Minnesota and the Dakotas- Sunday, July 2, 2017

     We started our day in New Ulm, Minnesota, where we had spent the night.  New Ulm was founded by German immigrants in 1854, and is still steeped in German traditions.   The main attraction in the town is the enormous monument to Hermann the Cherusci, a.k.a, “Herman the German.”  He’s an obscure figure to nearly any American, but he was credited with winning German independence from Rome in the year 9 A.D.   He is dressed like he has stepped out of a Wagner opera, and raises his sword in triumph over the town.  Because his pedestal is on the top of a dome and a set of columns, the entire height of the monument is 102 feet tall.  It has been recognized by Congress as a symbol of German heritage in America.  Visitors can climb the winding stairs that will take you to Hermann’s pedestal, but it was before 9:00 and didn’t open until 10:00 so we had to admire it from below.

     The town of New Ulm seemed almost empty on this Sunday morning, and we saw very few people on the streets.  No doubt many of them were in the several Lutheran churches that we saw in town.    The town has a glockenspiel that we hoped to see, but the long presentation it does about the German settlers of New Ulm only happens three times a day, and the first one didn’t happen until noon.  It was glocken but it wasn’t spielen.  We did hear it chime at 9:00 and the figure of the concertina player moved along with it.  We also found Turn Halle, i.e. Turner Hall, which claims to be the oldest tavern in Minnesota.  There were other German stores and restaurants too, but we were just there too early on a Sunday. 

     We got on the road then and traveled to Walnut Grove, the one-time home of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  When she and the Ingalls family moved to Minnesota in 1874, their home did not look anything like the way it was pictured on the television show “Little House on the Prairie.”  In fact, the TV series conflates many details from several of her books, including Little House on the Prairie and On the Banks of Plum Creek.  The beginning of her real life in Walnut Grove was covered in the book On the Banks of Plum Creek, and her first home here was a dug-out house in the bank of the creek.   When Pa and the family arrived here, Laura described the new home as a “Door in the Ground.”  Sod houses were used by many of the settlers on the prairies because of the shortage of trees and wood.  Like nearly all of the others, Laura’s house has not survived.  However, we did pass a sod house that has been preserved, and while we didn’t pay to see it, we did get to see what it would have looked like on its own in the prairie frontier.

     We’ve been to Walton’s Mountain, a.k.a. Schuyler, Virginia, and we’ve been to Green Gables on Prince Edward Island.  When we read that there was a Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Walnut Grove, we had to start rearranging the plans for the trip, in order to make room for it.    We spent a while in the large gift shop there, and bought CDs of two of the books, and some of music that was played on “Pa’s fiddle.”   Naturally, the first room covers details of Laura’s life, and several items that she owned are on display there including a large red and white quilt.   The next room is filled with memorabilia from the tv series.  A lot of it came from a reunion of that cast that happened here in 2014.  Of course, most of the principle actors had passed away by then, and many surviving ones didn't attend.  It would take a really hard-core fan to recognize the secondary characters that were played by many of the rest that came.

     Much of the rest of the museum was in smaller buildings outside.  One area was planted with native grasses and flowers, and did look like the field that is shown at the end of the TV show, though on a much smaller scale.  Far less then 1% of the original prairie grasslands still survive in Minnesota.  Farming has taken over the rest.  One "dug out" has been built to the dimensions that Laure described in On the Banks of Plum Creek, although it is above ground.  It still looked like a hobbit hole to Scott and Emma.  An early settler's home was moved here from nearby, and it is the same size as the "Wonderful House" that Laura describes in that same book.  The community has used this museum as a way to feature Walnut Grove's history, so there are a lot of things here that are from the town itself-- a jail cell, military uniforms from 20th century conflicts, and so forth.  There are lots of hands on opportunities for kids, including a one-room school house, a post office, a store, and so forth, though much of it represents a time after the Ingalls family left.  There is a well equipped wagon that would show what they would have probably brought with them to the frontier.  There is also a smaller one for climbing on and taking pictures.  Taking a family picture at the cutout figures of Ma, Pa, Mary and Laura was to tempting to pass up.

