Once in awhile-now and again-this is us

*this is a two part post. the internet was so spotty in grand forks, even my t-mobil, i couldn’t do much.

tracy picked us up and took us for a tour of grand forks on tuesday for her birthday. it’s a city of 56,600 people and 843ft altitude. you know about the sugar beets but did you know it is a pioneer in drone technology? and the university offers the first-ever unmanned aircraft systems bachelor’s degree program. and the first ever hamburger delivery by a drone happened at a golf course here.

it has a lot of the same stores and fast food that we have, but sometimes with different names. tracy has been wishing for a trader joes and a jack in the box for 5 years but no luck yet. tracy described some stores we dont have that i wish we would have had time to see. we did go in the target and it is huge. it has a deli and a bakery. i loved it. now i’m wishing for one of those by us.

our first stop was darcy’s, a local diner somewhat like bakenbroil.

i think we want bacon

In our travels we drove by this church sharon

we passed this car lot and jerry just had to stop. he bought one with five of his friends when he was 15 for $55.00. they all put in $11.00 and one parent helped them get it, but they didnt keep it long.

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they also had this ford oldie

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happy birthday tracy ~ part two

i was going to start another continuation post, but decided to just add to this one

tracy wanted to get a pedicure for her birthday so we did that. jerry got one too. i got a manicure.

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i’m holding the map of where we are so you can see how far we are from you.

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we had dinner at tracys favorite mexican restaurant, the vinyl taco. very cool concept.

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we drove by the university where tracy works but didn’t go in. it’s going through some renovations. i didn’t get a good picture. we saw just about every part of town. even though it’s a big city for this part of the country, it has that small town desirable quality, except for the average snowfall of 42in. it’s one of the coldest in ND. it can reach –43degrees below. bbbrrrrrrr.

it was a great day. thank you for taking time off from your new job to be with us tracy. and happy 58th birthday. ooopps, i gave away your age, sorry. oh, that gives away my age too. ooopps

this is one of tracy’s presents. a blue spruce to add to all the other beautiful

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we made a stop on the way to see a roadside attraction you won’t believe.

(ps. i had a lot of issues with this post. i can’t figure out this new block system works)

stay tuned

love, i really do put my love in this, jilly

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We found a very nice campground only 10 minutes away from tracy.

the sun was making these colors pop.

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now, this is a long, long trailer.

A major crop grown here is sugar beets and its harvest time. tracy said the town fills up with outside workers coming in to help. some to work in the fields and lots of truck drivers. When fully grown, a sugarbeet is about a foot long, weighs two-to-five pounds, and is about 18% sucrose. They are processed at factories that are located near the fields, because beets are a perishable vegetable. Factories generally operate around the clock, seven days a week, from October through April.

this campground will be full by friday.

this woman walking her cat and dog was here to work. her cat is a maine coon named tucker. the dog was jada

the showers were nice and clean and had plenty of consistent hot water.

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we finally got that pesky fly

cheers

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we had a good time celebrating tracy’s birthday yesterday.

stay tuned for more on that

love, jilly

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we made it.

tracy knows how much i love plants, so she was showing me some of hers. these are snowball hydrangeas.

the view from their back porch

come over here luna

after a tour of the house and yard we talked and enjoyed margaritas before having dinner. she’s holding the ’evenflo’ pitchure i made her formula in 58 years ago. she said they use it for everything because it’s such a nice size. i’m glad i saved it.

for dinner we had delicious tortilla soup, as per my request, and homemade rhubarb pie for dessert. yum-yum-yum.

tracy has to work today so we are going to explore the city, find a campground, and maybe a thrift store. we’re going to watch movies tonight. i hope she makes popcorn🍿

stay tuned to see what we watched,
because, they have-netflix+Disney+hbo-max+hulu +???

💗jilly

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don’t be alarmed. it was a friendly one. kinda shy, doesn’t talk much. he just wanted to sit in the back and look out the window. i think he may have been mistreated at some point in his life.

the road from wall drug through south dakota and now north dakota things to look at are pretty sparse but then a fleeting scene take your breath away, much to quickly to capture it here. thats why i’m starting another post. plus we are driving into the sun, cant get a good one.

i especially wanted share the picture of sunflowers tracy sent. it’s so pretty. can you pick them tracy. sunflowers are expensive to buy don’t ya know.

thanks tracy

and to tell rosemary to tell mike to feel better and let you take good care of him. he had shoulder surgery like you did daryl. hope you’re doing well to jessie. have they started the addition on mario’s house paula?

our hitchhiker is still quiet back there. hmmmmm.

We are passing through little towns we probably wouldn’t even notice if jerry did’t slow to their speed limit.

