Last Monday found us getting ready to head to
Grand Island and the Nebraska State Fair, after which we would proceed on to
the Black Hills of South Dakota. Larry
had to finish a paint job in Genoa early that morning, and when he got home, he
mowed the lawn. As for me, I was blowing
my nose, curling my hair, blowing my nose, sipping Cinnamon Viennese coffee,
and blowing my nose. I did feel
better than I had the previous few days; that’s always a plus, especially when
one needs to go somewhere.
I still needed to gather up Larry’s
clothes. Last year, I gathered his
clothes, put them away in the camper – and he proceeded to gather clothes and
put them in the camper, too! He thus had
twice the amount of clothes he needed. That
was odd. In all the years we’ve traveled
together, he has never packed his own clothes – except for our
honeymoon.
So Sunday night I asked, “Last year, for some
reason, you decided to pack your own clothes after I’d already done it, even
though I’ve always done it before.
So... do you want me to do it this time, or will you?”
He laughed and explained, “Well, when we were
getting ready and I was getting dressed, I found a lot of my favorite jeans, so
I thought you hadn’t gotten them yet, and I should!”
“All rrrright... but answer the question,” I
said in my humble wifely way.
“I’ll do it,” he decided after a moment, and
then headed out of the bedroom to do something else.
He would either be doing it long after we
should’ve already left, or he would forget, I figured. “Shall I get your underwear and socks, at
least?” I asked.
“Yes, that would be fine,” he agreed. “I’ll get my shirts and jeans.”
Later, as I was carrying bags of things into
the camper while he worked on the battery and the connections and the inverter
that wasn’t working and loaded tools into the under-compartment of the camper,
he opened the camper door for me and helped me carry some bags inside. Two were the aforementioned underwear and
socks.
“Where shall I put these?” he asked, peering
into the bags.
I suggested a certain cupboard, he vetoed the
idea and chose another. (I should just
always tell him to put things in places where I don’t want him to them,
because he will always decide another place is better than the place I
point out. Husbands, tsk.)
He cleaned out the pickup and washed it. When he came into the house, we were
discussing the few things that still needed to be loaded into the camper. I mentioned his jeans and shirts.
“I thought you were going to do that!”
he exclaimed in surprise.
Righto.
Now, how did I know that would happen??
“I’ll do it right now,” I said with some degree of exasperation.
I headed into the bedroom to collect his
jeans and shirts. If he wound up with his
least favorite, worst-fitting jeans, whose fault was it, hmmm?
No, I would try to pick out the best
ones. I was going to be seen with
him, after all! Wives regularly get the
credit (or the blame) for how well-dressed (or unkempt) their husbands
look. Why doesn’t anyone blame him
if I look shabby, huh huh huh huh huh?!
Why, I’m so concerned about looking utterly
too-too, I even brought my Rowenta iron along with us. 😂
By 1:30 p.m., I was ready to go. Larry was not; he was setting up sprinklers
to give the yard a last watering before we left. Still under the weather, I was all worn to a
frizzle-frazzle carrying things out to the camper. It was hot outside. 91° in Columbus, 82° in Hill City, South
Dakota. And it was 94° in Grand Island.
Shortly after 2:00 p.m., Larry was finally
taking a shower in anticipation of leaving sometime that afternoon.
I put our mail on hold, online. The USPS had Norma Swiney listed as the
occupant for our address. Good grief, do
they ever get things mixed up. When I
tried putting in my phone number, they informed me that that number is being
used on a different USPS account.
Yeah? Probably my very own,
somewhere, that I can no longer access, once they put Norma’s name at my
address!
I only got 65 photos at
the Nebraska State Fair quilt show, as we got there late, and didn’t
have much time before they closed the room in order to take down the quilts in
preparation for distribution. Here is one made of men’s novelty neckties.
To think this
exquisitely appliquéd, pieced, and quilted quilt got only a
fourth-place ribbon tells you just how steep the competition was.
Here is the quilt
that won Best of Show.
This was the most
beautiful set of quilts I have ever seen at the Nebraska State Fair. Quilters across the state outdid
themselves. Too bad they have to overlap
so many of them. Uh, that is, they
overlapped quilts. No quilters
were overlapped in the presenting of this show.
