Falls Park, Sioux Falls

We may have stayed in Minnesota, but we made the half hour drive in to Sioux Falls two out of our three days there. One of the main attractions is Park Falls, which highlights the namesake of the town and some of its local history.

great view of the falls from the tower - beware the gift shop!

Since we have a closer up image of me than usual, let me digress just a moment.  Wayne is one of those awful patients, that stubborn 1% who refuses to adapt to no-line progressive lenses.  I've forced him to try 4 different times, each time just to have to remake them into computer only lenses.  He now has 3 different powers of "readers" lying around the house, but only wears glasses for distance when he's driving his work truck.  (Which he then has to take off and put on another pair to use his laptop for work orders.)  When we travel I do the packing and those readers all stay at home, forcing him to wear the pair of lined bifocals I made him keep last year to have something that was somewhat multipurpose.  So, I'm reading my Kindle in the camper and he comes over to give me a kiss and says, "Your face looks old today."  My reply was, "my face looks old every day, you just never see it well because you won't wear your bifocals!" 

Before anyone is offended on my account that he said I looked old, I'm okay with the fact that I'm not a youngster anymore and this upset me a lot less than the fact that he won't wear his glasses!  While we've been touring around I've had to read everything for him, even the giant outdoor menu at a restaurant.  Really?  Wear your glasses!

 

Mahogany granite sculpture - hydroelectric building converted into cafe at back


The first attempt to settle a town here at the falls on the Big Sioux River in the 1850's was thwarted by the Civil War, conflicts with native tribes, and a Depression which discouraged settlers from making their way here.  The town was abandoned in 1862.  In the early 1870's people started arriving again and the town really took off in the late 1870's with the arrival of the railroad.

In addition to the ruins of the electric plant that was here, there is the turbine room from the Queen Bee Mill and traces of the supports for the flume that ran to it. 

 

The Sioux Quartzite exposed here on the river is on the pinker side, and of course a lot of it was quarried in the area long ago.  The stone is incredibly hard, almost as hard as a diamond, which made it more expensive to work with and eventually other materials replaced it.  Now its quarried mostly for gravel uses in the area, you can see bits of it in the pavement.

As we were leaving the park I got my first close up look at one of the many sculptures in town entitled "For Which It Stands".  It was voted the 2006 People's Choice winner from their local SculptureWalk.  Upcoming posts will have lots of sculptures, starting with that one!

Prairie Coneflowers Galore

Here at Blue mounds State Park in Minnesota Prairie Coneflowers are starting to wind down for the season.  We took a bike ride down to the historic Sioux Quartzite quarry area and enjoyed the show.  The coneflowers were amazing...there really wasn't anything to see at the quarry.

In general there isn't a lot of wildlife at this park, but we did startle a doe taking a nap in this beautiful field, and the park does have its own resident bison herd.  The herd is fenced in and I've yet to see them closer than half a mile away, but it's like the zoo anyway when they're fenced in.  I like seeing them roam (mostly) free at Yellowstone and in the Custer area.

This park  is good for 2 or 3 nights, but after that there isn't much to do either in the park or in the area.  Oh, and the showers are new but COLD.  Seriously, I cut myself shaving my legs because of all the goosebumps.  Also the water is so hard I couldn't get a lather when washing my hair and after 3 days of that my skin was itchy all over.  Worth a stop, but only for a few days and fill up your tanks enough to use your own shower, preferably with water you got somewhere else!

Dam Flowers

No, I'm not swearing, just have some pictures of the flowers down by the dam at Blue Mounds.

We stopped there on our bike ride to see what the kids were catching with their fishing rods.  Well, Wayne did.  I immediately went to check out the flowers, of course.

Not just flowers, dragonflies and butterflies too!  Dam flowers, gotta love 'em.

Blue Mounds State Park

We've been staying at Blue Mounds State Park here in Minnesota, but this morning we're hitting the road and heading towards Yankton.  There is still a lot for me to tell you about the area, especially the city of Sioux Falls, but for now I'll just fill you in on the park itself.

