Once in awhile-now and again-this is us

in the great hall there were these 5 flags. luckily they had a explanation sheet handy.

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here are the interesting facts of their different tribes flag.

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on the capital grounds there was a large statue of sakakawa. we should all know about her, if only from the movie ’ night at the museum’.

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also a much smaller buffalo stateue

then we went to the visitor center. they have this special thing they only do for special visitors, like us. any guesses? while we were waiting i bought a few souvenirs. this was of the nicest visitor’s centers iv’e seen. i got you something amy. any guesses

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well here it is….. i hope you get a kick out of it.

if you go to the bismarks visitors center facebook page it should be there too.

we had so much fun with the lady who took the picture. we told her the story of the putting fingers in noses and asked if we were gentle – could we? of course.

they only started doing this a couple of years ago because they kept hearing from visitors, this is my 50th state to visit. and then they would reply, ”you saved the best for last”!!
then we had to exlpain we had already been through 4 times but it was to see mt. rushmore on the way east. but being it was our last capital we qualified.

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we got on the road and ended up staying in a cracker barrel parking lot just out of bismark. we had taken our showers ray, and were good for another 4or5 days😉 we had the worst service and worst meal we have gotten at a cracker barrel ever. we ended up getting our meals free after jerry found a chicken bone in his chicken pot pie.

we made it to medora yesterday and found a nice campground, similar to the grand forks one.

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jerry always finds a dog and people to talk to.

we went through theodore roosevelt national park today. i hope my pictures do it justice.

tonight we are going to a new show titled ‘ring of fire’ about johnny cash. the madora musical has ended it’s 56th season tracy, so we couldn’t see it. this one is in the enclosed theater.

so once again stay tuned

💗jilly

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🌬i look at the clouds a lot on our travels. i can see something in them most of the time. but by the time i get the tablet up and focus it’s gone. i almost saw a face in that center cloud. and i guess google photos saw it too, it put it’s little focus square right on it. we also see these old vehicles in yards and fields everywhere. it seems they just sit there and rot.

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here is the roadside attraction. jamestown, nd. claim to fame, the worlds largest buffalo monument. 26 feet high-14 feet wide-46 feet long-and weighs 60 tons. his name is ‘thunder’. we did not walk down there.

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we got to our 50th capital yesterday. i’m so happy and proud to achieve that dream of mine i’ve had for quite a while. thanks for getting us there jerry💗 this capitol was built in the thirties after the original building from the 1880’s burned down

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this is an interesting old photo of the laying of the cornerstone of the new capital. the dakotas have a lot of indian reservation territories in their states.

They used a lot of wood and white marble. there were a lot of rounded corners.

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The building is 19 floors high and there is an observation deck that is open to the public.

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a lot of state department offices are in all those floors, so there was a very nice cafe to feed them. we think this is the first time eating in a capital.

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when we got our official stamp on a postcard, the nicest lady said we should visit the ’convention and visitors center’. they had something we might like.

stay tuned to see what it was

💗jilly

ps- the trees were ash rosemary

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*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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