We got ourselves
a Pineapple and a Strawberry Whip – frozen treats – and sat on a bench in the
shade to savor them on that hot afternoon.
We looked longingly at the food cart selling smoked turkey legs, but
decided not to spend any more money on pricey food at the fair.
Instead, we
walked amongst the dozens and dozens of vendors in the big Expo Building.
I got a little metallic pink purse for Eva, whose third birthday would be on September 6, and a tube of Watkins Pain-Relieving Cooling Gel.
Loren used to sell Watkins products in rural areas around Columbus back
in the early 60s, when he was in his early 20s.
I told the vendor at the Fair about a little German lady to whom Loren
sold products. He’d show her one thing
after another, to which she would respond in her birdlike voice, “I’m
uninteresting! I’m uninteresting!” But eventually Loren recommended some
products she liked, and he had a faithful customer from then on.
After collecting
my things (five quilts, two pillows, and one fabric book), we headed northwest
to a campground next to Calamus Reservoir near Burwell, Nebraska, out in the
western Sandhills.
As we rounded a
curve near the lake that night, lightning flashing in the west, strong winds
suddenly came ripping over the hills and down through the valley where the road
wound.
Larry had just
barely said, “That felt strange—” when tumbleweeds large and small were flying
through the air over and around us. Really
odd, to see them up so high in the air like that. Most of the time when we encounter tumbleweeds
out here, they are rolling across the prairies, not flying wildly through the
air. It was like we’d driven through a
giant dirt devil. It was really windy all through the night. We chose a campsite farthest from the tallest
trees.
As I blow-dried and curled
my hair the next morning, I happened to look up at the vent in the bedroom
ceiling. The cover was gone! There was nothing but the screen between me
and the clouds in the sky.
I called, “Larry! Come look at this vent!”
He did so.
Yep, it was gone. (Sometimes it takes two people to verify
these things.)
“That bad wind we drove
through last night tore it off!” said Larry.
“I made very sure the vents were closed before we left home.”
Fortunately, he had some of
that waterproof Styrofoam left over from last year’s trip, when rubber from
blown-out tires tore up the wheel well lining and insulation, and he had to
replace it. So he cut a square of foam
and fit it into the vent well until we could find a trailer sales and service
place and buy a new one.
The next morning,
there were Eastern kingbirds flitting about in the pine trees. They have such lilting little songs, and
they’re fun to watch as they perch high in a tree, then upon spotting a flying
insect, go winging out to catch it on the fly.
The day started out with clouds covering the
sky. As we drove northwest, it seemed to
me that the clouds were transitioning to a smoky haze. We stopped at a truck stop for fuel, and then
I knew it was smoke, because it was so strong it burned my eyes, nose,
and throat.
It grew steadily worse, the farther northwest
we came. People were being told to stay
indoors as much as possible. The smoke
was coming from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, Montana, and Canada.
Somewhere south of Wall, South Dakota, Larry
made use of his KTM motorcycle that he’d mounted on the rear of the camper when
we ran out of fuel. We’d been holding
our collective breaths for 30 miles, hoping to find a fuel station just over
the next hill.
At that previous truck stop, the pump had
shut off when the tank was only half full.
Rather than restart the pump, Larry decided to head on north, hoping for
better fuel prices farther on.
Bad choice.
It was too far between stations to worry about fuel prices right there. In the
Badlands of southwest South Dakota, fuel stations are scarce. To make matters worse, the wind was blowing
hard against us, and we were only getting 9-10 mpg.
The
buttes and spires of the Badlands were formed through the geologic processes of
deposition and erosion. The Cheyenne and
White Rivers carved their way through them. It didn’t take all the gazillions of years
so-called ‘scientists’ say it took, either. Yes, there’s been some erosion through the
years, and sediment build-up; but God made the earth somewhere around 6,000
years ago, and He did it in a literal six days, as the Bible says. “He cutteth out rivers among the rocks,” it
says in the book of Job. We have a
wonderful, almighty God!
I kept hoping and praying that when we ran
out (I just knew we would), it
would not be just over a hill where we would not be noticed by coming vehicles,
as there was practically no shoulder, and the sides of the roads dropped into
deep gullies and valleys.
