Oregon Trail

Leaving Des Moines Saturday morning, with our sights now clearly set on reaching Oregon, it was easy for Betsy and me to relate to the pioneers that shared our goal.

Most of the Oregon-bound emigrants started their journey west from Independence, Mo. We began from our camp site at a state park in Indianola, Iowa and joined up with the Oregon Trail at Kearney, Nebraska.

Many of the journals of the pioneers talk about the hardships and drudgery of the trip west; rising early each morning, packing the wagons and pushing westward all day only to unhitch the wagons, make camp for the night and then get up and do the same thing the next day. 

We can related to that.

Saturday was one of the longest driving days of the entire trip, 380 miles. Theoretically that’s an easy jaunt westward on I-80 from Des Moines to west-central Nebraska. However, an overturned truck on I-80 in Iowa and an ill-fated decision to gas up at a Costco in Omaha burned a lot of time.

Despite these delays we still managed to get settled into our camping spot at a jam-packed Nebraska recreation area before sunset. Nebraska has about 80 of these recreation areas around the state, mostly at man-made lakes. While far from luxurious, we’ve used them several times over the years with good results. In this particular case, we were glad we had reservations because the place was brim-full of recreating Nebraskans when we got there.

On Sunday we drove about 250 miles to reach Scott's Bluff in far western Nebraska where the connection with the Oregon Trail deepened.

The most consistently mentioned place in the pioneer journals is Scott’s Bluff, a yellowish butte that rises out of the featureless plains like a sentinel. Some 500 miles of featureless plains west of Council Bluffs, Iowa the bluffs signaled that the "easy" part of the journey was over and the mountains were not far ahead.

Another prominent landmark in the same area is Chimney Rock. Both have been preserved and protected.

Scott’s Bluff is a national monument managed by the National Park Service and Chimney Rock is a national historic landmark administered by the Nebraska Historical Society. We stopped at both of them.

Look closely to see Chimney Rock in the background.

Hopefully it is obvious how Chimney Rock got its name. Scott’s Bluff was named for fur trapper Hiram Scott who was wounded by Indians and then abandoned by the men that were assigned to transport him to safety. His body was found the next year near the bluff.

Seeing these two prominences that were so often mentioned by Oregon Trail pioneers was cool; but it was a trip north of the city of Scottsbluff – to Agate Fossil Beds National Monument – that really drove home the vastness of the western plains and the daunting task faced by those travelers on the Oregon Trail.

Driving the lonely road out to Agate there was nothing but rolling plains and sky. No irrigated fields, just ranch land. With rain and clouds in the distance it was a spectacular drive and we got more of a feel for what it must have been like in the 1840s.

The Agate fossil beds were discovered by an astute and erudite rancher in the late 19th century. He invited some of the college boys back east out to his place to look around and, lo and behold, they found these.

We had enough daylight left when we got back to hike to the top of Scott’s Bluff and enjoyed he amazing views of these beautiful high plains.

Given that we had just been at the Apostle Islands – famous for its light houses – it was a bit of shock to learn that Nebraska’s Lake Minatare Recreation Area (where we camped for the night) features Nebraska’s one (and only) lighthouse. Actually, it is just an observation tower made to look like a lighthouse, but we climbed to the top anyway.

Iowa State Fair

(August 8 & 9)

Our affection for the Minnesota State Fair (which we have attended three times since 2008) is likely the reason we began our quest to attend every state’s fair. So, naturally, we tend to compare other state fairs against Minnesota’s.

By that measure, the verdict for the Iowa State Fair is good, very good; but not quite as good as Minnesota.

Iowa’s Fair is probably a little larger and its agricultural shows, exhibits and buildings are definitely more extensive than Minnesota’s.  Iowa fair goers may be even whiter than Minnesota’s. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen such a large concentration of white people in one place since last year’s Republican Convention.

A clear winner for Iowa is the craft beer tent where beers from dozens of small breweries around the state were on tap. Another home run for the Iowa Fair is the pork chop on a stick. Yummy!

Other cool features we liked at the Iowa Fair included the hymn sing, where folks gathered to sing old favorites, and the $2 shuttle service that departs from the beautiful state capitol building in downtown Des Moines. 

Iowa also has a very good talent show – which is one of our favorite events at the Minnesota Fair.

Clogging nun at the talent show.

But the Iowa folks don’t seem to be quite as talented as Minnesota’s; and they are definitely fatter. Good lord are they fat. Sloppy fat. So many fat people. The kids are fat. The teenagers are fat. The young adults are fat. The parents are fat. The grandparents are fat. These people are huge! Honestly, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that two-thirds of the people at the fair were significantly overweight.

And, to make matters worse, an astoundingly large percentage of them move from food booth to food booth on electric carts. At times the number of people riding on something seemed to outnumber the people walking.

We felt fortunate not to be run over by a cart or crushed by someone toppling over while standing in line for a deep fried Twinkie.

But we survived and managed to chalk up our seventh state fair. Following is the photographic evidence.

Sky Ride

Corny

Beer

Map of Iowa breweries

The famous butter cow

Lincoln sculpted in butter

Egg on-a-stick

Pork Chop on-a-stick

Maybe not the best time to be eating lamb-on-a-stick

Corn-on-stick

Future pork chops-on-a-stick

A great fair. Good job Iowa!