The campground has 71 sites, 40 of them with electric.  We made our reservations online since we were arriving on a Saturday, but if you come on a Sunday or later you'll have your choice of sites.  Just about everyone was gone by Sunday afternoon, there's less than 10 sites occupied now.  The new shower building was beautiful but the water was tepid at best so I used ours in the camper after the first night.

There are 15 miles of hiking trails, but they are all across prairie.  Most of the park sits atop an outcrop of Sioux quartzite, which we even had a chunk of at our campsite as you can see in the above photo.

One day we walked for an hour from our campsite out to the top of the cliffline and took the Upper Cliffline trail out about a mile and then back.  One of the surprises here is in addition to the abundance of prairie grass and flowers we found spots with cactus growing!  The area is one of several in Minnesota where cacti are found.   Who knew?

The park also has two dams that form two very small "lakes", one of which is good for fishing and swimming.  I found it to be a source for a different variety of flowers than on the prairie, but I'll save that for another post.

The bike trail is only 2.8 miles long, and Wayne and I took it out to the historic quarry and back our first full day here.  On the way back we ran into a little girl with the cutest carrier on the back of her bike for her dolly.  Bitty Baby was  back at home, but I think we made her day when we asked her if she'd pose with her bike for us!

Sioux Quartzite

 Sioux Quartzite is a popular building material in this area on the Minnesota-South Dakota border.  When I first saw it in downtown Luverne I told Wayne it made me think of The Flintstones.



Loved the restoration coming soon sign in the window in this Luverne building


The quartzite was formed from river deposits when much of North America was under sea level, and it varies in color from pink to red.  Most of what we saw was downright purple, in my opinion.  I won't talk about it any more right now because we're going to be heading over to Pipestone National Monument and I'm sure I'll need to say more about it then!  I have lots to talk about in upcoming posts, so much I don't even know where to start. 

This building in Luverne had a variety of building materials showing

US Courthouse - Sioux Falls

Look Who's Hangin' Out Downtown

We're in Minnesota, and we spent our first day staying at Blue Mounds State Park by exploring the area.  One of those things that kind of happens by accident.  We woke up to an unseasonably chilly morning to discover we had left both of the electric heaters back home.  Wasn't thinking about heaters in early August, silly me!  So off we went to check out downtown Luverne and maybe find a heater.

My research had indicated there were a few historic buildings in town, so we swung by to see those first since we were blessed with overcast skies.  I found a few, but I also found this guy hanging out in front of The Palace Theater.

My camera was a mere 2 inches from this guy's head.  I'm grateful, but I have to wonder why he was so complacent.  Anybody know anything about dragonfly behavior?

I know it's Mural Monday but I'm having spotty internet at the moment so the one mural I found in Luverne will just have to wait.  More on what we found, including those buildings I alluded to, in upcoming posts! 

Superior Sandstone?

What's in Superior?  Lots of brownstone, that's for sure.  You always know you're in northern Wisconsin when you start seeing a lot of this.

Not only brownstone, but probably Bayfield Group sandstone. Quartz cements and comprises 75% of the stone.  That's one of Superior's two Carnegie libraries above, it's for sale and at a great price I might add.  The other one in town was already purchased by a private owner and has such a thick garden around it that I couldn't get much of a look at the building.  

Superior Elks Lodge

The sandstone was a popular building material until the depression of 1893.  After the World Fair in Chicago lighter colored stone was more fashionable.

Many of Superior's fine old buildings, including Fairlawn, Martin Pattison's mansion, were made with material from the Amnicon quarry. In about 20 years, more than a million cubic feet of brownstone was shipped to many cities including Chicago, Sioux City, Omaha, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth.

Fairlawn Mansion

Fairlawn is open for tours but when they said $9 and no photography I declined.  I'd probably enjoy the outside more than the inside anyway.

I also stopped in to visit the State Fire Fighters museum.  With the exception of this cool sculpture the one in Racine is definitely a much better one to visit. No guide, no organization, not much to see either.  What a shame.

I don't know if this is Bayfield Sandstone, but I thought it made a nice foreground for a shot of the lighthouse.  If you want to know more about the lighthouse, I found a great link here.

While the sandstone in northern Wisconsin is nice, nothing beats that sandstone in Utah!  I probably won't be seeing that for another couple of years again though.  (insert heavy sigh here)