We came up over a
hill just south of Kadoka and I90 – and the pickup sputtered and then died. With the motor off, there were neither power
brakes nor power steering. The shoulder
was nonexistent.
And then I spotted
a gravel road on the west side of the road, just a little ways ahead. I pointed it out to Larry.
“I hope I can make
it around the corner,” he said, working hard to turn the steering wheel and
then the brakes.
We made it.
He brought the rig
to a stop on the side of the country road, got his motorcycle off the camper,
and headed north on it. According to the
GPS on my phone, we were 7 ½ miles from the Interstate, and there would
probably be a station near the exit.
It turned out, we
were only a mile and a half from the Interstate. My phone had lost satellite signal six miles
back. Larry found a station just over
the next hill. He brought home a couple
of gallons of fuel – and discovered that neither of his gas cans had a spout
that reached far enough into the fuel filler hole, and those odd winds must’ve
pulled the funnel he always carries right out of the pickup box.
He fashioned a
funnel out of a water bottle, and poured the fuel into the tank. Then, fearing two gallons would not be enough
to get the pickup started and keep it started until we got to the station, he rode back and purchased two
more gallons (plus a funnel).
As I waited for
him with the pickup and camper on this gravel road, the dark orange sun lowered
in the dirty orange sky. The smoke was
unpleasant to breathe, and it hurt my eyes and throat; but I was sure glad we
didn’t have anyone with us who suffers from asthma.
I called the owner
of Whispering Pines Campground to let him know we were going to be a bit late
(after feeling so smug, thinking we were going to get there an hour early); he
assured me that was fine, and said he would leave a map on the office bulletin
board showing us where to park.
As we headed north
to Rapid City and then turned west toward Whispering Pines, we heard a strange
noise in the pickup. Strange noises in
motorized vehicles are not good. Ever.
We were glad when
we made it to the campground a little after 8:30 p.m. and got parked. We are a little bit northeast of Silver City,
a little bit northwest of Pactola Reservoir, and about ten miles north of Hill
City.
After getting
everything plugged in and sitchee-ated, we were more than happy to eat some
Campbell’s Chicken & Dumpling soup, applesauce, and kiwi-watermelon juice,
and then go to bed. We were tired. We’d worry about Strange Noises the next day.
Except... there
was a strange noise when I went into the camper’s bathroom. The noise of the Great Outdoors, to be exact.
I looked up at the
vent.
The cover was
gone.
As usual, I called
for Larry: “Come look at this vent!”
He looked.
Yep, it was gone.
“They’re getting
older,” he said, “so they’re getting brittle from the sun. Today’s wind was too much for it.”
We checked the
third vent, positioned between the living room and the kitchen, but it was
still okay. Being in a lower position on
the roof of the camper shielded it a bit from that wind.
Out came the
waterproof Styrofoam again, and Larry soon had another square of it to put into
the vent well. Unfortunately, this vent
has a fan in it, and the fan has gotten damaged. We’ll have to replace that one of these days,
too.
Wednesday, Larry took a good look under his pickup. He determined that the odd noise was probably
a bolt in the doohingy connected to the wutzit, fastened to the blurgdertooter. Or something.
And he would have to remove the blundersnort in order to get to it to
fix it.
There.
I described that business just as well as Larry talks about my
quilting. Maybe even better.
I spent a good part of the
afternoon and evening sewing hanging sleeves onto the quilts we picked up from
the State Fair. The counter in the
camper is a good height for the project. The air quality had improved immensely since the
previous evening.
Here is our truck and
camper, and you can just see the front wheel of Larry’s KTM motorcycle on the
far right.
Upon taking this picture and
then looking at it on my computer screen, I suddenly spotted the Stanley coffee
mug Larry ‘lost’ that morning. Can you
find it? 😄
While I sewed, Larry went to
Rapid City for handlebar grips, a rear-view mirror, and gas for the motorcycle,
vent covers for the camper, a creeper for working under the pickup, and an air
mattress and a fishing pole from Cabela’s.
