The perfect Minnesota Truck

As I was walking Mollie this morning, I noticed this truck at the local Chevy dealer.  Is this the perfect truck for a Minnesota winter or what?

Southern Minnesota

   Land of the farm.  Driving around in southern Minnesota, I remember what rural America is like.  Miles and miles of corn fields.  Lots of fields of soybeans as well.  Scattered throughout the countryside among these fields are groves of trees.  Each of these groves is a windbreak for a farm.   Everywhere are cornfields and trees.  In Eastern Oregon the ranch home sites are 10-15 miles apart.  Around here the farm sites are about a half mile apart. 
    Today we drove to Windom to visit an aunt of R.  It is harvest time.  Everywhere you look, you see huge dry fields of corn and beans.  I thought they were dead from the drought, but that is just what they are supposed to do at this time of year.  As you travel, you see large combines working through rows of dry brown corn stalks or equally brown stands of soybeans.  You will also see parked combines using their comveyor shutes to load the corn or beans into waiting grain trucks.  Farmers are very busy right now spmetimes working into the night to get the harvest in.

A Trip to Minnesota Day One

   We got an early start on Monday.  Not as early as I would have liked, but 7:30 was pretty good.  The Prius was really loaded!  There were a few extra boxes aboard, one containing my Teac reel-to-reel tape deck and two computer paper boxes full of reel-to-reel tapes some of which I have recorded and some were purchased from Special Services in Viet Nam in 69-70.  Some old stuff.
   We were taking it to Minnesota to give to R brother.  He has a recording studio and is going to see if the deck or any of the tapes are in good shape.  I might get some recorded CDs out of the deal.  We will see.
   An hour lost as we crossed into Malheur County.  An hour lunch in Jerome, Id at the Burnt Lemon where burnt lemons are used to make a tasty lemonade.
   We arrived at the Days Inn in Evanston, Wy. at about 8:00 pm       600 miles and the foam rubber pad helped keep my butt from falling asleep.  Early to bed for the next day which turned out to be longer than we expected. 

Minnesota Trip Day 2

   Left Evanston, Wy at 7:30am   The geology along the way was great,and scattered rain showers and sunshine made the trip enjoyable.   As I travel, I like to look at the vehicles both coming and going.  We passed a couple driving a very cool car tooling along I-80. 



    We lost another hour due to the time zones two hours after crossing into Nebraska.  Then about half way across the 400 miles we were trying to decide where to spend the night and came to the conclusion, " Why don't we just drive straight through to Minnesota?"  Let's do it!!

  
 By midnight, we wondered if we were ever going to get out of Iowa, but at 3:30 am we arrived at R sister's home in Fairmont, Minn.  I was asleep within 3 minutes of my head hitting the pillow.


I'll put in  a pic of the car when I find my camera.
 

Safety Cones

    There is a shortage of safety cones in Nebraska.  There has to be because there must be at least 100,000 of them scattered along I-80 across Nebraska in at least a dozen construction zones that last for 5-10 miles each.  Each zone consisted of a narrow single lane passage through cones on  both sides with no noticable construction going on in any of them.  The only use I can see for this construction is that is was good way to slow down the flow of traffic.
   Iowa is trying to use up its quota also, but they seem to put out a few pieces of equipment here and there to simulate actual construction.   It might be wise to buy stocks in the safety cone business.

Antique Hunting

    Yesterday, Wednesday, R and I went antique hunting.  We weren't looking for your average antique, something Gramma would have had in her house.  We were looking for items to display at the Sodhouse Ranch, circa 1880's / 90's.  There weren't many women there at that time either.  The Clark family were the managers and Mrs Clark raised at least three children and cooked for the ranch crew.  She may or may not have had a cook to help her with that job.  Then during the haying time several women would have been hired to cook three meals a day for the men that came to the ranch to for that period.  They all lived in tents on the ranch property and ate meals prepared out of the hay kitchen which, at one time, was the homestead house.  Our goal yesterday, was to find addtional items to furnish that hay kitchen and the bunkhouse.  With a shopping list in hand, we hit the road. 

  First stop:  a junk shop just east of Burns on Hwy 20.   Prizes:  a pair of leather chaps. ( in need of clean up), some harness tack, a coal oil can, and a stirrup.

  Second Stop:   A shop in Canyon City that has mostly decorative items.  They also make horse drawn wagons, surreys, and even stage coaches.    No luck here.'
 
  Third stop:   Jim's Antiques in "downtown" Canyon City.    Prizes:  a nice conversation with Jim, the owner and a line on an old saddle that he has at another location

Fourth Stop:   "A Touch of Europe" in John Day.  Prizes:  A set of blinders for a horse, some knives and forks, a glass hurricane lamp.

Fifth Stop:  "Skeins" in John Day to visit with the owner, Teresa, to catch up on her life and to buy some interesting blue wool roving.

Sixth Stop:   A shop on Hwy 26 just east of Mount Vernon.  Ken, the owner has several barns full of goodies.  What we were looking for and more.  A chair, three spoons, and a dust covered lantern.

Cowboys

It is Fall, time for the local ranchers to move their cattle from summer pastures to pastures that they will occupy until the end of the year.  There are herds in the fields on both sides of the ranch.  The herd from the Church family ranch arrived last Sunday.

 Cattle drives have occured since the late 1800's.   They continue today.  The distances are shorter.  The herds are different breeds now.  The comboys are mounted, some on horses, some on less traditional transportation.