Goodbye South Dakota, Hello Ontario!

This week found us driving in North Dakota reminiscing about the past 6 weeks in the Black Hills; about everything we got done, about all our visitors and talking about what is yet to come.  We have so many goals of things to do in South Dakota it is mindboggling; bike the entire Michelson Trail, hit every brewery in the hills, hike all 9 trails in Custer State Park….. Not to mention the personal work; get our build site ready for concrete, fencing projects...... So many things so little time…..

But that is part of what continues to drive us; reaching for and achieving goals. This past week we accomplished a couple of these goals and made steps towards others. Kevin and Cheryl arrived for a few days and we went to work on our build site by putting in concrete forms, putting in water lines, electrical conduit, frost foam and rebar. We are officially ready for concrete!

We also knocked off one more brewery by visiting the newly opened Firehouse Brewery in Hill City. This makes 5 out of 10.  Barb had a flight of 6 brews (her favorite being the Smoke Jumper), Cheryl did a wine tasting that included 5 wines (she bought a bottle of Mythical Beast) while Kevin and I had a pint of Bell Tower Lager, their lightest beer. Since Cheryl had never been to Prairie Berry Winery we hit that as well where she bought a bottle of Red Ass Rhubarb.

Cheryl and Barb at Firehouse Brewery

The night before we headed north Rudee and Phil invited us to another play at the Black Hills Playhouse. This time we saw “Oklahoma!” We are not really play people so for us to go to two plays in a month is quite a feat and both Barb and I agreed that this was the best one we have ever been to and the Spelling Bee we saw last month was the 2^nd best play we have been to. Never mind the fact these are the only two we have ever seen.

One last check of thee trail cameras showed that the fawns are finally starting to show themselves!

Follow the leader.....

This one looks very young!

Do I have something in my teeth?

Jumping for joy!

For this road trip our first destination was “The Farm” in North Dakota where we planned a one night stay to see Bob and DeAnne for the night. We try to take different routes whenever we travel to the farm, this time we came across “The Enchanted Highway” so we took a little detour to see what it was all about. It is a 32 mile stretch of highway where they constructed scrap metal sculptures to entice travelers in the area. 

Besides seeing Bob and DeAnne, we were especially looking forward to this trip as it was the first time we have been here in the summer.

Barb was a little camera shy

All of our other trips were in the spring before the crops were up and in the fall when the crops are harvested. This is the first time we have been here when the crops were in their full growing cycle. One of the main things we were looking forward to was seeing the Canola in full bloom and we were not disappointed! 

The field with the blue on the right is flax

The cows kept staring at the drone

Soon after arriving and saying hello Bob and I hit the field to take a look at a gopher problem he has in one of  his fields. Since I am the self-proclaimed rodent expert of the Dakota’s, I wanted to see what he was dealing with. I have seen the damage prairie dogs could do but we have no financial impact. These gophers on the other hand can devastate a field and take money out of their pockets.

The bare spots in the photo below show some of the damage caused by the gophers....

Each of those bare spots a gopher damage

A close up of one of the area

Then there are the geese.... this is what they do to a pea field.

All that brown were peas until the geese moved in and ate them to the ground. So what do you do? You can't shoot them this time of year, you cannot be there constantly to shoo them away, instead he put up a coyote decoy which so far is working like a charm!

Farmer Bob and his coyote decoy

The next day we drove the area so I could get a look at all the fields we planted in May. It was really cool to see where they were just 6 weeks later.

Field Peas

Chick Peas

Flax

Barley

Wheat

We left the next day and started our 16 hour journey northeast towards our ultimate goal; Pasha Lake Cabins. We chose a route that took us east just below the Canadian border. As we passed through Rugby we saw a monument saying that we were in the geological center of North America!

We eventually crossed into Minnesota and made our way to Baudette where we crossed the border into Ontario. This is where we met Willie Walleye, a 40' statue just before we crossed the border.

As soon as we crossed the border Barb kept chiding me that she was going to catch the biggest walleye and rub it in my face. She kept doing this annoying “walleye dance” saying “I am going to catch the biggest fish, I am going to catch the biggest fish” To be honest she looked more like a beached manatee than a walleye. She went on so much I don’t know if I should pull over and roll her into the water or roll her in some bread crumbs and into a frying pan!

After 10 hours of driving that day, we spent the night in a boat launch at a remote lake on highway 11 about 1 ½ hours east of Thunder Bay. 

Four hours later we were pulling into Pasha Lake Cabins and set up our home for the next 5 weeks! 

Not a bad view for the next few weeks!

So who will catch the biggest fish? Well, you will just have to stay tuned to find out! 

Wildflowers of the Black Hills

One of our regular visitors to the birdbath 

Being stationary for so long with so many ongoing projects there is a fine balance between working too much and getting out and exploring the hills. With only two weeks left before we head to Ontario and all of our visitors gone we found ourselves in “all work and no play” mode.

Beautiful Rainbow after a rainstorm

What have we been doing? The two biggest were getting the underground plumbing done and building an outdoor fire pit area. Along with that we have been working on fencing over at Kevin’s and working on prairie dogs over at our neighbors.  

Having never done plumbing before I was a little perplexed on exactly where to start. Luckily, our neighbor to the west is a licensed plumber and was nice enough to come over and help me lay it out as well as inspect it before I covered it up. Richard and I had gotten a third to a half of it done while he was here so I just whittled away at the remaining over the last week and soon I was done!

While I was working on that Barb has been working on a project of her own. Farmer Bob was nice enough to bring us a tractor rim for a fire pit so Barb has been busy creating a patio so we can sit around it. 

I will take another picture when it is all done. 

It is very time consuming as she has to wander around and find the perfect flat rocks and then bring them back and piece them together like a big jigsaw puzzle. She is about ½ way done and it is really looking great!

With all this work to do we have to remind ourselves to stop, look around and “smell the roses”. That thought inspired me to walk through the property and take pictures of all the different wild flowers and other flowering plants that we run across on our daily excursions.

I have no idea what most of them are. Farmer Bob told me a few but I am afraid my retention is not very good so if you recognize any of them, let us know what they are. I have numbers each of them to make it easier. 

#1. I am told these are Echinacea 

#2. No idea what this yellow flower is

#3. Wild Sunflower

#4. No idea

#5. Some kind of thistle 

#6. Looks like a dandelion but the size of a baseball

#7. Wild Rose with some other flower next to it

#8. No idea what this purple flower is...

#9. Yucca blooms

#10. Prickly Pear bloom

#11. Once again, no idea, it is about the size of a dime

All of these flower pictures were taken on our property so as you can see there is quite the variety. We found two other things over the past week as well. About 1/3 of the prairie dog holes in the area have black widows guarding them which makes it a little precarious when treating them. The other even more disturbing creature found this week was a rattle snake. Barb is now looking into what we need to do to get the dogs a preventative shot in case they ever run across one. 

Speaking of the dogs, I have gotten a couple of comments that they are not in the blog enough so here they are. They have two new favorite places to hid from the heat. Under the rig and in their pool....

We did have a couple of get-togethers; one at the Bumpin Buffalo with Harry and Vicky as well as Jim and Brenda and another when Quartzsite friends Les and Sue stopped by for a visit. They are working at Crazy Horse for the summer so we hope to get together with them again sometime soon!

The gang at Bumpin Buffalo

Jim and Brenda along with Sue and Les

Oh! We also had a visitor the other day! This guy came right up to us while the Jordan's were over. As a matter of fact, he walked within a foot of Jim Jordan!

Our new friend

We leave for Ontario in less than two weeks, I am guessing the work is not going to slow down as there is a lot we want to get done before we head north for a month!