He also got a couple of sandwiches and a bag of Trail Mix. When he got back, he installed the cover
vents, then added oil to the transmission in the pickup. It was less than a pint low, so that probably
was not the cause of the strange noise; but hope springs eternal.
Ravens were
cawing loudly from the wooded hillsides around the campground. Their voices are much lower-pitched than the
crows around our house.
Around
8:30 p.m., I finished the last of the hanging sleeves. We ate the sandwiches for supper – Ham and Colby,
and the Turkey and Swiss on 12-grain wheat bread, cutting them in half and sharing
them. I removed half the bread from
mine; there’s always too much bread to suit me. We also had applesauce and strawberry-watermelon
juice, and Trail Mix and fresh coffee for dessert. We needed groceries! We weren’t starving yet, but we needed
groceries.
Thursday,
we took an exploring excursion to Silver
City, a small community nestled deep inside the Black Hills next to Rapid
Creek. Silver City was settled in 1876
by the Gorman brothers who came to the Black Hills from Canada in search
of precious metals. They set up two mines: the Diana Lode and The Lady of the Hills. Although initially called Camp Gorman,
the town was eventually platted and renamed Silver City. By the year
1878, the population of Silver City had grown to over 300 residents.
At the 2010 Census (the most recent Census
number available, as it is no longer tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau), Silver
City had a population of 59 people.
Silver City’s elevation is 4,620 feet (1408 meters).
In some places in that little town, residents should be required to knock
on their own doors from the inside, before opening them, so as to
refrain from ka-bonking into possible pedestrians! 
There’s a little lending library next to the church. I realized, after a friend commented, that
they patterned it after the Community Center.
I should start bringing some of my multitude of books with me, and put two
or three in these little libraries when we come upon them!
As we drove along the gravel and dirt lanes of the town, a young fawn,
still with spots on its fur, bounded gracefully across the road, tail high.
Next, we went to Hill City to get groceries
at Krull’s Market.
On the way there, we stopped at Pactola
Reservoir and walked down close to the water.
It’s quite a big lake. There’s a
rocky island in it called Alcatraz Island, and it sports the U.S. flag atop it.
There’s also an Alcatraz Island off the
western coast of Australia, did you know?
😀
We stopped at Sheridan Lake for a few minutes
to take pictures, too. It was so pretty,
with the sun lowering in the sky, and the trees on the hillsides reflecting in
the water. A couple of ducks swam by,
having a conversation with each other as they went.
Krull’s is a very nice
little grocery store. The fresh fruits
we got there were so good.
When we got back to the camper, we had a supper
of smoked chicken, Colby jack cheese, and vine ripe tomato slices on toasted
12-grain bread. We had cran-pineapple
juice and cottage cheese to go with it.
I finished the meal with Theraflu Daytime
tea, and planned to wash the dishes as soon as the water heated up. We can’t run the electric water heater, the
refrigerator, the two electric heaters, the toaster, the coffee maker, the blow
dryer, the curling iron, the phone chargers, the laptop, and all the lights all
at the same time, or the breaker blows.
Imagine that. 🤓
The pickup was still making
alarming noises. Adding transmission
fluid had not mollified it. So Larry began
taking off the front driveshaft to see if it was a U-joint making the racket.
I washed dishes in water that never got
really hot. I thought we were running out
of propane, which would also explain why the stove and oven were not working,
even though they worked just fine last year.
Larry needed a shower that night; I take mine in the morning. I would probably have nothing but ice water
to shower in.
Larry’s motto: Never fill anything up until you’re plumb out
and already in dire need of it.
He fiddled around
with something, and soon there was hot water, heated electrically after we
turned a number of other electrical items off.
But yes, we were out of propane.
I edited pictures,
then went over to the campground’s General Store and got a can of green beans,
a can of corn, and a gallon of water.
Larry seriously underestimates how much water we need each day. It’s at least a gallon.
Larry got the front driveshaft off... put
grease in the transfer case... and still the pickup made scary noises,
particularly when slowing down, when it’s still in gear. It didn’t do it when in neutral. Hopefully, it would get me and my quilts to
Hill City the next morning.
Friday morning, Larry
made a yummy breakfast of his supah-dupah pancakes. We were running low on syrup, so he mixed a
concoction of syrup, peanut butter, and peach jam for the topping. Mmmm, was it ever good.