Leaving AINL

(This post covers August 4-7)

Volunteer Susan (pictured playing her violin) pointed out to us the other day that the park’s abbreviation – AINL – is pronounced “anal”. 

Hopefully that revelation will not detract from the poignancy of this post’s recap of our final days here.

We’ve really enjoyed the park, the month spent on the northernmost tip of Wisconsin and our volunteer duties in the visitor center at Little Sand Bay.

Our last three days at AINL were spent on duty in the visitor center and our evenings were spent partying at night with park rangers and other volunteers. 

One of Betsy's favorite tasks, swearing in some new Junior Rangers

The social life here is a bit like living in a dormitory or being at summer camp because there is a lot of communal space and everyone is away from home and here for a short time. On several occasions there would be a knock on the trailer door and one of the seasonal rangers would come in for an hour-long visit.

Monday we had a rib cooking competition that we did not enter but four others did. There were lots of ribs and they were all very good. We did not enter the rib contest but we did contribute copious amounts of Shiner beer.

 The guy in the red jacket in the center of the photo won the rib contest. He is an odd but interesting law enforcement ranger who delivered his ribs on the 4-wheeler in the background.

 Note that I am using the watermelon knife that I got for my birthday for the first time. BTW, this watermelon was very good...some of the best I've ever had. It was purchased from the back of a pickup truck parked along the road in Ashland, Wisconsin.

 Unfortunately, we did not get a photo of the copious amount of ribs but we did get one of these desserts, all of which featured fresh-picked local berries.

You can see who does the laundry.

An epic battle between wolf and moose in the north woods of Wisconsin.

One last sunset photo.

The Sunday night phone call in the maintenance shed.

AINL gets its place on the camper shell window.

We left Wednesday morning and drove to a state park in southern Minnesota and then crossed into Iowa to visit Worth Brewing in Northwood, Iowa - one of the smallest breweries in the U.S. The last photo is a sign in the window of the gun shop across the street from the brewery.

Kayaking

(This post covers July 29 through August 2)

We started out the week working uneventfully – but fruitfully – in the visitor center; and working diligently to prepare for our kayak adventures during our three days off.

Thursday morning I drove down to Bayfield and picked up the rental kayak. By the time we had schlepped our gear around and organized ourselves it was 2:30 and there was a good bit of wind and wave activity in the bay. Given that, we decided we would paddle out a bit just to get our “sea legs”. Once launched – without incident – we felt pretty good. The two-person kayak is very stable in waves that were probably about two feet – no more than three –so we decided to head for York Island, which is about four miles from Little Sand Bay. We made it in about an hour – a tumultuous hour – and got around to the lea side of the island where there is a beautiful bay with three campsites (and a toilet).

The water there was flat calm when we pulled up on the beach and ate lunch while enjoying the view of islands that we cannot see from Little Sand Bay, including lighthouses on nearby Raspberry Island and distant Devils Island.

We paddled back home – into the west wind – in about an hour and 15 minutes.

It was a very good first day in the kayak.

Friday we were better organized and got underway to Sand Island – also about four miles distant – at about 11:30. This time we headed out into the west wind and again traversed the open water to the island in about an hour.

Sand is much larger than York and there is a lot more to see there, including a lighthouse.

Earlier in the week I had helped change out the volunteers that staff the island, so I had some advance intelligence about the things to do and see on Sand Island.

We started by paddling past some sea caves on the southern shore and then stopped at the main dock where there is a house where the volunteers/staff live. There are also camp sites and a toilet (note: it is very difficult to pee when you are wearing a wet suit and locked into a kayak by a spray skirt, which may have something to do with my mentioning the presence of toilets for the second time in this post).

We are considering coming back to AINL next year, possibly to staff a lighthouse on an island; possibly the lighthouse on Sand Island. So we had more than a passing interest in the housing facilities.

From there we paddled further up the shore; past some bigger, more extensive, more spectacular, sea caves.

This photo of our camera's final resting place was taken with Betsy's i-phone.

Betsy got some awesome photos of these caves with our small, lightweight backpack camera.

I would love to include some of those photos in this post but, unfortunately, those images are still in the camera; and the camera is at the bottom of Lake Superior.

After a few choice words – and absolutely no consideration of going into the 50-degree water after the camera – we proceeded on to another quiet, sandy beach where we disembarked from the kayak (not as easy as it sounds), changed from wetsuits to clothes (not as easy as it sounds) and hiked the mile or so through the woods to the lighthouse (much easier than getting into and out of kayaks and/or wetsuits).

Although this lighthouse is not in nearly as good of shape as the Raspberry Island lighthouse it is very cool and very beautiful with awesome views of the lake and the Minnesota coastline 30-some miles to the north.

The volunteer gave us a nice tour. Interestingly, he is the former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin.

We hiked back to the kayak and paddled back to Little Sand Bay on calm waters and arrived in time to join the other volunteers and some seasonal rangers in Bayfield for the all-you-can-eat fish fry, a Friday night tradition in northern Wisconsin.

We now have just three more days of volunteer work in the visitor center and we will be pulling out Wednesday, heading south to the Iowa State Fair.