INSIDE

The inside of the Stave Church Demanded our full attention and garnered our total respect.

The woodwork and fit was worthy of the finest cabinet makers in the land !

The tall ceiling and beams could absolutely capture one's focus until you would get a "crick" in your neck from looking up at such a angle.



This small door located behind the pulpit or speakers location, prompted several questions from the tour group. Some had thought that it might be a "confessional window".

However as it turns out it was so that the armed guards outside could hear the speaker also. Yep suspicions confirmed ! They were a warrior society. Arms were left outside and guarded by a armed lookout contingent.

CHURCH

This beautiful Stave Church repleca is also located at the Moorehead Minnesota Museum.

The tour is guided and the excelent interpreters give great explanations of this beautiful church.

The shingles are shaped to look like fish scales. But I thought that they looked more like armor on an ancient warrior. The Dragons on the roof peaks seemed to add to that impression. To me this seemed to be the Church of an ancient warrior society.

A wedding was taking place just after we took the tour and we got to see all of the Wedding party as they arrived. The bride wore an ancient looking gown with a corset built into the bodice.

As we stood aside for the Bride and her maids to pass by, we thought, "I wonder if maybe her great, great grandmother was married in that gown"

We had plans to view several other venues in the Fargo/Moorehead area on this day. However the displays at the first stop were so captivating that we spent all of our time there ! If you get a chance to see this, ya' just gotta' !!

Viking

On a day off we went to a museum in Moorehead Minnesota to see a Viling Ship repleca that had sailed from Duluth Minnesota to Norway.

By the time it had reached the open Atlantic Ocean it had already sailed nearly fifteen hundred miles.

The voyage to Norway took a little over thirty days. The video presentation that accompanies the guided tour is really super !

VALLEYS

Now, there are Valleys, and, there are Valleys. For example, in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, I have harvested a Deer by shooting from one side of a Valley to another. Yet, here in the Red River of the North's Valley, you can't even see from one side to the other. As the sugar beets are Harvested, the fields are disked back under to be ready for the next crops. The Tractors and disks are very large in order to cover more ground. And, there is ever so much ground to cover. He, he, in the Ouachita Mountains, we ain't got no Valleys that is wide enough to pull one of these set ups down !! Here is a look at one such Tractor and it's multi gang hydraulic lifted disks: Here is a video look at the Goliath rig:

HILLSBORO

Upon arriving at Hillsboro North Dakota for the Sugar Beet Harvest, we checked into the Hillsboro RV Park, a place we are very comfortable with. Here is a look: In this last photo, we were on our way, in the pre dawn, to a training site for the harvest. Here is a quick, from behind the wheel, video tour of the campground:

A brief History pasted from an internet source:
The area along the Goose River that is now Hillsboro was first settled by German and Norwegian settlers around 1870. In 1880, the present day site of Hillsboro was founded under the name "Comstock". Local folklore tells of the residents of nearby Caledonia, North Dakota turning away a shabby surveyor because of his appearance. This man was then offered hospitality by residents in the tiny settlement of Comstock. The man turned out to be railroad baron James J. Hill.
Hill was so impressed by the kindness showed to him by the residents of this small community that he decided to place his Great Northern Railroad there instead of in Caledonia. The name of Comstock was changed to "Hill City" in September 1880 in honor of Mr. Hill. The city was then renamed "Hillsboro" in 1881 after it was discovered that there was already a "Hill City" in South Dakota.
In 2006, Hillsboro celebrated its 125th birthday.

GARAGE

Things mechanical were pretty much simply made, and heavy duty. Hydraulic vehicle lifts hadn't made it here yet, but just look at the craftsmanship in the garage's rock work.

The garage's hand made trusses span a large area and are hand laminated, each nearly identical. They have held up the roof well for many years, preserving this grand old garage. Craftsmanship made the difference.
Across the road is another well preserved building of the era.

A bit further down Route 66 is this grand old structure. Maybe somehow it will be restored.




At the end of the sixty miles of our self guided tour and prowling about old buildings stands this nifty station from the past:

PARITA

They said that the price of gasoline had went up some since their last delivery !

Owner and local historian GARY had some stories to tell, we listened. Free coffee and a great visit, now that's a mighty powerful thing out on the mother road.

Be sure to use a search engine to find out more about "Route 66, Gay Parita", You'll see Gary's photo there, sitting behind his desk, just as he was during our local history tour !

CASKETORIUM

This very cool old skeleton of a building stands quietly and patiently beside Mo Hwy. 266, formerly US Hwy. 66.
It has seen several reincarnations and served in several capacities, one of which was the manufacture of Burial Caskets.

Much of old route 66 is in partial decay, but the storys are there. Finding them is the fun part.
Sometimes it takes a bit of leg work. Here is a look from the inside of the old casket factory:

This old general store is now a church:

PASTURIZED

When something has been "turned out to pasture", does that mean that it has been pastureized ?



This old roadside service station is all gone except for the Texaco sign, gas pumps and the price board. Man oh man, has it ever been a long time since we gave .68 cents for a gallon of gas !