We then took my
quilts – seven of them, plus three pillows, a fabric book, and a quilt bag – to
The Little White Church in Hill City and got them all entered in the quilt
show.
I got some shots of
wildflowers while Larry was getting propane for the camper. Sometimes a small, weedy field can yield quite
a few varieties of wildflowers, if you look. Most of them were very small, but up close,
they are so delicate and pretty.
We stopped on the
south side of Pactola Reservoir for a while, and walked around the visitor’s
center. This little White-crowned
sparrow was hopping about gathering up bugs in the grass. Look how the feathers atop his little head
stand up when he thinks we’re getting a mite too close for comfort. 😄
We drove to the
marina and checked on prices of boat rental.
A fishing boat costs $100 for four hours; a pontoon boat costs $150 for
two hours. That’s a little steep when one
has a pickup that’s ailing with an unknown ailment.
By the time we returned to the camper, Larry
had decided what the worsening noise was:
it was the clutch release bearing.
He found one in stock somewhere in Rapid City; he would get it the next
morning.
Too bad the campground isn’t a little closer
to a creek. Or a lake. Or a town.
Someplace where I could explore.
But no, I would pick a campground way out in the boonies. Because I like boonies, don’tcha know? At least the stove was working again. The first night, Larry started taking apart
the stove because he was sure we had propane; therefore the trouble must
lie in the stove itself, right?
Sorta like a friend of ours, back when
computers were new, taking apart his mouse when the computer locked up. And we laughed at him.
Later that afternoon, I walked over to the
little General Store and got a gallon of water – and succumbed to the siren
call of two Hershey’s candy bars. We
haven’t had Hershey’s for a long, long time. When I came back to the camper and handed one
to Larry as he was working on the truck, he beamed as if I’d just magically repaired
his truck for him. I made a new pot of
Peanut Brittle coffee (a surprisingly good flavor from Amana Coffees), and with
half a bar of Hershey’s chocolate, I was almost as good as new. Next, I took Larry a thermal mug full of
coffee. He’s a-gonna love me forever, he
is.
By a quarter ’til 9, it was thundering like
anything. Soon the rain started coming
down. I have always loved hearing
thunder in the mountains, with all the rolling echoes. Problem was, Larry had things partly apart
under his pickup, and there were wooden blocks holding up parts of the transfer
case, and they were atop his rubber mat, so he couldn’t roll it up and put it
away to keep it dry. He rolled it as far
as he could under the pickup, but if it rained very much, it would get all wet.
At least we had two new vent covers atop the
camper. Hopefully, the one remaining old
cover would stand up to a heavy rain.
For two or three hours that night, there was
bright lightning, crashing, rolling thunder, and pouring rain. It had stopped by sunup Saturday morning, and
Larry was glad to find that the things under his pickup had not gotten
wet. The vent covers all held, too.
Above is a three-wheeled Polaris Slingshot we
saw near Hill City.
Larry rode his motorcycle to Rapid City that
morning to get the clutch release bearing.
It was $56. The cost of having a
transmission place do the work would probably be over $1,000. Fortunately, Larry had the tools he needed to
do it himself.
I trekked over to the
little General Store again that afternoon to buy water, syrup (there were
leftover pancakes!), a couple of packets of rice meals, and two microwavable meals
– Hormel’s turkey and dressing, and chicken and mashed potatoes. The rice would go with the Carving Board
turkey we’d bought at Krull’s Market.
I made fresh Cinnamon
Cookie Dough coffee, and ate the other half of my Hershey’s bar. Larry, as Larry’s are wont to do, had eaten his
entire bar all at once the day before. I
therefore ate my second half on the sly.
🤫
By about 3:30 p.m., the
truck was back together. Larry started
it. After a bit of uncertainty, it
shifted. He thought it was fixed,
maybe.
“It wanted to go forward
before I actually got it in gear,” he told me.
“So I instead tried it in reverse, so as not to run into the next
camper.”
“Okay, that’s scary,” said
I, “’cuz I was just imagining right when you started it that it would rage
forward out of control – but I imagined it plowing into our camper and
running me down.”
