Heading further East through South Dakota, to Sioux Falls, and apologising to North Dakota on the way, we stopped at a not to missed monument. Known as ‘Dignity’ its a 50ft tall roadside sculpture design to showcase the the light, the beauty and the promise of indigenous peoples who still thrive off the land today. A private gift, in 2016 its a symbol that all are sacred. We also saw a lot of symbolic Tipi’s through this part of the US. The rest stop where Dignity is, also has a fab museum to The Lewis & Clark Expedition to chart the Americas in 1804.
We opted not to detour to Fargo, anyone who’s watched the TV series will understand why, continuing on to Sioux Falls. Our pitch at the campground had its own patio, chairs and BBQ and given we ended up there longer than planned, it was welcome! Waiting for a parcel delivery from home we decided to rent a car (it’s so cheap from local airports) and headed to Downtown. Even though a sizeable population, downtown is basically a one street wonder but to be fair, it has lots of out door art sculptures. On a cycle we saw many of the c. 80 pieces, of which, every year and after a vote, the city buys the favourite, for permanent placement. Favourites were “Imposter Syndrome” and “Pork Chopper”.
Slightly away from the centre is Sioux Falls Park, once home to a short lived flour mill that used the fast flowing waters for power. It’s now just an outdoors space with average waterfalls and modern ugly buildings as a back drop. The flour mill went bankrupt after only a few years due to a shortage of water and grain… me thinks there’s a problem with the business model…
Sioux Falls considers itself a unique and thriving city on ‘The Prairie’, we’d give it that. There’s certainly a lot of building going on but none of it adds much to the place, all quite dull really. What we did experience though was ‘Prairie Weather’, from melting hot where even our aircon couldn’t cool the van down, to incredible thunder storms. One night a large branch snapped off a tree, luckily falling between two RV’s… can you imagine the insurance claim? At cooler times we played ‘Pickle Ball’ and discovered muscles we didn’t realise we had. It’s Americas fastest growing sport we’re told and its actually really good fun. Jigsaw cooled off in the firepit… and changed colour….
Continuing to hang around we took a walk along the Big Sioux River to see ‘The Arc of Dreams’, a stainless steel sculpture across the river. It’s not joined at the centre, its supposed to reflect ‘The Leap of Faith Dreamers make to fulfil….’ Blah blah, that’s all a bit Hollywood for us! We half expected Kevin ‘Field of Dreams’ Costner to walk around the corner… We also got the bikes out and cycled into downtown via a riverside cycle way. A tad industrial, a train blocking the route but a great section of woodland and a rapid flowing spillway.
Unable to do a three point press-up I climbed the Tri-State Marker, this wasn’t 4 corners, (previous blog) but nor were we charged $8. It was the intersection of South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota in a very non descript place, yet to be turned into a tourist rip off. Ticked off two more states there! We knew we were in “Corn Belt” country that’s for sure. Iowa too, however has the most pigs of any state, c. 40% of all US. It’s also known for ‘The Day the Music Died’ as its where, on February 3, 1959, American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson were all killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. To be honest, in Iowa, there’s not much to see, 85% of the land is agricultural and flat. Iowa produces more corn than any other state. It was fields, silos, farm houses, fields, silos, farm houses… you get the drift. Minnesota wasn’t much different.
A couple of nice spots, out among the corn sticks, Devils Gulch Park lived off its Outlaw Jesse James claims but was a pretty walk through the pink Quartzite rock forested area, as was our picnic at Split Rock Park watching fishermen. More interesting that the ghost town of Garretson which was shut for the day. To be fair, sometimes driving around aimlessly isn’t all bad, there’s always great buildings and barns…. until you stumble across Wayne Porters Sculpture Park. Hard to miss from the road, the 60ft Bull’s head was something we had to go see! That, along with the 23T horse.
The sculptor himself was there so it was interesting to chat and he has unusual perspectives as you’d imagine. Not only are there the two giants but there’s numerous other smaller pieces,a bizarre collection of random and sometimes macabre pieces in a field. Some a little dark, the Jack in The Box for one and two ‘handmaids’. Clearly with a passion for The Wizard of Oz, the bulls head had landed on the Wicked Witch, wearing the ruby slippers…. we weren’t even in Kansas!
After a night of Tornado Warnings popping up on the phone, thankfully about 30 miles south of where we were, our parcel arrived so we headed off to get our filters changed and thus move on. Driving around the edge of Sioux falls on the freeway we noted ‘Real Men Love Babies’ on many a sign… interesting to try to connect a mans ego to pro life… personally, real men respect a woman’s right to choose but who am I to comment. The other one that stuck was a politician… “Pro Gun, Pro Life, Pro Family”… mmm…. time to move on, so we did.
Copying a line from the infamous Blues Brothers, we were “On a Mission from God”… well, actually, it was US Department of Homeland Security for us. (Some might say they have a god like complex). Wanting more fingerprints, in case we’d changed somewhat within the space of 8 months, we had an appointment in New York State. Flat fields of Minnesota then at the Mississippi River it all changed, becoming really green and forested. The river, full of tiny islands, the change was dramatic, as was the amount of traffic. The I90 could be anywhere in the world, tree lined and dull, save for fun road signs, silos and barns. We zipped into Wisconsin. There was some karma, depending on your point of view, watching an awning be near ripped off a trailer that had Biden Sucks and Trump 2024 flags during a thunderstorm 🙂 Schadenfreude at its best!
Around the south of Chicago it took twice as long to do the same distance as previous days, so much more busy than we’ve been used to in the US as we enter more populous areas. We ticked off Illinois and Indiana, didn’t buy ‘live bait’ at a gas station, have a hotdog that had been rolling for days it looked like or buy fishing tackle from numerous road side ‘stalls’. We did however note that “God Blessed America, he sent us Trump”…. yep, its all happening! We arrived at the Indiana Dunes State Park campground, bemused!
Indiana Dunes State Park is actually wholly within Indiana Dunes National Park. We were lucky to get camping there as it was Memorial Day Weekend. Just an observation from that weekend, the Americans show great reverence to veterans and it’s great to see. Lots of people have ‘I’m a Veteran’ type bumper stickers, very different to UK. We should have the Monday after Remembrance Sunday as a Memorial Day Bank Holiday as we call it, not that we particularly like to copy! Anyhow, we were enjoying being back in nature and one of the days being very hot, there was plenty of wildlife on the beaches that we cycled to. Lake Michigan is so vast it may as well be the seaside, the skyline of Chicago visible through the haze but not the advertising banner for King of Budz.
Much of the park is woodland dunes and teeming with birds. The Calumet Trail ride was challenging as lots of flooded sections but Cowles Bog gave us Sandhill Cranes at a distance. It’s a great trail ride, weaving in and out of woodlands but quite close to the shore where the fancy houses were. There were also some at Beverly Shores that were built for Chicago’s 1933 World Fair and were moved there afterwards for preservation. Great designs and futuristic for their time. A cycle back via Great Marsh and a campfire finished off the day with neighbours playing ‘pickle’.
Contrasting weather, thunder and lightening, which was pretty spectacular over the lake, meant we decided to walk through the woodland dunes. Again, the birds, being natures orchestra, were singing their little hearts out, and the Merlin app was going crazy. We saw two snakes basking on logs in the water and a highlight was nesting Prothonotary birds feeding chicks (thanks to Merlin for the ID) Wet weather equals bugs so more campfire! After a wonderful few days we moved on, to Michigan, relaxed and tweeted out!
The Curious Adventures of the Cat in the Camper Van 
Agree re the veterans, they are almost revered
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