Laura's House and rain on the prairie

This Sunday morning, rain is what is on my mind but I should delay that thought until after I discuss yesterday's activities.

We had a leisurely bacon and pancake breakfast at our camper and then set out west ward around ten am.  A nice drive mostly along US highway 14.  Just after passing the state line into SD there was a very small roadsign saying "Dakota Stonewear, Bushnell, 1 mile' with an arrow pointing down a small road to the right.  We passed it so quickly that it hardly registered and was too late to turn.  Dakota Stonewear is the folks who show up at the Oshkosh trade fai every February, and from whom I always buy at least one piece, usually a mug. 

Continuing west on 14, we passed Brookings and soon found the turn to the Little House, on a gravel road about a half mile south of Hwy 14.  Again a charge to wander around the grounds, but probably worth the $10 per person, after having driven this far.  There is a replica dugout,as it was in Plum Creek, but this one is in good condition, and lets one get a real sense of what it must have been like to live in one of these small holes.  They also compare it to a tar-paper and wood shanty, which was the other cheap easy house to build. 

A small house, the size and location of the original Little House is there, having started as a one room house, the Ingalls' had put on a two bedroom addition, the total size of which is smaller than our camper/trailer.  And they then added a second addition almost doubling the size of the house, and this became their parlor.  

There are two over sized covered wagons, which one rides to the far corner of the 160 acre property to visit a one room school house.  This having been moved to the Ingalls property in the late 1950s when it finally stopped being used as a school. 

They also keep 10 acres cultivated with corn and wheat, to show the size that was required by the government in order to qualify for free land under the Homestead Act.  This 10 acres they plant and harvest using horse drawn implements, which look to me to be from about 1900.

Now, what was I saying about rain?   A line of thunderstorms went through our camp grounds about 4 this morning.  We had to wake up and close all our side curtains on the trailer.  This is just what we do NOT need today, as we will be packing up this morning to drive to New Richmond, WI to visit with Darrel and Kirsten.  We want to see the new deck which they have added to their house over the last few weeks.  The pictures looked great, now we see it in person.

. . . .
Moving on to a technical matter with Blogger, I believe I should be able to post photos, but have not figured out how to do it yet using this Android App. so it remains a text only blog until I learn more about how to use it.

Dawn on the Prairie

Saturday of our trip to see the little houses on the prairie,  we have had 2 days of travel and some interesting sites on this trip into the "Little House".  Yesterday we drove across most of Minnesota, on highway 12, arriving in Walnut Grove around 3 pm.  A walking tour of the Laura Ingles Wilder Museum, and then about a mile and a half out of town to the "dug out", their small in the ground sod house.  It was a bit like a hobit hole, except not nearly as nice.  Imagine 5 people living in a 10 by 10 foot mud room dug into the side of a steam bed, although about 20 yards back from the stream itself. 
The mud house is long since gone, but the depression in the ground shows clearly where it was and you can easily imagine the looks of the place being very similar to what they were about 130 years ago.  The trees along the stream, the prairie around the area.  Yes it is all there, but how does one imagine living in that "house" all year, winter in a dark 10 x 10 room does not sound like fun at all.  Yet from that experience a girl grows up to be a famous author. 

Well, its early morning now, and coffee is on the camp stove, there is still a breeze, but it is comfortable in the upper 60s I would guess.  I'm sitting at the picnic table, listening to wind and birds.  This camp ground is along a river bank, heavily wooded on the slopes and we are at the top, not down in the valley.  There is a railway track down along the river, and although I have not seen a single train, I have heard about a dozen of them, it sounds like a heavily used freight track, long trains at all hours.  Loud horns at a grade crossing near here, although I haven't found that yet, just heard it.  In this area the river runs NNE to SSW and all the trains seem to be going that one direction, I have not heard a single one going the other way, very curious.

Our plans for the day include a trip to DeSmet SD.  This will be our third "Little House" location, and what looks to me as the farthest west that LIW went in her travels, although I am not an expert, that would be Judi, who has been fascinated by LIW and her books since as long as she can remember.