He laughed. He laughed.
He reeked of grease, and
his face, arms, and clothes were covered with it. He didn’t think he smelled bad at all,
because he couldn’t smell it – though he can clearly see it. His sense of smell was damaged years ago when
he worked with cement dust, then auto paint, and various other toxic
odors. A bout with Covid three years ago
pretty much removed whatever sense of smell he had left.
A friend commented on one of my pictures of a windmill in western Nebraska,
wondering if it really was as short as it looked.
Yes, they use very short windmills out there. They have such strong winds so often, tall
windmills would get torn to pieces. Many
are placed down low in the gullies, and are only about 5 or 6 feet tall. Yet they bring up a constant flow of water for
the cattle and horses.
There’s Larry,
working away on greasy pickup stuff. See
the gear shifter there on the picnic table? (I put the bowl of red grapes out there in
case the mechanic needed a snack.)
Then some fellow
campers came along and invited him to go dirt-bike riding with them, and off he
went. They got rained and hailed on, but
dirt-bike riders don’t talk about stuff like that.
Wouldn’t you know, I’d
just started supper. Ah, well. We have a microwave. And I’d much rather he was riding with
someone than riding alone.
I fixed
chicken-flavored Knorr rice and put pieces of Carving Board oven-roasted turkey
in it. Mmmm, it was good. We had Reser’s Loaded Potato Salad, Kozy Shack
rice pudding, peaches, and Cran-Cherry juice to go with it.
Yesterday, we went to the Hill City Quilt Show, which was held in the
high school gym.
Hill City was first settled by miners in 1876, who referred to the area
as Hillyo. This was the second American
settlement in the Black Hills. Hill City
is the oldest city still in existence in Pennington County. A post office was constructed and opened on
November 26, 1877.
We walked through the Hill City Quilt Show,
including the vendors and the room with Textile Arts. We bought some soups and cornbread mix from a
family who had a big crockpot full of chili, chips with homemade dip, and
plates of cornbread and some yummy-looking scone-type something-or-others. They were offering samples, and Larry had
some; but I’d just eaten not long before, and didn’t care for any. (I always wish I had some, later. Knowing this contributed to my purchase of
same.)
Here I am trying out Handi Quilter’s 20”
Amara. It’s the newer, 2” bigger,
version of my Avanté. It’s a wonderful
machine. But I can be satisfied with
mine for a good while longer.
I will post pictures of the other
quilts at the Hill City Quilt Show in South Dakota as soon as I get them
edited. So many beautiful quilts! They put my six smaller quilts all together,
and put the pillows, book, and bag with the coordinating quilt. I liked the way they displayed them. Oh – look at how they hung the quilts. It’s just the way they do it at the Nebraska
State Fair. I did not
need to sew hanging sleeves to these quilts. 🙄
Keira’s quilt got a purty, 1st-place
ribbon!
Since it was still a few hours before we
could pick up my quilts, we went to the South Dakota State Railroad Museum. It was $6 for each of us, and it was just one
room with a caboose in it, railroad stuff scattered about the place, and a
large, working miniature train display.
I thought it was overpriced; but oh well, that’s not too awfully much, I
guess.
The best part was when we were in the
caboose, darkened so visitors could watch a playing video featuring the elderly
lady who had once received that very caboose as a gift from her father, who
worked on the railroad. We sat down on
one of the cushioned benches and were watching the video, when a towheaded
little boy clambered up the metal steps, peered in, decided he didn’t
particularly want to come in (probably on account of the darkness), and turned
around to examine the handbrake wheel on the rear platform.
The boy’s father mounted the steps, peered
in, and asked his son if he didn’t want to look inside the old caboose. The child said, “Okay,” and peeked in
again. He turned back to the handbrake.
“Come look around inside here,” coaxed his
young father. “This is the way old
cabooses used to look!”
The boy actually set foot on the doorsill
before about-facing this time. “Yep,” he
said congenially. His father glanced at
us, chuckled.
The boy turned toward his father, gave us a
quick look, then said in a no-nonsense tone, “Hang on!!!” – and with that, he
grabbed that handbrake and proceeded to turn it madly to and fro, with all his
young might and main.
