Let me backtrack a bit: I made it to the prairies of southwest Minnesota finally. I love the wide open feel of the prairie with its never-ending skies.
Before I got there, I made a quick stop at Fort Ridgely State Park as it was on the way. The Minnesota Kite society was supposed to be flying some huge kites there - those plans seemed to have been cancelled due to high winds. A (Civil War?) re-enactment group from Sleepy Eye was on hand, camped out and doing cultural demonstrations and such. I was bored.
South of there, I stopped in at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site. As always, petroglyphs and other rock art interest me. This site has over 2000 petroglyphs, most of them very hard to see in broad daylight. When the sun is lower in the sky, it creates shadows making the outlines easier to spot. Of course, I was there in broad daylight so I struggled to see them. Even with a tour guide pointing them out, and in some instances tracing the outline with a stick, it was hard to see some of them. This is a bison petroglyph:
She was good, and very helpful and believable, so I took her at her word that the spot she was tracing really was a bison or thunderbird or whatever. The hike around the rest of the grounds was nice - the sun was out and it was a beautiful day with some nice fluffy clouds that cast some occasional shade.
Onward to Blue Mounds State Park, home of Minnesota's only bison herd (at least in a state park). It struck me as funny every time it was mentioned (and it was a rather frequent occurence) that this was the only state park in Minnesota with a resident bison herd. I think most people understand that a bison herd is a pretty unusual thing to have in a state park anywhere.
After setting up camp in a nice shady walk-in site, I took off on a 4 mile hike to try to spot some bison. I saw a tick (on my leg), some birds and a few bunnies, but the bison were safely out of sight. Nevertheless, it was a good hike, about 2 miles to the visitors center where I took a break in the shade. A nice woman warned me of some approaching storms. The skies went from this:
To this view of the visitors center about 15 minutes later:
To this about 5 minutes later:
Not even halfway back to the campground, it started to rain a bit, off and on. Not a big deal for me, but I hadn't put the rain fly on my tent so I ran back as best I could carrying a camera, camera bag and water bottle. It was a nice workout and the tent was mostly dry.
Other than some drunk people deciding to leave the campground at 2am, it was a nice quiet night. I declined to get up early to shoot sunrise and was thankful I slept in as the clouds and bison were non-existent. I did eventually spot some bison off in the distance - I had hoped for photos of bison babies frolicking on the prairie, and all I got was this.
Heading up to Pipestone National Monument, I stopped and took some photos of a few bison on a neighboring farm. At least they were somewhat cooperative.
Pipestone NM is (as I said above) a sacred place for Native Americans. It contains several quarries used to produce pipestone (surprise) which is carved into pipes (shocking!) and other ceremonial items as well as artwork. There's a nice trail to walk and see a few quarries as well as rock formations. The visitors center is actually more interesting than the outdoors as they have cultural demonstrations - people are working on pipestone, carving it into art or other things and available to answer any questions. I declined to ask how they felt about Jesus being Lord of Pipestone.
I left Pipestone and settled on Flandrau State Park for my Sunday night stay. After deciding I wanted to pay the extra $6 to stay in the modern campground with a shower building and water from the tap (as opposed to the rustic campground with no showers and a hand pump), a ranger came around and informed everyone one of the water mains had broken and they were shutting off the showers and drinking water. He *hoped* the toilets would continue to function until the could fix the system the next day. Yay for no showers!
I just sat around getting some sun and reading, then went into town for some food and water. Nothing exciting or eventful, just a relaxing evening doing nothing.
You can see more photos (3 separate albums) here.
