Back from camping with a friend this week.  Last fall, a friend from Northfield mentioned that she’d like to visit Pipestone National Monument, it was on her bucket list, but there’s no campground at Pipestone, just an RV park (UGH!) nearby, sooooo, have pop-up, will travel, and we booked it in October!  Alan and I have the routine down, and it’s very different with a friend who hasn’t been camping in decades, and never in a pop-up!

Getting there… CapX 2020 and other transmission was EVERYWHERE!

The weather was bizarre.  Got set up, but had to do it quickly, as it dribbled a bit of rain not long after (whew, good timing).  But the WIND!  WHEW!  It was SO windy.  Tied down the awning right away, and ultimately had to use an emergency blanked clamped to the awning as a windscreen to be able to cook!  Put the camper’s stove on the table, set up as another wind screen, and propped up the Coleman in that, kinda precarious, but needed the shelter.  It rained all day and all night and the next day too, and most of the next night!!!  Waterlogged, for sure!

Hard to keep everything under the awning, and very hard to keep that emergency blanket “rain fly” in one place.  On the stove there is the makings of wild rice (and sweet peppers, corn, green onions, mushrooms, and a dash of cream!), to go with the turkey (so easy when we have electricity, the hardest part is fitting it in the convection oven).  Got the hang of this now, first one was Thanksgiving in Arkansas, and this was worry free, no way the wind could blow away that oven.

The next day, we hit Pipestone National Monument, which was cool, actually hot but windy to make it OK, and there was a class meeting in the grass near the building when we arrived, and the next day, we learned that the Minnesota Historical Society had a group that had been there the day before, I think it was part of the American Indian Museum Fellowship program.  Pipestone National Monument is a sacred site,and in many places, there are remnants of prayers and offerings.

There are active quarries, and inside, three stations for pipestone carvers.  The carver I talked with had been wanting a spot there for over a decade, and it’s a long-term family thing, with ties going back generations, with the next generation waiting for someone to retire before they can take a place there as a carver.  Throughout, I thought of Robert Rosebear — I’d commissioned a piece decades ago, and he put a lot more into it than I’d bargained for, much more, the detail was amazing, priceless. How he planned and pieced that together was amazing.  Rosebear had mined the pipestone for his carvings from the quarries here.  It struck me that natives have to go through a permitting process to mine pipestone, but how does that work?  How is it that the Pipestone National Monument got into the hands of the feds, and the feds are in charge of determining who gets to mine at this sacred site?  Seems a bit off…

But this…  GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The following day, we went over to the Jeffers Petroglyphs:

It was impossible to get reasonable photos because it was at early afternoon, and the sun disappeared the petroglyphs, but staff tricks with boards and mirrors, and an occasional squirt bottle revealed them.  Here’s a depiction:

Thursday, it was off to Albert Lea for some pretty monumentous real estate closings  — the Bent Tree buyouts are DONE!  What an intense day!  And over 300 miles!

It’s good to be home!!