Larry and I burst out laughing, but the
father, who’d paused to read one of the plaques on the wall, just smiled and
went his way. I don’t think it
registered what his boy had said, or what he then did. Ah, parents miss so much, because they don’t
tune in to their children!
However, we later saw the man lifting the boy so he could see things better, and heard him explaining things about the old train paraphernalia. The child was cute and funny, and better behaved than many kids these days. Children need attention and teaching and playing-with and discipline and love from their parents, and many get all too little.
In the gift shop, I got some Dionis blood
orange hand and body cream, and Larry got a set with a small tube of Dionis
pumpkin spice hand cream and a tube of pumpkin spice lip balm. The stuff is made with goat milk, and is the
nicest hand creams and lip balm we’ve ever used.
As we exited the railroad museum, a foggy
mist was coming up over the tops of the mountains and descending on the
town. It wasn’t long before the hills
couldn’t be seen at all.
Larry and I walked down Main Street, trying
to stay under the awnings, dodging into each quaint little gift shop we came
to, more to stay out of the misty rain than to actually buy anything.
We were thirsty and had a wee hunger pang, so
we popped into the Turtle Town Coffee & Fudge shop and had a mocha (Larry)
and a hazelnut latte (me), and shared a big caramel roll. (The outside shot was taken two days
earlier.)
In the next shot, we were trying on
hats in one of the clothing shops. We
were trying to be sorta quiet and sneaky, back behind the display racks. I took his picture, then he was going
to take mine – when all of a sudden, there was the owner of the store, a
pretty lady with long, thick, shiny black hair, offering to take a picture of both
of us wearing hats. (That T-shirt behind
me reads, “Do Not Pet the Fluffy Cows” [buffalo].)
We felt we had to buy something, after
that, haha. So Larry found a
zippered fleece vest – and then the lady told us that if we bought any other
item, that item would be half price, so we chose another vest in a different
color for Caleb, who will soon be having a birthday.
We got Eva this little wooden magnetic
train set in the railroad museum. I
would have gotten all the letters for her name, but there was no V.
And then
it was time to return to the high school gym and gather all my quilts.
Today dawned
bright and sunshiny, with not a cloud in the sky. Larry went dirt-bike riding while I conducted
ablutions, sipped chokecherry coffee, and ate breakfast. The chokecherry coffee smells good, but it
doesn’t taste as good as the Amana coffee I’ve been getting. Maybe it’s because I get whole beans from
Amana and grind them fresh for nearly every pot, while the chokecherry coffee
is pre-ground. It never tastes as fresh,
when it has already been ground.
When I was little, I loved the aroma of my father’s coffee. We called his coffee ‘Coffee Soup’ because of
all the stuff he put in it: an
itty-bitty pinch of baking soda, because he used distilled water and thought
it flavorless, enough honey to fill his teaspoon and juusssst baaaarely
start to drip, and exactly and precisely three dollops of half-and-half cream. All that, to put into a cup made with Kava
instant coffee, for pity’s sake! 
I loved
awaking to the smell of Daddy’s coffee after he’d been off on a trip somewhere,
knowing, “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!”
Larry
arrived safely back at the camper just as I finished getting presentable for
the day – with an upside video. We’ve
gotta get the poor man a GoPro.
We drove to Deadwood and Lead, partly to test the clutch on the
pickup. We traveled hither and yon on
the steep streets of the towns, admiring all the pretty houses.
Midway through the afternoon, we were both starved, having gotten
up early, so we had an early supper at a little family-run restaurant, Deadwood
Miners’ Hotel & Restaurant. I had a
cup of homemade hamburger-vegetable stew, half a BLT, apple juice, hot orange
pekoe tea – and then, because I always assume I can eat a Goliath’s share of
food when I’m hungry (despite the fact I just as regularly prove I cannot), I
ordered blueberry pie, too.
Larry ordered a big breakfast plate of easy-over eggs,
chicken-fried steak, hashbrowns, a biscuit, and coffee – and when I asked for a
piece of pie, he, as always, had to have one, too. He ordered Forest Berry pie (apples, rhubarb,
blackberries, etc.) à la mode, and then the waitress decided I needed à
la mode, too.
