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Tuzigoot -- On the Road Again!
Report 1. As many of you know, we’re off on a
three-month motorhome trip – to New England and back, visiting family and
seeing the sights, with fall in New England
being the motivating objective.
Outbound stops along the way include Sioux Falls, where Jeff and
Valerie Hinkle live; Minneapolis, where I will attend American Statistical
Association (ASA) convention – whoopee, everyone says; Labor Day weekend with
Matt Hinkle and family in Grand Rapids, MI; State College, PA, for Penn State
game, ticketed and accompanied by Jay and Joyce Rush; an RV park in Vermont
the first week of October. Then we’ll
work our way back via North Carolina (grandson
Jason Robert Easterling and family), Tennessee
(daughter Mandi and Paul Venable), and OKC.
Only fixed goal on the return trip is a Bluegrass awards show at the
Ryman Auditorium in Nashville
in late October.
First stop was Oklahoma
City, arriving there on Aug. 2. My Mom is buying a house in nearby Edmond, where my sister,
Verla, and family can live with her and provide the necessary care. We got there for the day of the house
inspection. Looks like it will be a
good arrangement. They’ll close and
move in Labor Day weekend. Also, while
in Edmond, we
got to join in the birthday celebration of two of my sister, Connie’s, sons.
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From OKC it was a two-day trip, nearly due north, to Sioux Falls. Here’s the double-decker bridge over the
Missouri River at Yankton, SD – Lewis and Clark
country.
We really enjoy seeing the heartland – farms, villages,
and towns. NE Nebraska was particularly beautiful – so many shades of green
and so geometrically neat that we were reminded of New Zealand. There’s the deep, dark green of bean
fields, the slightly lighter green of the corn fields, beginning to be topped
with golden tassels, and the still lighter green of pastures and alfalfa
fields. There are the well-kept
farmhouses and outbuildings – barns are the chief attraction for me –
generally surrounded by a heavy stand of tall trees. Then there’s the occasional country church
– the Lutherans especially like tall steeples. It’s not the ocean or the Rocky
Mountains, but it’s still awesome. (Didn’t have good opportunity to pull
Tuzigoot over and take pictures in NE, so I’ll insert some MN farm pictures
below as a stand-in – my apologies to Cornhuskers everywhere.)
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There’s one difference I’ve thought about while
driving. You can look at mountains and
oceans and pretty much see them as they have always been (not going back to
the eons of time during which continents, oceans, and mountains were formed)
– you don’t see evidence of human presence or intervention, and that’s one of
their attractions. On the prairies,
it’s the human presence – barns and churches, say – that get your attention,
start you thinking about the pioneers and the people who came and created
lives and communities – how they endured and persevered. Not always a pretty or perfect process, for
sure, but the result is worthy of our awe.
Incidentally, even though the picture at the right is MN
farmland, you can think of it as KS, NE, and SD farmland, too.
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Minneapolis. Son, Jeff Easterling, is a statistician,
too, and since he and I were going to attend the ASA meeting, Mike, a
biomathematician, who tells me that he took enough statistics so that if
worse came to worse he could get a job as a statistician, decided to join
us. The Twins were at home against the
Red Sox, so the chance to go to a MLB game together was another attraction.
So, I dropped Susie in “Siouxie
Falls” and drove to Minneapolis, catching a few barn pictures
and this MN courthouse along the way.
I managed to rendezvous with the boys at the airport and find our way
downtown to our motel. We had the afternoon
free and decided to head for MTM – that’s the Minnesota Train
Museum, not Mary Tyler
Moore, who’s no longer there. Got
thoroughly lost and I made a couple of driving faux pas (“pases?”) on the way
that had Mike saying maybe the time would come sooner rather than later when
they take my keys away.
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Ball game was exciting – Twins won in the ninth on two Boston errors. In the picture of Mike and Jeff, that is
not Susie between them, and that is not my stomach behind them. I was taking the picture.
Sunday morning we went for a heritage hike around the
downtown falls on the Mississippi which
started it all – the development of Minneapolis
and St. Paul
around flour mills that were built to harness the energy of the falls. Picture below is downtown Minneapolis
from the St. Paul
side of the river.
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We followed our hike with a drive along the river, then a
loop along parkways that ran through posh residential areas, parks, and
lakes. Lots of people out enjoying the
nice warm day. And, we didn’t get lost
or make a driving faux pas.
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The conference started Sunday pm; I gave a talk – at least
two people in the audience really enjoyed it – they said. Mike left Monday am; I drove back to SF on
Wednesday, and Jeff flew home on Thursday.
Eleven years ago the three of us attended stat meetings in Toronto when Judy had
to be in MO with her mother who was having heart surgery at the time. Then, at an earlier time, we three attended
the meetings in San Francisco,
so it was really nice to have another such opportunity.
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Back in Sioux Falls we finished the week in fine style –
saw the Falls (picture copied from a website), went to a Sioux Falls Canaries
baseball game (this time an 11th inning win for the home team), snacked
our way through the Sioux Empire Fair – fried Oreos (cookies wrapped in
funnel cake dough, deep fried, powder-sugared – yum yum), fried curds (no
whey!), cornonthecob, and ate well and often wherever we were.
On Friday, Susie and I traveled about 60 miles to Mitchell, SD
to see “The World’s Only Corn Palace!”
External and internal murals and trim are mostly made of corn with
other farm crops thrown in. The story
is that Lewis and Clark said this part of
the country was a desert – unfit for farming.
By the late 19th century, settlers had found that not to be
the case, so to get their point across and attract more settlers they built
the first corn palace. The current
edition is the third. It’s a gymnasium
and auditorium through the school year – tourism is the main summer use.
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One local farmer grows all the corn and other crops used
in decorating the Palace. Corn cobs
are sliced down the middle and nailed in place, following mural patterns
produced by local artist. About
250,000 half-cobs are required. Theme
changes every year, so even if you’ve been here once, you’ve got to come
back.
Sunday (8/14) we bid “adioux” to Jeff and Valerie and head
for Minneapolis
and the Mall of America. Enough of
this rural stuff!
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Cheers.