Highpoints roadtrip - Day Seven

Brrrrrrr!  It was hard to get outta the sleeping bag this morning. Temperature was 39 degrees and there was a  fine  mist coming down.  I loaded the tent without bagging it because it needed to be dried out later.  Drove into nearby Hettinger, North Dakota,  looking for the old Yellowstone Hotel where we stayed back in the 60s when we came to town to work bees. Staying at the Yellowstone was like going  back in time. I remember the  old wood floors creaking when someone went down the hall at night,  I remember that all the patrons on a floor shared the same bathroom and I remember that it had the softest water that I had ever experienced... you felt like you just couldn't get the soap off of you after a shower. The Yellowstone has been torn down because it had become an eyesore and safety hazard. Another part of history has been erased by progress.

The next stop was Lemon, South Dakota,  where we also worked bees during this same time period... I  remembered a couple things in Lemon... the swimming pool on the hill by the water tower and the petrified wood park.  It was no problem locating the petrified wood park where everything including the buildings are made of local petrified wood.   When we were there in the 60s, there was so much petrified wood that it was thrown in piles at the end of fields to get it out of the way of the plows and in some cases you could haul off all you wanted for free..I didn't figure that that was the case anymore..everybody is trying to make a buck. From the park, I drove to where  the old pool should have been but it was gone.. stopped in the Super Saver grocery(only thing open that early),and found a lady(Sandy Paulson) who had lived in Lemon in the 1960s and we went down memory lane about swimming at the old pool...we figured that we probably swam there at the same time at least once.  It must be that everybody that visits Lemon must be looking to pick up some petrified wood because Sandy volunteered that if I would like a piece that she has several good size pieces in the bed of her pick-up parked at her house and I could help myself to one of them. She gave me directions and I had no problem finding her pickup and transferring a soccer ball size piece to my car trunk for the ride back to Texas. Sandy... another person that went out  of their way for a total stranger.  These are the Americans that we don't hear enough about.

 It was time to hit the road again as I had big plans to drive all the way to Sibley, Iowa that day.  I stopped occasionally to photograph something that caught my eye. My favorite was the red fox that crossed the road in front of me and hid in the grass. I guess he thought that he was hidden from me because he didn't try to run off when I approached him. 

Between Bowman and Hettinger...Beautiful unbroken prairie ...this is where the last great buffalo hunts took place

South Dakotans get creative with their mailboxes

Swollen Cheyenne River near Faith, South Dakota......all the rivers that I crossed in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota were full or flooding... they all eventually flow into the Missouri River

Another creative mailbox

red fox thought he was hiding in the roadside grass

Bee apiary....with all the rain, this is going to be a fantastic year for honey production