Chipmunk Spirit

We said good bye to Iowa this morning, entering Nebraska, but not for long, as we headed north to South Dakota.  Like most places there is a completely different feel between these states.    I suppose if I really worked at it, I could name the small details that make me have this perception, but this seems like a level of detail not needed here.

Suffice it to say, that Iowa definite feels like farm country, while Nebraska feels like cow country.  But, as they say in Oklahoma, the farmer and the cowboy can be friends.  SD is yet another animal entirely.  It’s still flat, though more plains like - valleys between small rises.  More trees, though from what I’ve read - they are pretty much imports from else where.  SD is brown. 

There is, at least to me, a perpetual feel of dustiness and industry.  This probably has not been helped by the fact that it’s hotter than Hades here at the moment.  We broke 100 today.

Our first stop this morning was a rest area off the highway, where looking like the ultimate tourist, I was taking a picture of the picnic tables under little lean-too.  This very nice young man stopped us, asking if we were not from around here.  I resisted the urge to say, can’t you tell?  We said yes, Connecticut, had the oh cool, that’s far away conversation and then he told us he was a SDU student and down the road to the town we were headed, there was a look out point for the Missouri.  He was very nice.

The rest area too was nice with pamphlets galore for me, but they also do this really neat thing:  they “sell” a audio cd for 20$ that tells local stories and history and info about the scenic drives.  If you want you can keep it, or if you send it back to the state of SD, they will refund 15$ of your 20.  We started listening, but haven’t gotten too far yet.

Our second stop was a few miles down the road in Vermillion, SD, home of a SDU campus and 3 block Main St.  We stopped because this is also the home of the National Music Museum (on the SDU campus).  For a two horse town, it was surprisingly hard to find, but eventually we did.

It was small, but interesting.  Gorgeous inlay string instruments, some old pianos, cool collection of international instruments, and some oddities (the horn from the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie - a movie from the 80’s that most people don’t remember because they didn’t see.  I, of course, did and still have the vinyl album.)  It turns out, Vermillion was also the home town of  Shawn Colvin - known for the song Sonny Came Home; we saw her guitar, too.  The museum was also housed in an old Carnegie Library. 

Upon leaving town, we decided to head the few miles South at our college student friend’s suggestion to Mulberry Point.  It was a look out worth looking out from, up and down the Missouri River at the sand flats.

We then traveled a few miles North of town to the Spirit Mound.  We saw it from afar, it was… unimpressive aside from being a big mound in the middle of flat.  One of it’s claims to fame is that it is about the ONLY place in the state in which they are certain and documented that Lewis and Clark had actually stood there - they went to see it because they heard that little people with arrows lived in it.  Just like L&C, I did not see any little people roaming the area and got no “vibe.”

After another 20 miles of flat, we arrived in Sioux Falls, SD - the largest city in the state.  For a very big state, SF is a very small city.  We drove all over it…twice.

Our first stop in SF,  was the Washington Pavilion - advertised as quite the cat’s pajamas.  The cat’s pajamas were a bit moth-eaten.  Perhaps if we were 5?  There was a lot of ‘hands on’ science-y stuff… but most of it was neither that interesting nor working well.  The art side of the museum was better, but small.  It had 4 shows up - Native American art - which was nice but only a dozen or so works,  local artists which were not very interesting and I didn’t even wander the whole space, but then a small show on the beauty and beast of the weather here.  There was some photographs of storms that were impressive. We are both actually hoping we might get to see a storm here.  It looks like it would be highly impressive.

Since the temp was still 100+ we did not walk the few blocks of their Sculpture trail, but drove it a couple of times instead.  I think it’s very admirable what they are trying to do - each year they add a public sculpture installed outside.  Some of it was fun, but … sadly it isn’t enough for this town. 

We drove on to SF park - where the falls are.  In some ways they are impressive.  The rocks are different here.  They almost look fake - and they are pinkish which is different.  The falls themselves are more rolling than falling by NE standards, and I was really surprised at how open they were.  Sure there was a sign that said be careful and don’t go in the water - but people could and were climbing all over the rocks and going right up to the water.

There was an observation tower too - again kind of small - two stories, maybe it was 30 ft in the air?  But I’m not sure.  There was a nice (albeit hot) breeze at the top though.

But today’s greatest excitement for me was the chipmunk that we saw in the park.  S/he was definitely like no other chipmunk I’ve seen before.  S/he was almost snake like - very thin, long, had a long not bushy tail, no defined ears and the fur was spotted.  I was very excited and we stalked him for a bit to get a good picture.

We’ve settled in a little early tonight, opting to not go back out for the light show over the falls.  I can live with this.  Tomorrow, we shall check out cowboy town and make our way west to the Corn Palace.