I forgot that on the way into SD I stood on the border between WY & SD. Here's the pic for Manana. :)
We also stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. They redecorate the panels every summer. :) This year they had a Washington, DC panel. I took a picture with it. Also in Mitchell was Cabela's, a huge sporting goods store. Jesse had seen the catalogue, so we went in. It was pretty cool. They had a huge display of stuffed game and a tank of live bait. Jesse took a great picture of the mountain lion attacking the white-tailed deer.
We made it to Watertown at 7:30pm. The Days Inn gave us a smoking room, but we saw that there were non-smoking rooms and they changed for us. :) We then headed to Aunt Dorothy's house. We unloaded the vacuum cleaner, cooler, and cleaning supplies so she could sit in the car with us, and headed to dinner. We went to Clifford's Steak House. Yum. She told us all sorts of stories. We popped the champagne Uncle Paul gave us and Jesse got the cork trick on the 3rd try as I was telling him it doesn't work with champagne corks. :-p
Friday morning we met up with Dorothy at 10:30am, after a frustrating conversation with Dominion Power, the electric company in VA. It seems that because we are new customers, they need 2 forms of ID before they will turn on the power...the thing is one of my forms of ID was sent to the Soc Sec office and the other is in the pod storage unit. So, we may not have power when we move in. :(
Dorothy took us to the house grandpa grew up in, the house Frank (great-grandpa) grew up in, and the bowling alley where the first house Frank lived in used to be (pre-1907 at least). We went to the post office building as well. It is huge!! The building next door used to be a little store. Frank was adamantly opposed to drinking and one day "The Four" (grandpa and his buddies) went to buy a bottle. Grandpa saw them walk by and slipped in the back door of the store. He reprimanded adult Grandpa and made him leave!! That's the only story I know from Grandpa's youth before coming here. Dorothy said Grandpa was the outgoing one of his four brothers. That was surprising to me since I don't remember him talking much.
We went to the Mellette House, the home of the last territorial governor and first elected governor of the state of South Dakota. It was neat and one of the beds from the period in the house used to belong to our family. It was Frank's sister's and when she moved to North Dakota, they couldn't take the entire set, so they left the bed. When they came back, the bed was gone. Turns out it was taken to the Mellette House. Apparently there is a cemetery tour every year and they bring different people back to life and tell their stories. A few years back they resurrected Frank. The woman at the House is going to try to find a copy for me. I am so excited. It was so great to find all this history!
After the Mellette House we went to see Aggie Johnson. She turned 100 this past February and she was one of Grandpa's best friends. She and her husband Roy were a few years older, but they were really good friends. I took videos of our time with her and will compile all the stories later. Apparently, Grandpa made her go with them to pick out the wedding flowers!! Grandma wasn't too happy, though Aggie said she made a beautiful bride. The Johnsons stood up for Grandma and Grandpa at their wedding. Aggie said when Grandpa went into the nursing home, he called her and asked, "Can't you get me out?" She said he was quite the talker depending on who his company was.
After we left Aggie, we went to the cemetery to see Frank and Susan (Frances)'s graves. We also saw Grandpa's little brother's grave. He was born in 1923 and died in 1925. His name was Donald. Then we went to dinner at Lunker's on Lake Kampeska. It was really nice, but it was loud and hard to hear Dorothy's stories.
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