Back to the Missouri River

20090829 – Back to the Missouri River

It was a beautiful clear and chilly morning at Fort Sisseton. This prompted me to walk around the grounds. The Fort was built in 1864 and abandoned about 25 years later. The buildings were mostly lost between that time and the 1930's when some reconstruction began—so there was not much 'authentic' there except some items in the museum. But, from pictures and other evidence, they appear to have done a great reconstruction job. It has an open and clean feeling to it, kind of stark, probably very unlike the actual feeling soldiers had while actually serving there. There were a few birds in the reconstructed cemetery and some prairie remnants along my almost 2 mile walk.

I drove for an hour and a half, along SD10 to Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge. HQ was closed due to the weekend, but a ranger approached while I was finishing a peanut butter sandwich. He has been stationed there for ~20 years and was full of info. I learned that the large number of tree skeletons lining many of the potholes were the result of a very wet year in 1997 that had flooded them throughout the summer. That was the wettest year on record till this year which exceeded that. The water remains very high throughout the area, consistent with my experience as I began this trip, the flooding in Fargo that Tim and I experienced, and areas of fields that I see on my current trip—areas that had been planted and started to grow, then flooded out. Well, the high water restricted available roads at the Sand lake Refuge, so I spent only a short while there, then resumed the trail West.

The next ~80 miles were gently rolling then flattened out. Larger farms, much hay, corn and soybeans, and as I approached Mobridge there were a lot of sunflower fields. The source for my winter bird feeding in Olympia, I suppose. Or maybe the supply for the baseball players to spit out on TV?

I pulled into the Indian Creek Recreation Area near Mobridge ~6:45 for dinner, a short walk and then blogging. A phone call completed and another to go, then it's goodnight. Just in case you wondered, Mobridge is the cleverly named site of the first railroad BRIDGE across the MissOuri River in this area.