SPRINGFIELD

It's more than Bart Simpson and the Atomic Plant. For us it is about a really cool section of old ROUTE 66. Yes that's right, the mother road where people go to get their kicks. Historic route sixty six West from downtown Springfield to Carthage Missouri is a bit under sixty miles. Old stuff galore and most of it can be seen for free ! We no longer have our old four door hard top to cruise in, but, cruise the mother road we did, in our Jeep ! Talk about cruising, he, he, we came across this right in the old downtown area:

Then there is that other thing, GEOCACHING. There is a place right in the midst of old downtown Springfield, that has a quick park and grab cache. A micro with a story behind it, hidden almost in the back yard of the Missouri State Police Crime Labatory. Here is where we parked to retreive the cache and sign the log, that brick building in the back ground is the crime lab:

The cache owner tells the story about this location and it's signifigance in Missouri Law Enforcement History. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Parker were the perpetrators in this startling turn of events for a Police Officer that had not been on the job for very long. Here is a link to the geocache page and other links of intrest pertaning to this story. I'll bet you like it as well as we did ! Actual newspaper clippings accent the authenticity of this tale !The name of the cache is "BONNIE AND CLYDE WERE HERE 1-26-33
https://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=fc1b5c42-3631-4391-9b4a-d0bf5113f6f8

SLICK

The "HUEY" Heilocopter played such an important part of my life that I just can't resist taking a look every time I get near one of them. Then I want to touch them and remember. I couldn't touch this one, but memories came flooding back none the less.

SMART

With less than one day to go before we depart for North Dakota and the Sugar Beet Harvest, we made a startling discovery. Our small dinette cushions were soaking wet ! It took awhile to unravel the mystery and figure out just who the culprit was in this unfortunate turn of events.
When I went in the Ollie for the first time this morning I noted water dripping from the cushions. The bed cushions were damp but dried quickly. Just like in the old Sunday newspaper cartoon series POGO, we has finaly found the enemy ( culprit ) and he is us !
Here is what happened.
As I closed up the Oliver the evening before, I turned off all power to the fantastic fan. That meant that when a hard blowing rain came up in the night the rain sensor couldn't close the lid. The max aire must have turned most of the rain away, but it was such a hard blowing storm that the cusions were soaked.
So, today in addition to getting ready to leave, we are also drying things out.
He, he, leave it to an ol' redneck boy to find a way to "dumb down" smart technology !

FIRST

Here was our first look at our home for the Summer of 2009 as hosts of the Trujillo Meadows Campground at ten thousand feet plus elevation in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. So, what do you think ? Would you have done it ? We wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world ! He, he, by the way that's the top of the picnic table just barely showing above the snow drift, we didn't find the fire ring till' after we had been on the site for a couple of weeks and the snow had began to melt off faster !

SPOILED

The internet has spoiled us ! It is so easy to do a vehicle registration on line in Arkansas, that when we have kept a vehicle for so long that the State sends us a mandatory "come in and re register" letter, we grumble, and . . . grumble. For example we renewed our 08' Jeep Wrangler on line earlier this Summer and the decals for the plate caught up with us at our Summer Job of camphosting out in Colorado.
But then the " mandatory tag replacement" letter arrived. We just had to come in to the Revenue Office to get a new license plate. Dunno' why, this one is still perfectly good, it just has a lot of renewal decals on it.

I usually leave the left edge of the previous year's decal showing so it is easy to count and see how long we have had our 96' Nissan 4x4 farm truck.
The internet has became such an important part of our lives, we do so many time saving things on it, from locating and landing our migrant worker jobs to taking care of routine chores such as vehicle registration renewals.
Hey, email us ! We ain't got no time fer' no "snail mail " !

SORTIN'

We have been home from Colorado for a couple of days now and are still trying to catch up on stuff ! The camphosting Summer job above 10 K was a wonderful thing. We are looking forward to being there next year.
It is six days until we leave for the Sugar Beet Harvest and we are rushing to get all of our plunder sorted out for the trip.
Betty will be taking samples for quality control and I will be operating a front end loader. The harvest starts on October first and runs 24/7 until finished, usually about four to six weeks. The job pays straight time, time and a half and double time. They also furnish a full hookup campsite. Here is a link to the web site:
http://www.sugarbeetharvest.com/
Then after that it is home for the hollidays and deer season, then,,tadaaa ! off to the tie dye event at St georges Island ! We have our beach front reservations made already !
After that, who knows, more beach, flip flops & tee shirts we hope !

LOCKED

I guess that what they say, " all good things must come to an end", is true ! Our 110 days of boondocking and hosting at Trujillo Meadows campground has came to an end. By the end of the month of August we had a hard frost five times and it had snow flurried and hailed many times, though nothing stayed on the ground for over an hour.
We had everything packed up and when out last camper departed Tuesday about 1230 hours , we locked the gate and headed down the mountain. It seemed fitting that 1/2 inch of hominy snow suddenly fell on the highway, and us, as we started down La Manga Pass, just as it did the day we climbed up to the campground to open the gate for the season.
After closing out our books with our area manager, we headed for Arkansas driving until about 1130 hours, stopping for the night at Amarillo's East Wal Mart. There must have been thirty other RVers overnighting there also.
The next day, Wednesday, we put in a long day on the road, arriving at our home about dark. We don't like putting in those long days at 70 MPH ( sometimes more, in a passing situation ) on a boreing old interstate, but our time is short before we report to our next work camper job site in North Dakota.
Ten days to reshuffle our clothes and depart for the North Dakota job site. This trip put us over forty three thousand miles on our origonal equipment Jeep tires. We ordered four new ones online ( Tire Rack . com ) and had them sent to a friends shop for installation later this week. We priced the same tire at a dealership in Colorado and they were $130. less on line, even after shipping. Sure i'll pay a trusted friend to install them, but still saving over $100 per tire !
By the way, that three wheeled bicycle never made it back to Arkansas ! Someone saw it at the campground on the fourth of July weekend, and bought it for their little girl that has an inner ear Ballance problem, and wanted to be able to ride with her friends. We just had to help and let them have it at the bargain price we gave for it.
The next few days will be busy for us, so, we will try to update after we arrive at the Sugar Beet Harvest.

CAVE

A local resident took us to a cave. One that was said to be the Winter home of a black bear. Here is the stills and video: