South Dakota-Wednesday

Wednesday, August 25

This was the Big, Exciting Day. The raison d'etre. Bison Day.

We woke up early and dressed for the day, got in the truck, and rode out 45 minutes to meet Lane at the ranch. We shifted from Allie's truck to Lane's and rode out about five minutes across the rode to the bison herd. It... was...awesome. The bison know that there's food on the truck so they ran along side, grunting the whole time. We got to feed them "cakes" (tastes like wheat, see left) from our hands. Lane didn't recommend patting the bison but I did it anyway. Their head hair is coarse and sproingy. Very fun. By the way, the animals are huge. It's one thing to know that they're huge. It's another to sit in your car and watch them walk down the road at a level higher than your car. It's a whole other world to be in the bed of a truck petting the darn things. They're huge.

We then went over to the elk compound and got to see the herd of four bucks and 8(?) ladies. They weren't as comfortable coming to eat cakes and one bull in particular did NOT like Lane. He tried to get through the fence to poke holes in Lane's body.

Then came shooting. The family has a shooting range made up of a bunch of old jars and bottles that you can line up on top of a no-longer-in-use washer and drier and then you shoot. I had never shot a gun before. At least, not that I can remember. That day, I got to shoot a .22 rifle, a.17 rifle with a scope, a.30-30 (lots of kick), 9mm sig sauer, and a .357 which is almost just like a Dirty Harry gun. Way fun.

Before we went in for dinner (read here, a very large lunch), we went out to

the south fields to shoot some prairie dogs. It took awhile for us to find them but finally both Allie and I shot some suckers. I think I missed on the first one (and there was some debate on whether it was a prairie dog or a rock) but got the second one I aimed at. I felt horribly guilty and swore never to kill again (that last about two weeks until I went out on the fishing boat) but I had to put up a good front because Lane had taken all this time out of his day to take these three ladies out and I didn't want to cry, especially since he had asked, like, three times if we really wanted to do this.

Dinner helped. Food is a balm to any soul. It's not supposed to be, but c'mon, if it helps, it helps. And this.... this was a spread. Potatoes with gravy, spinach (out of a neighbor's garden) creamed corn, beets, a veggie platter, homemade bread, chicken, honey from the family's bee hives and ice cream for dessert.

Bread Recipe

5-6 cups of whole wheat (yeah, she had her own mill in the kitchen so it was fresh, fresh wheat)

4 cups of water (or just over that amount)

2/3 cup sugar

gluten

yeast

Put everything in mixer and add white flour slowly.

She then took us out to the Stoneville School. The school had only recently closed after being around for almost,

if not over, a hundred years. Community members had decided to come together and make it a museum with each of the classrooms representing a different time period in the school. Some of the locals had old desks. One teacher's daughter had her desk from the school. It's an amazing effort and hopefully will be worth the time.

South Dakota-Tuesday

Tuesday, August 24

Allie and I woke up and walked down to Common Grounds, a coffee shop, to get some drinks.

On the way out to the ranch, we first stopped off at Aunt Teresa’s house so Allie could visit. What a nice lady! She had some cobbler for us to eat and their house was beautiful. It was built to be the fajther’s workshop, but when he got sick, the townsfolk got together and helped them to make it into a home. The stairs are a little dizzying but it seems like a fun place to live.

We also stopped at Keystone, an equivalent gateway community to Gardiner, only it's outside Mount Rushmore, and grabbed some ice cream and Mexican. The lunch was okay but not expensive so it all equaled out. We also ran through a really neat antique store and I found a butter cutter so that I can make real pie crusts now. This is also the closest I got to finding a mechanical bull. Sigh. At least there is always Great Falls

On the way out to the ranch, we played I Spy which was surprisingly difficult at times considering there was really only the open road ahead of us.

We finally got to Allie’s family ranch which was incredibly beautiful. The house was a kit from Sears that the family had lived in. With only two true bedrooms and one bath, I don’t know how they survived with the many, many children (8?) that they had.

We hopped in the truck and rode around. Emily and I sat in the back of the truck with the pupsters and just enjoyed the scenery.

Allie took us down to her favorite tree and we hung out until dusk.

We went for a moonlit walk and then went to bed.

South Dakota-Monday

We went to the Fair. It was awesome.

There were rides, animals, games and just tons of things to do and see: sheep shearing, animal petting, prize animal lookin', people watchin'. Emily, Allie and I got there early in the afternoon, before the crowd gathered. It looked like pretty normal people for the most part. At least before dusk fell. This was the winning Sheep Buster (sheep busting is like a junior rodeo, basically kids riding on sheep until they fall off). The picture on the left is Ben on "Fluffy" who won with a score of 78. This little guy knew he was a star. As soon as we was off that sheep, he had his fingers thrust up in the air walking around letting everyone know that he was number one!We got to watch one of my personal favorites, pig racing. I'm

sure a lot of people would decry this sport as being inhumane but the pigs sure look like they're having fun.

