The Trip Out
Saturday (for a few Friday)
Today was the beginning of our trip to South Dakota. Some of us actually left on Fri. and stayed overnight in Rochester MN. There is an interesting restaurant there called Sytje's Pannekoeken Huis. They make Dutch food and are famous for their oven baked Pannekoeken. It was delicious.
Neal and Ellen took the extra time to go to the Spam museum in Austin MN. Bob has mentioned it in our travelog every year and the timing had never been right to go there other years. It was definitely worth the time. What a fun place to go and who knew that Spam could be so interesting?
We encountered scattered rain showers along the way but nothing too bad. Everyone except Tracy and Kevin made it to Oakama around 6 p.m. We headed to Chamberlain to go to the Derby restaurant. It is our favorite place to go to eat while we are here. They make the steaks out on the grill out in front of the restaurant.
Everyone must be fairly tired from the journey as we all headed to our rooms when we finished supper and things are pretty quiet. We will meet up again either at breakfast or in Pine Ridge.
Sunday – arrive at Re-member
Today dawned bright and sunny. After a hearty breakfast at the motel a number of us headed to the Akta Lakota Heritage Museum. It is very interesting to read and see things about the history of the Lakota. It does make one sad and ashamed of what was done to them throughout the time of the white man.
After that, it was on the road again. We had to take a little different route than we had planned to as Highway 73 was under construction and too muddy to be used. We traveled on Highway 83 instead. We stopped in Martin for lunch at a little diner there. Neal and Ellen stopped for gas on the way out of town and Neal provided some excitement after that. He was stopped by the local police for speeding. He thought we were through to the regular highway speed sooner than we were. Oops! Luckily the officer took pity on us out of towners and just gave him a warning. Whew!
We all made it to Re-Member by 2 p.m. their time (except for the Roders, who arrived around 6:30 p.m.) We were able to go to Our Lady of Lourdes to drop off materials and equipment, food, computers, and encyclopedias.
Back at Re-Member we helped make a tipi this afternoon. Kelly Looking Horse walked us through the process. It was interesting to actually see how it is constructed. The other group that is here will have the option of sleeping in it tonight.
After supper, Tom came in to give us a talk about how things work here and our schedule for helping out with meals and cleanup. Nancy began a devotion time. It will be split tonight so we can go to listen to a speaker at the main building.
The speaker tonight was Minerva Blacksmith. She told us about her life and the difficulty people face with depression, drug and alchol use and gangs. She also shared that her Grandmother and Grandfather were survivors of the Massacre at Wounded Knee. They were two of twelve children that survived and had to walk about 47 miles through the cold and snow to a stronghold where they were told to go in case of emergency. It is amazing that they lived through it.
Nancy guided us through devotions before heading to bed.
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