We stopped here to have lunch at a park. there were too many flies to get out. speaking of which,, and you will not believe this, but honestly, you can ask jerry when we get home, we have had-what we think is the same fly in the coach- since spearfish canyon. we have swatted him repeatedly dozens of times and he just flies away. he hides from us. i think he sleeps at night who knows where. when we open a window he flies out, only to come back in before we can roll it back up.. ok now i’m going to sound senile, but at a recent thrift store when we were checking out there was a fly on the counter. was it hilm?

we are now 27 minutes from our destination.

the trees are starting to turn colors.

stay tuned

💗jilly

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It used to an abundance of corn fields we saw across America. then soybeans started showing up. now its sunflowers. acres-acres-and more acres of them, along with the acres – acres – and acres of corn.

they are in every stage of growing, but mostly ready to be harvested. the fields are very grand looking. i wish i could capture that aspect. tracy has sent me pictures of the fields in full bloom near her and they are spectacular. i couldn’t find it tracy, do you still have to send me again?

here are some of my pictures so far

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oh yeah, we see lots of cows too.

looks like a rock from a passing truck hit the windshield. it made such a loud noise, it scared us a lot. it made a interesting crack, don’t you think?

an auto parts store in selby, south dakota, came into view not long after it happened. jerry stopped and went in to get their opinion of what to do. i was worried it would get worse. the guy said, well first he said ”that’s the darndest thing” and jerry said ”no, that’s the damndest thing”. anyway he said it shouldn’t cause a problem. so it looked like the nice man knew what he was talking about so we drove on in to bismark. the capitol isnt opened today so we’re going to grand forks this morning to see tracy and daryl-yay! we’ll get daryls opinion.

Our first stop……..

i didn’t put the m in the crack on purpose, but interesting, don’t ya think?

stay tuned

💗jilly

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we saw our 49th state capitol building yesterday. and it didn’t disappoint. all capitols have a rich history behind them. it would be boring to a lot of people, but i find them fascinating. we see and have seen a lot of beautiful, interesting and historic places that i like to share the pictures i take with you. places that you may never see, or have seen that bring back pleasant memories.

so here are those pictures of this historic building witch laid the cornerstone in 1908 and opened in 1910. it took 2 years to build costing 2 million dollars – then.

and now you have seen the south dakota state capitol building

stay tuned to see the our 50th and final state capitol building

jilly

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it’s an interesting story how this place started. i’ve put a little history behind that for you.

i guess this will be hard to read. if you’re interested you can check online

i don’t really get why this place is so popular. it’s a block long souvenir meca. almost everything has ‘wall’ on it. a few things were cute though. like this t-shirt.

it was fun taking this picture. we were trying to take a selfie. we couldn’t figure out how to stick our finger in her nose and push the button. a nice lady watched us, laughed, and then offered to take it for us. my finger was in her other nostril. i didn’t want to cover up her body.

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we did some shopping before leaving walmart. we haven’t done a lot of cooking yet. we’re eating sandwich’s, soup, and salads. jerry is going to cook salmon tonight.

it seemed like it was long because there was not a lot to look at. i don’t want to say it was boring but it kinda was. i tried to catch a few pictures, but its hard when the coach is on a freeway.

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jerry saw a man laughing as he passed us, so he pulled over to look. the sewer hose had come out and was dragging on the ground. jerry said it was probably bouncing all over the place by the looks of it. i cant believe someone hadn’t gestured to us to look. and it’s ironic because he had just been looking at them in walmart and wondering if he should buy a new one. well, now he has to.

jerry and i had driven through spearfish on one of first trips to mt. rushmore. we fell in love with it. we happened to go to a garage sale and started talking to the people. it turned out they were from long beach. small world huh. they told us how much they loved it there, except for the snow. we’ve always wanted to visit here again, and can’t wait to get started. but first i have to wake up jerry.

so stay tuned

💗jilly

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after having bananas on corn flakes for breakfast, emptying the holding tanks, filling the water tanks, we took showers. that always feels good in a good campground shower. we’ve seen some doozies that you couldn’t wait to get out of. if you can believe it, the coach will be 30years old next february. so, we do know how to keep clean in between ray. (remember what you said about putting on marthas socks?) we could go a week without a shower when we went to quartzite. and youre right, that pink does look like my hair.👩‍🎤 just shoot into the sun sharon.

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anyway, we went into the historical downtown before leaving rock springs. i love these old towns that are disappearing across america. it’s sad, like so many, most stores are closed and in disrepair. a few were open here and one was being restored

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the camera store still remains. how do like these pictures anonymous?

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it was a lot of fun looking around. we found a small church thriftstore and talked to the elder ladies for awhile. it seems the bank building is the only restoration project planned for the town. its very sad.🙁but, i got a t-shirt, a blouse, a new Puzzle, and a red vase for $3.🙂 it will be fun to talk about your visit here rosemary.

we left and drove to rawlins, had salads for lunch by a park. then drove all the way to casper, stopping only for gas. staying in a walmart parking lot for the first time this trip. had chicago hot dogs for dinner.

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next are the pictures of boring, but interesting, highway 80. we go into south dakota tomorrow. we’re getting close tracy.

💗jilly

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