First, there was a practice run so we could see the pigs strut their stuff. Everyone in the crowd got a ticket and then could put one half of it into the bucket whose color corresponded with that of the pig we though might win. Then the pigs were off again. The pig in the black jersey was always put in backwards. At the end, the pigs get a little treat and the barker pulled a ticket from the bucket and the matching half got some little trinket or prize.

The pig wrestling (or "wraissling" as I tried to make everyone say but using it as much as possible) was the event we had come for. There were four teams (two mens, two womens) and everyone was dressed up in theme costumes. Just before the announcer explained the rules, the pigs were covered in baking oil.

The object of the game was to get the 100-150 lb. pig into the bucket. All four team members must have a hand on the pig as it goes in. They can't grab the tail or the ears of the pig, it's a 10 second penalty. The pig must go in feet first, an upside-down pig was an automatic disqualification. There is a maximum of 1:20 seconds to get the pig out of the tub and put it back in the pig pen. The teams must start in four corners of the arena and have at least one hand on the rail. It was hilarious, loud and just down-right fun. I had tried to talk Emily, Allie and Allie's cousin into making up a team but they were adamant about not going in. The winning times were:

Minute Man Archery club 14.21

Children's Miracle Network 50.81

Cedar Canyon Bible Camp 1:17.06

Children's Miracle Network 1:17.22

We then rode the swing ride and after hanging out at the German polka tent for awhile, we went back to Allie’s cousins house and fell promptly asleep

My work is rarely dull

Think about things one might do in a bathroom. Then ponder which of those things one should never, never do in a urinal. Well, we had a little gift that one of our researchers found. Actually, two little gifts, one for each of our public floors.
People, if you're going to do things like this, make sure that there are no cameras in the building. Seriously.

September books

24. Slower month. Better "quality" of book though. If you consider romance novels to be "lesser." Which I don't. They're usually just shorter. And less densely packed. And more enjoyable.

Antiques Roadshow

In July, Emily and I went to the Antiques Roadshow in Billings. It was pretty awesome. We got to the building, gave them our tickets and got in the first line. It moved pretty fast and we were in line for about an hour-hour and a half. It was really fun to see all of the random stuff that people had brought in. We were allowed to take two items each. I took the statue my uncle had given me and a violin Carrie had gotten from her grandmother. Emily brought a mortar and pestle that belonged to a work friend and a calendar that Christie had found in the wall of her apartment when she was remodeling.
Once you get into the area where they do all the pricing, you can't have a phone or camera so I don't have any pics but the people standing in line were enough. I would definitely recommend that anyone going to get tickets go as early as possible since those people got in and got out... fast. We got in around 11 and didn't get done until 3. Yes, some of that was dawdling but no more than a half hour or so. After you get to the main area, you get two tickets, one for each of your items. Mine were Metalwork & Sculpture and Musical Instruments. Emily got Folk Art and something else we determined was more or less Miscellaneous. It was the longest line, by far.
We started with my little statue. The guy was very, very apologetic while telling me that my troubadour is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. I wasn't expecting much so I wasn't very crushed. The guy seemed a little taken aback that I wasn't more crushed. Um, okay.
Our next stop was the Folk Art. Oh yeah baby, we got the married twin (Okay, I know that's really bad not to know his name, but I don't watch enough to actually know names). This woman with a totally sycophantic gleam in her eye tried to cut in front of us but was rebuffed 'cause she didn't have an item. The mortar and pestle ended up being the highest item of our day. The guy and the other woman at the table were pretty impressed. I'm still convinced we might have been on TV if Emily had lied and said it was her great-grandmother's. Oh well.
The next stop was musical instruments. The first table where we didn't get to walk right up. The guy there got excited when he saw the case. It's a fancy, shmancy thing but the violin... turned out not to be what he had expected. He said that it was "only" worth something like $250-300. I say, meh, for a $10 garage-sale buy, that's pretty awesome.
The last stop was Collectibles-or-whatever-that-section-was-called. There were a lot of people in line. We ended up waiting for over and hour. The guy that looked at Christie's calendar was actually very intrigued. It ended up that similar lithographs were selling for about $50-88. This was an unusual litho because the calendar, all twelve tear-off months were still there.
We got to do the thing at the end where you talk to folks but didn't make it on TV. Well, not on purpose. If you see a green skirt covering a wide butt and a white shirt with criss-cross in the back, that's me.

Episode 1 -- April 11 at 7pm
Episode 2 -- April 18 at 7pm
Episode 3 -- April 25 at 7pm