completely missed my turn onto SD-19. On the map you can see an orange line that keeps running down County Road 122 past where it says Humboldt and stopping in the middle of nothing. That’s where I pulled myself together enough to realize I’d come too far and managed to turn around on a 2-lane, no-shoulder road to go back. It was pretty upsetting how close I’d come to killing those little guys.
I came to the town of Madison, definitely not confined to being a farming town with 7,322 residents. I never did figure out what happened with Google’s directions, but they were completely inadequate. It sounded simple: turn left on SD-34, then right on SD-34/US-81, then left to stay on US 81. I thought I did those things but ended up in a completely wrong part of town. I had to turn a bunch of corners to turn around and navigate a road construction zone twice and then just drive in hopes of finding a road I could recognize. Which I finally did. I really wanted to go back and figure out what was wrong with those directions, but in a bulky vehicle like my RV it just seemed like I’d be asking for even more frustration than I’d already gotten.
Once out of town, I passed a sign saying, “Does Freedom Matter?” and wondered about the politics of whoever put it up.
I came to a crossroads with the town of Sinai, pop. 120, to the right and Oldham, pop. 133, to the left. Oldham, by the way, is losing population – they had 206 folks in 2000 but were down to 133 by 2010. I didn’t want to look up where they are now, too sad. But Oldham touts itself as “Home of the Annual Potato Days Festival.” This year it’ll be August 27th and 28th and include a French Fry Feed, Potato Car Races, Barrel Rides and more. Most of the info is on Facebook, which I’m not allowed to look at, so if anyone is truly interested in the treats in store, that’s where you can look. Actually, it’d probably be fun. Unlike those who crave pasta or rice, I’m a fan of potatoes.
I passed ponds with Great Egrets, cormorants, a pelican.
At Arlington, pop. 852 in 2018, we stopped for a walk at a boat ramp. There were 2 boats being put into the water then, and when I’d walked past all that activity, I saw a Mallard in the water on the other side of the pier watching them just like I was doing.
Down the road I saw an operating windmill that had obviously pumped up water into a large trough – I say “obviously” because a small herd of goats was gathered round the trough.
Lots of bee boxes in this area.
From Arlington I drove north to Watertown, named appropriately enough since it’s in the midst of what they call the Lake District – this area of northeast SD. You can see by today’s route map that I was passing one lake after another, with more to come. I’ve seen lots of duckies on all these ponds and lakes today, but couldn't identify them from the road and didn't have a place to stop.
I passed a small round barn that, sadly, had holes in the roof. There have never been many of them built anywhere, so I hate to see one fall into disuse as this one has.
Just coming into Watertown, pop. 21,482, from the south, I got a good view of Mother of God Monastery. This is a Benedictine community for Catholic women, and it’s housed in a distinctive large white building on a hill. It currently houses 49 religious women “in community” as they say. I didn't find a non-copyrighted photo of the monastery on line, but it's an eye-catcher.
We stopped in Watertown for groceries, then a quick tour of “Historic Downtown” (yes, it’s an historic downtown). I’d also intended to stop and do laundry but by this time was too tired and too not sure about the laundromat I’d found, so we drove on by and out of town to head to the campground.
The driving route was convoluted anyway, even according to the state parks. According to Google it involved driving down County Road 17 6/10. Yes, that’s county road seventeen and six-tenths. I have absolutely no idea what Google had been smoking to come up with that because I never found it, or anything else even remotely resembling it. I’d suspected as much and written down the alternate names for these roads: 450th Ave., 20th Ave. SW, 449th Ave. That was lucky because those were the names I saw on the signs. But even luckier, the state parks people had put up helpful signs at the various turns, so despite Google’s best efforts, I found the campground easily.
But there my luck ran out. I guess these state parks only have staffing on weekends, because there was nobody to check me in and they’d put out no maps of the campground. I had to wander quite a bit to find my site, and when I found it someone else was in it. Still, park policy says check-out time is 3:59 PM and check-in time is 4:00 PM, and I’d gotten there at about 2:00. The people in my site looked really dug in, with a fire going and kayaks lying around and many chairs, so I thought I’d better check to see if they still planned to leave or maybe I’d gotten the wrong site or something. They were really nice and said yes, they’d be gone by 4:00. So I went off with the dogs to a nearby boat launch where we took a short walk and found a place to park in the shade with a breeze. And sure enough, when we went back at 4:00, they and all their stuff were gone and the fire was out. Efficient folks.
No comments:
Post a Comment