States & Provinces visited on this segment: South Dakota, Minnesota
Dates: Sunday, July 8 to Monday, July 9
Miles driven: 225 (3525 total to date)
Summary: We left De Smet on Sunday morning, stopping to visit the cemetery where the Ingalls family is buried before heading out of town. We then headed northeast to Belgrade, Minnesota to visit Dale and Gladys, friends of Karen’s from her time in the Peace Corp in Belize. Dale and Gladys are dairy farmers, and we parked our trailer on the farm while visiting with them. The kids had an awesome time on the farm. They helped feed the cows, bottle feed new calves, gave hand milking a try as well as hooking up the milking machine, and even cleaned up a bit from the cows. They also enjoyed playing in the hay loft, and “getting lost” in the corn field. The weather this year has been warmer than normal and all of the crops are weeks ahead of where they normally would be this time of year. The corn was 7+ feet high, so even an adult could get lost pretty easily. We enjoyed visiting with Dale and Gladys and getting caught up what has been going on in their lives as well as Karen reminiscing with them about their years together in the Peace Corp. Dale and Gladys are retiring at the end of September, so they are counting down the remaining days of milking. It was ~80 days when we were there. They have bought a fifth wheel trailer and plan to spend the winter months down in Arizona so they were interested in our experiences with our trailer since they have not used their trailer since purchasing it earlier this year. Dale and Gladys took us to a small family run zoo that was about 20 miles from where they live. The zoo has a wide variety of animals bad it was interesting to hear about them on the guided tour.
Other notes: Special thanks to Dale and Gladys for their hospitality. They made us all feel extremely welcome and were great with the kids explaining everything to them and letting them help out on the farm. I think we each gained a couple of pounds eating Gladys’s great cooking. We even had 30A electrical service for our trailer so we could run the AC! We offered to let the kids stay longer and said we would pick them up in a few weeks on our way back west, but Dale and Gladys weren’t quite that accommodating.
Next up: Somewhere further east.
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