Friday vacation and a bit of an experiment

What experiment?  Well I've never tried using Blogger in a place with no internet access before, so here I am typing, hoping that this gets saved as a draft, and can be uploaded next time I get near a wifi.  I'm in camp spot 19 of Frontenac State Park, Minnesota, right on the bank of the Mississippi, its 7:45 in the evening, dinner is still cookong as we got off to a late start, and I am being dinner for a lot of skeeters and other such little flying creatures.   I should go in the camper but . . . .

we got the trailer a bit after 11 this morning, stopped for a burger in Little Chute, at Tom's drive in, and then drove straight to Pepin,  getting there 20 mns  before the Laura Wilder museum & gift shop closed.  Then the 30 min drive to the park here, but we stopped at a grocery to get a couple pieces of chicken for supper.
Thats it for Friday.  

but wait, it is 5:30 Saturday morning and now a new experiment.  I started FoxFi  / wifi on my cell phone and am connecting the tablet to that, and will now try uploading this again,

Vacation morning at the kitchen table

It is Thursday morning, day 1 of my July 2013 vacation.  I'm sitting at home in the kitchen at the table wondering if we will go anywhere today.  Our plans are to go to Pepin WI for the day and then on to a Minnesota state park for the night, but our popup camper is at VnBoxtel's for a bit of PMCS, and should have been back on Monday.  If we dont get it by about 1pm today we wont make the drive today.  So this will be a very unsure day.  Worst case is vacation in place at home.  If we do get out of here today, I will try to do a post this evening from somewhere else.  But that could be subject to my access to the internet wherever we may be. 

Looking back at PT.

There is a blog post entitled "PT" which was published about 5 minutes ago.  It is really from Mid March of 2013, but for some reason that I don't understand, I tried to publish it from the ASUS tablet, and the publish didn't work.  I happened to find it a few minutes ago and sent it on to the blogger web site, better late than never.

It is obvious to me now, that posting to this fine web site is much more straight forward to me when I work at a real, honest to God, PC than at the the tablet.  I do like using it for watching videos, and reading eBooks, but it sucks as a means of being sure that I am posting to the fine internet.

I really should post more stuff more often.

PT

So its been a bit over a week since last I made a a comment here.  For the last few days my shoulder seems to have been "tightening up", that may not be technically correct, but thats how it felt to me.  When I went to Physical Therapy today, Jesse asked how I felt and I commented on this, he looked at and played with my scar, then proceeded to pull my arm in 17 directions, 16 of which hurt.   And then he added an exercise to work on my pectoral muscle.  An hour later and I can tell it has helped.  I am amazed at what he can do.  I do hope that in a few weeks the daily pain in shoulder will go away, and I can get back to having normal use of my right arm.

Only 4 weeks, according to this system, since last I posted.  Today is the first Saturday of April, and its cool and gloomy outside.  My arm has been making pretty steady progress, although I still take pain pills at night, I can go all day without any.  I do notice that range of motion continues to improve, and I bet that if I were more diligent about my exercises and stretching that it would be even better.

Well being the weekend, Judi is doing homework and laundry, so I am about to head out the door and do the grocery shoping - whoopee how exciting.

I really should put more interesting, more philosophical stuff into this blog - and I really should do this more often if it is to be of any benefit to me, let alone any unfortunate person who happens to stumble upon my incoherent ramblings.

Monday

Here we are again, its only been 6 or so weeks since my last post, this is getting kind of frequent.  Anyway, 3 weeks ago I bought an Asus 10 inch tablet, with a keyboard, and just today I downloaded the Blogger app for use on this fine new machine.  Maybe if I have even easier access than via my google account, I will remember to use this more.  
I am now two weeks (tomorrow morning) post shoulder surgery.  The new shoulder seems to be working although there is still a fair amount of pain.  It is however, of a different nature than before the surgery.  It does not feel like the arthritis in my shoulder did.  Now I feel the incision, and I have pain in my biceps muscle, which I suspect is from not using it for  a couple of weeks, and now trying again.
Interesting learning to use this new application for typing, some things work just like in M$ windows, like ctrl-c and ctrl-v for copy & paste, but try to find the spell checker !  I still have to figure that out.
Will be  leaving in a few minutes for physical therapy, more  later.
 

Now this is confusing.  The new format of blogger, that is.  So I have had this blog account for 3 or 4 years, and I post something a few times a year, then I forget that I have this, and don't come back for months.  But when the blogger folks converted my account to their new format, well they confused the dates of prior posts.  So every post from be fore this has the same date.  They all appear to be from about two months ago.  Makes a lot of sense don't it.
Anyway, I am posting this on Sunday Jan 27th 2013.
Spent a fairly quiet weekend at home, did very little, over slept, fed the birds in the back yard, watched YouTube videos, day dreamed about vacations.  Wouldn't it be nice to have either a cruising boat, maybe a "trawler tug" or if one stays on land, maybe a class A or C motor home.  Ahhhh dreams.