     The landscape of southern Minnesota is wide open prairie, but It is also practically all farmland now.  The roads cut through the countryside in straight, grid patterns.  The land is very flat, and there it’s spotted with barns, silos, and clusters of trees as far as the eye can see.   Once in a while, we would find a baseball field amongst the cornfields.  “If you build it, they will come,” Julie said jokingly, and really, the map shows that we’re just a short distance from Iowa.  We found lunch at a Subway, at a little four corners location.  That was fine, but it was also the only place we saw to eat at.

     As we approached the South Dakota border, we saw a huge wind farm.  There might have been hundreds of windmills, like the ones along the Buffalo lakeshore.  There were so many windmills and it was so flat, it reminded us of what we had seen in the Netherlands.  We weren't on a major highway when we crossed the South Dakota border, so our family selfie was at a regular roadside sign, near a tent selling fireworks.  As we pulled onto our first major highway, Julie asked, "Does that sign say what I think it says?"  Indeed, it did- Speed Limit- 80 MPH.  So of course, she did.   South Dakota's land was slightly more rolling than the very flat land in Minnesota, but other than that the views didn't change much.  When we crossed into North Dakota a while later, we had to find a sign in their rest stop to do the family selfie with.

     Since we were going through Fargo anyway, Scott had us stop at the Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center.  He has long been a fan of the quirky movie Fargo by the Coen brothers.  One of the last scenes is of a murderer caught "red handed" while trying to dispose of a body in a wood-chipper.  That same wood-chipper from the movie is on display in this visitors center.  There are so many people who stop by to get a picture with it that they offer you the use of one of the distinctive flannel caps with the earflaps to pose with.  Of course, Scott did.

     For dinner, there was a place called, "Space Aliens Grille and Bar."  We hadn't heard of it, but there are several in North Dakota and Minnesota.  It's a really kitschy place both inside and out, but was a fun stop.  The statues of aliens and the florescent spaceships lit with black light made the place was kind of fun.  They served pizza and other fun foods.  We started with an onion bloom.  We didn't partake of the video game room, but they had some games that were tempting- most notably, a giant-sized version of the classic Space Invaders game.  Somehow we had lost a $20 bill just as our food came, and we decided not to spend any money on the games.

     Speaking of kitschy, we found a brochure advertising the "World's Biggest Buffalo Monument."  It is in Jamestown, ND, which was right on our way to Bismark, ND, so we added it on to the agenda as a last stop for today.  His name is "Dakota Thunder," he is 26 feet high, is made out of steel and cement, and has been there since 1959.  It turns out that there he is the main attraction at a whole little park called Frontier Village.  Buildings from the area have been brought here to preserve them, and that has created a whole western street.  The shops are furnished with antiques, and the whole thing is free to stroll through.  The exhibits were still open, even though it was after 7:00, and we had fun exploring.  We were sad that the gift shop in the general store had closed for the day, but we could hardly complain, since admission was to this whole park was free.  One interesting building was author Louis L'Amour's "writer's shack."  He was from Jamestown, ND, and the building contains many of his personal items, and displays many of the books he wrote.  Some of them were turned into John Wayne movies like Hondo.  He also wrote the adaptation of  How the West was Won.  So there's no doubt that this little corner was truly part of the mythology of the West.  There is a museum adjacent to Frontier Village called the National Buffalo Museum.  There was an admission to it, and since it was almost time to close, but we did browse all of the buffalo themed items in the gift shop.  There was supposed to be a herd of buffalo in the hills out back.  We saw one on a distant hill but that's it.  Hopefully, we see more as we push west.
   
     The girls are getting a little tired of riding in the car.  It was probably over eight hours total for them in the car today, and while Anna drove some, she's getting antsy being in the backseat so long.   We've got at least seven hours of driving planned for tomorrow, too.  It's a problem we've anticipated, and we've tried to minimize days like these, but if we're going across the country, we've got to make some distance some days.   At least we're not doing it in a wagon train.