I ate the cup of stew, served with crackers, and was full. I managed the half BLT without too much
trouble... but then came the slices of pie, which the waitress warmed before
bringing them to us. She also brought
each of us a generous scoop of ice cream in a small bowl.
With difficulty, I ate my pie and most of the ice cream.
Larry, having the same problem, ate his, plus the ice cream I
couldn’t finish.
Somewhere in the middle of our meal, the waitress, a middle-aged
lady, came and asked, “May I ask you a question?” We smiled and nodded. “I’ve never asked a customer this before...
but are you two Christians?”
We both said yes.
“I thought so!” she said.
“You both have such nice smiles.”
“It’s an important part of our lives,” I told her.
“For sure it is!” she readily agreed before hurrying off to another
customer.
Other people have said similar things to us through the years –
something about our smiles making them think we are Christians. One even said, “You just glow with the love
of God!” That was a bit embarrassing, if
not slightly spooky.
Now, I know a number of people who are not Christians, and some are
dear friends of mine. I do wish
they were Christians! Still, these
people have what I would describe as ‘nice smiles’, too; they are good people,
kind and generous. So why do we get
singled out for this question? It’s got
to be more than a ‘nice smile’.
Of course it surely has something to do with the 16th
verse in Romans 8: “The Spirit itself
beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”
Carrying this Biblical fact to further logic: If we have the Spirit of God in our hearts,
as we do if we are born again, and another person has the Spirit of God in his
or her heart, then the Spirit certainly ‘beareth witness’ from one person to
another – a simple matter of like kinds recognizing like kinds. So I guess that the lady who recognized the
love of God in us didn’t say anything too very spooky after all, did she?
When we were done eating, we gave the nice lady a decent tip, paid
our bill, and waddled our way back out to our pickup.
We then drove through Central City, the west side of Lead, west
through Terry, and on to Terry Peak Ski Area.
We saw a large flock of turkeys, adults and young ones, alongside
the road.
The clutch release bearing Larry put in Saturday helped, but didn’t
fix all the problems. On our way ‘home’,
we took a short drive around Roubaix (pronounced ‘row bay’) Lake about 20 miles
from the campground – and that’s when the pickup started refusing to shift,
first into reverse, then into first gear.
Larry turned it off, got it in gear, and started it a couple of times,
and then, after one scary bit of grinding between 2nd to 3rd,
it got us home.
Now it’s clear there’s an input bearing (I speak of that which I know not) that’s bad, too, and will have to be replaced before we can come home. The place in Rapid City has the part, though not a seal that’s also needed; but they can have it by tomorrow morning. Larry will go there on his motorcycle in the morning.
This evening, I got a call from one of the nurses at Prairie
Meadows. Loren’s left eye is red, so
they want an eye doctor to look at it tomorrow.
I said yes, that would be good.
Then the nurse told me that he also has shingles! This nurse who is often the one to call me is
Mexican, and has such an accent I have trouble understanding her. So I’m not sure if the doctor who comes to
the home diagnosed him, or what. In
any case, I’m very thankful he’s where people watch out for him, are quick to
care for any ailments, and have the necessary specialists look at him if
necessary. As I still have this cold
that I got a week and a half ago, I probably wouldn’t go see him tomorrow, even
if I was at home.
Larry is working on the pickup out on the lane in front of the
camper. The campground owner told him he
could do it there where it’s more level, and he brought him some plywood so the new creeper will slide around easier.
There’s no place on the campground where there’s any paved area, “not
even in my utility barn!” said the man apologetically. He’s been good to us.
I’m sipping a cup of chokecherry coffee as I type. I don’t like it strong or bitter; it’s weak by
most people’s standards, I reckon. And
nope, it won’t keep me awake tonight.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
P.S.: If I’ve contradicted myself anywhere throughout this letter, it is not my fault, I can’t help it, I cannot be blamed, I refuse to take responsibility. It’s Larry’s fault, I’m sure, since he must’ve guessed at something first, and then told me the Facts O’ Ze Mattuh later.
Furthermore, it’s time for bed, and I’m going to live dangerously
and post this letter without rereading it.
Well, that’s my story, and I’m a-stickin’ to it!
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