"Joy and Ray's Minnesota/South Dakota... " a South Dakota Travel Page by joyellen

MINNESOTA & SOUTH DAKOTA

Minnesota and South Dakota June 21-25. 2000
After leaving Wisconsin, we drove to Austin, Minnesota near Rochester where we spent the night at another huge family campground. They even had a complete selection of videos for rent at $1.00 each in case of rain. The weather was clear and cool, after some thunder storms. Could have spent more time in this state, but we decided to continue west to South Dakota where we hope to find some information on Ray's great-grandmother who lived in Aberdeen in the first half of the 20th century. We arrived in Sioux Falls in mid-afternoon on the 22nd, and did some shopping before heading to the campground. It was in the upper 80's and really muggy. We hooked up quickly and turned the air conditioner on.

Since we needed to drive to Aberdeen, and it was already Friday, we decided to spend the weekend in Sioux Falls. Can't do much genealogical research on a weekend in any town, so why not just kick back and relax? We had a doozie of a thunder and lightning storm about three a.m., and I wondered about the people in tents in the campground. There is a woman right next to us in a small pop-up tent with a station wagon and a poodle. She said her husband is working seventy-five miles away where they have a 5th wheeler. I think I would have stuck with the 5th wheeler, which undoubtedly has a stove, an air-conditioner and a bed. But as Ray said, "Some people need their space."

Anyway, we woke up to some crisp cleanly washed air, and set out on a gravel road with cornfields on both sides for our morning walk. I had this eerie feeling of being Cary Grant in North by Northwest, and when the small plane flew overhead, that clinched it. For a gravel road in the middle of two cornfields, the traffic certainly was not sparse. The big town of Tea, South Dakota was a little farther down the road, so folks from the campground were heading there for some Saturday morning business.

After we leave South Dakota, our telephone service will be reduced to the bare minimum, as there is no Sprint PCS service west of Sioux Falls until Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and none in Canada. We will not disconnect our service, so our voicemail will still be working, and we'll check our messages every few days (925-351-4515). We're not sure about email connections either. I may be able to send some through an internet address, but my email address will not change from joy_tennison@bigfoot.com. Sometimes I send things from online addresses, but my address doesn't change. At least we're more accessible than our son, Paul, who is currently on an African safari to the Ngorongoro crater, to Zanzibar and then up the mountain, Kilimanjaro.

Aberdeen, South Dakota June 25-26, 2000
Talk about coincidences! Someone contacted me via email on June 21st about researching Ray's great-grandmother's name in Wisconsin. I got the email and responded that we had just been in Wisconsin and were en route to Aberdeen, SD to further research the name. She responded, with an email address and a telephone number for a 1st cousin of Ray's mother who was near Aberdeen. We met with this 81 year old cousin, Ralph, of whom Ray's mother was totally unaware, and with his 80 year old brother, Lyle, in Milbank, SD. I entered data furiously into the computer as they poured out their memory banks with information about them, their two sisters (two more we didn't know about), their father and other family members. We looked at old photograph albums and shared photos that I have on the computer. We spent the better part of Sunday afternoon with them, took photos, thanked them profusely and headed for Aberdeen, armed with more information for research purposes.

Monday and Tuesday in Aberdeen gave us birth, marriage and death dates for Ray's great-grandmother and family information hitherto unknown. We garnered bits and pieces on other family members, filling in gaps as we worked. If only I had photos to go with the names, but we do have the telephone number of Ralph and Lyle's older sister who is gathering family information.

The other great thing in Aberdeen was the campground. We stayed at a city park which had a storybook land complete with figurines in a huge park. The figurines were incorporated into the play picture, as in the "House that Jack Built" which had a huge slide coming out of the side of it. It was great! And, since Aberdeen is the birthplace of L. Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz, there was a Land of Oz, complete with a yellow brick road which leads from Munchkin land to the Haunted Forest and ultimately to the Wizard's giant hot air balloon. There is a petting zoo, a larger zoo, a waterslide, two lakes with paddle boats and canoes, a train, bumper cars, and some kind of water bumper cards. All but the rides are free.