Sunday, July 15, 2007

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

On the way to Sioux Falls, we drove through the town of LeMars, Iowa, which bills itself as the Ice Cream Capital of the World. It is the home of "Blue Bunny" ice cream and they make more ice cream there in one day than anywhere else in the world. It takes 75,000 cows to produce the milk needed on a DAILY basis. Wow. That's a lot of cows.

We arrived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Thursday afternoon. We had a list of things we needed to do and so we got set up at the fairgrounds and proceeded to run into town and started checking things off the list. We had to go to the Treasurer's office to change some boat trailer titles to SD. We got in there and there was a pretty good line, so we were prepared to wait. They had 12 windows open and we were surprised when a lady came out of the office and called to us. In addition to those 12 windows, they had several more people in the office and we got right in. It took less than 20 minutes to get Phaeton Place's plates and the Sport Trac's plates renewed and get new titles applied for on the boat trailers and their plates as well. Then we were off to Alternative Resources to get our mail and to the insurance agent in the same building to pay some insurance. We didn't have to go to SD to do any of these things, but since we were there, we were able to take care of them.

We met at 9 am Friday morning with our attorney who is adding some amendments to our wills and trust to make them legal in South Dakota. We are using the Thompson Law firm and they are very good. Very personable and we feel we are going to enjoy our association with them.
There is a Honda Gold Wing rally in Sioux Falls over the weekend, so the fairgrounds was filling up with attendees and vendors who were in town for the festivities. We drove on down to the Falls Park, where the rally is being held and strolled around the grounds. When we were last here, we visited the park at night, so it looks a lot different during the day.








We left Sioux Falls Saturday morning and drove to the Jackpot Indian Casino in Morton, Minnesota. We met the neighbors who are "Teton" people. Got a beautiful Teton 5er and were very friendly. We were chatting after supper before we went over to the casino. Our dogs were outside and Neal had a seizure. Because of that, we had to wait a couple hours until we knew the danger of his having another seizure had passed. Neal was a real trooper and we managed to keep it down to just the one. We left about 2 hours later and went to the casino. The slots here are really tight. We had gotten some free money for camping in their park and I got $5 because it is my birthday month. We both spent our free money and $5 more a piece. In less than an hour we had lost that. We don't mind losing, but I at least like to be entertained. This didn't even qualify for that. So we left.
I stayed up till midnight keeping tabs on Neal, but he was fine. Today we went back and tried again. We had free money again. . . good thing they do this, because we wouldn't be playing here otherwise. Once we lost that, we were out the door.
We went to the town of Redwood Falls and visited the Ramsey Falls in the city park. Very nice park and the falls were quite impressive in spite of the dry summer they are having. We also visited their county historical society which is housed in a building that was built as the "poor" farm. It is an impressive building and they have the various rooms set up to display period items.

Later when we returned back to the reservation, we visit the Lower Sioux Agency Historic Site. It gives a history of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. It is a small museum, but well planned and gives a good description of life in the area during that time.

Tomorrow we are leaving here and traveling about 90 miles to the Mystic Lake Casino area south of Minneapolis, where we are going to do some shopping and sightseeing.

Till next time. . .

Dale

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