On the Road Again in 2010: The Dakotas

We stayed in Big Stone City, SD, at a very quiet RV park for a few days. The city hall of Big Stone City established before the YT era still looks good.

We drove off Hwy 12 to the small town of Marvin, SD.

Decided to skip this donut shop even though we love to try new bakeries.

Here's what we found when we passed through Marvin and headed back to the highway. Not fancy but a sign that the YT did indeed go through Marvin.

Here's the first sign on Hwy 12 that formally announced the YT in SD.

We are welcomed to Ipswich, SD, by a sign commemorating the YT. Ipswich was the home of Trail founder, J. W. Parmley. Parmley was the instigator of the idea of a good road from coast to coast plus a local business man and politician.

A cafe and tavern highlight the YT.

The mural depicted many important events of the Ipswich community.

Another yellow rock with the standard black arrow helping to find the way on the Trail.

The Ipswich Arch spanned the YT for years eventually becoming too narrow for modern traffic to use. The Arch was eventually moved to this park alongside the road where travelers can park and walk under it.

The Arch was constructed originally as a memorial to honor the veterans of World War I and then rebuilt over the YT highway.

The community has honored the YT history by installing the plaque on the Arch. We all wanted to have our picture taken by this special memorial to the YT Trail and the veterans of Ipswich.

Here's Milo.

Here's Suzy and Pete.

Here's Bill and Teri.

We visited the home of J. W. Parmley that now houses a very good museum.

The fireplaces in this house were very unique in design. They also were constructed using souveniers that Parmley had collected from around the world. The most noticable item in this fireplace are the large shells but there were also stones from everywhere he traveled.

This house was very modern and large for the time it was built in the 1920's. The crocheted tablecloth was very beautiful.

The kitchen had a great display of utensils, dishes, etc.

Each of the three upstairs bedrooms had large walk-in closets. There has been a lot of clothing donated to display in the museum.

After the house museum, we visited a museum in Parmley's Land and Abstract office.

This stencil that was no doubtedly used to mark the YT in many areas was one of our favorite displays.

This spare tire cover advertised the idea of the YT Trail. It was in very good condition.

This picture is of fireplace in the business office. The flyer was most likely used when Parmley ran for Congress . The family pictures are his wife and one of his children. The brick (another souvenier) with the number "38" was a marker from the 38th parallel line that divided North and South Korea.

The old Post Office window by Bill was brought from a neighboring community, Mina.

This is what Post Office employees look like at the end of a day.

There was some more information about the YT Trail at the museum.

This brick building was the M. T. Beebe Memorial Library where there is information about the YT.

This plaque tells the story of the below prayer rock.

It must have been hard work to etch the hands in the rock.

These homes were on a peninsula of land but it looks like there was more water than usual.

We have seen lots of buildings with lightning rods on them. They do seem to get a lot more severe thunderstorms than we have at home.

We have seen a lot of the grain elevators in SD. This was a very large operation.

This water tower was located in Bowdle, SD. It is supposedly the tallest water tower in SD. The tower wasn't even meant to go to Bowdle. It was accidently delivered by train to Bowdle instead of its intended destination of Timber Lake. The tower was erected and still stands tall.

A large, lonely old house standing quietly on a knoll along the road.

We crossed the Missouri River several times as we drove across SD.

A pretty view of Oahe Lake on the Missouri River.

We hadn't seen mesas since Arizona so it was fun to see these flat top mountains.

Here's our traveling partners, Pete, Suzy, and Milo stopped for lunch on our last day of travel together. If you look really close, you can see Pete in the driver's seat of their motorhome. Pete, Suzy and Milo left us in Lemmon, SD, and headed for Missoula, MT, where they will care for their two granddaughters, Mia and Brityn. Their son, Axel, and his wife, Meghan, will celebrate their 10th anniversary in Mexico. We know Pete and Suzy will enjoy their time with the grandbabies. It will be different traveling alone. We have seen some amazing sights together but we will keep in touch with them about our travels.

After settling into a beautiful state park in the Shadehill Recreation Area, we began looking for anything about YT. We found this marker in downtown Lemmon. It may not be an original but it was good to see the Trail being recognized and remembered.

We also found the most fascinating park. It was created and funded by Ole Quammen. It is the world's largest petrified wood park. All the petrified wood was gathered from a 25 mile radius around Lemmon. The farmers wanted the rocks removed so they could farm. People needed work having just suffered the great depression. Mr. Quammen solved two problems at once - removing the rocks and paying the workers to construct the park.

The rocks were used to build many different structures. Here's an arch.

The building seen here is actually the back of a very good historical museum in the petrified park.

Here are some huge petrified rocks and as you can see, there were lots of them at this park.

The surprise find at this park was the two pillars (the columns with caps on them) where the YT passed through Lemmon.

The familiar YT arrow was in place to point you to the pillars.

Another surprise were several displays about the YT inside the museum.

Lemmon can claim to be the birth place of the YT because it is where the first meeting for the YT association took place. Ipswich can claim YT fame because J.W. Parmley, creator of the YT idea, lived there.

This was a really great collection of crockery. Crocks were used for making pickles and sauerkraut. There are probably many, many more uses for these crocks.

It is fascinating to think of the creation of glasses for correction of vision and that even very long ago people worn correction lenses. This equipment here is similar but not what you would see now.

A nice looking Post Office in Lemmon.

Our day of poking around took us to ND but you only need to cross the railroad tracks from Lemmon, SD, to be in North Lemmon, ND.

We drove about 17 miles to Haynes, ND, to see this marker for the YT. The road leading to Haynes was a rough, gravel road that could have existed in the YT days but it was worth the drive to see this marker.

This marker is supposedly an original "hoodoo" for the YT. The wear and tear on this marker leads us to believe it was an original marker.

These clouds were surreal. It felt like they were just drifting softly around the sky.

We have seen many pheasants but this was the first one to hang around long enough to get a picture. There is actually a hen sneaking into the grass just to the right of this rooster. There was another rooster across the road from this pair.

Some very old grain elevators.

Another old house. Someone probably homesteaded this land in the late 1800's or early 1900's and moved on when they were done farming or something better was calling them to leave the area.

Farming is huge in the Dakotas.

There are wind farms, too.

When we left Lemmon to travel to Miles City, MT, we went through some of the badlands of the Dakotas. The rock formations are so interesting I take a gazillion pictures. Here are only a few of them.