4th Of July On The 3rd? (NE/SD/IA)

(Note to readers; each blog post covers about a week and is taken from parts of my travel journal.)

We went north about 20 miles to Elk Point, South Dakota, for Lewis & Clark Trail. This is the Elk Sign campsite where a vote was taken for who to replace Sergeant Floyd, since he died in Council Bluffs.  Private Patrick Gass was nominated. Seaman (footnote 1) was happy to get out and explore the signs. There are about 4 or 5 display signs about Lewis & Clark. Then we drove the side roads and along the farms and river bluffs. Corn is sure getting taller and looking good. Soybeans have weeds in the fields but Kevin said it shouldn’t hurt the crop. We stopped at Hy-Vee on Hamilton Blvd in Sioux City. Wow this place was great! They even have a huge, and I mean huge, area of tables that looks like a restaurant. You can take you food from the deli and eat there. The produce was plentiful and fresh and so that made me happy. 😃 I also got one more loaf pan because, when I made the Sourdough Italian bread, I needed two. HAHA Yep, making Sourdough bread sure saves money. LOL

The next day we went to the local South Sioux City, NE, public library. A modern building but nice and open and good seating. We stayed there a couple of hours. Back home, the pork chops I had put in the crockpot didn’t look done. So I pulled out ham & cheese Runzas for dinner. I had made them with Sourdough and frozen them.

Sourdough Starter: I fed one of my starters. It filled the jar about 1/3 of the way. Well, it was so hot (107° heat index outside and 79° temp inside) the starter completely overflowed the jar and lid. What a mess and it sure made me laugh! 

Today I did deep planning for meals the next two weeks. Why? Because of no groceries stores in the next area. I did find a tiny grocery store in Chamberlain, which will be about 40 minutes away, so that might work. Other “grocery stores” are convenient stores. So I planned out the menu. It was fun. I always used Paprika (a recipe holder app that I think is fantastic) to see what I have in the freezer and then added recipes using those. Yesterday I reminded Kevin we need to get propane. He found a U-Haul that sells propane so we there today to get both tanks filled. One was completely empty and the other was 51%. I thought sure it was almost empty, too, but Kevin said the oven/stove really use very little propane, even though I cook a lot. It was extremely humid and hot out and the lady worker even had a wet towel around her neck. 

Sourdough Starter: today I tried a new recipe from The Clever Carrot for Buttery, Flaky Sourdough Discard Biscuits From Scratch. Here is a link to the recipe: Sourdough Discard Biscuits I was a little intimated by the having to mesh in with hands the cold butter. I used frozen because that is where the non-salt butter was. It worked out so easily and perfect. I seriously think these biscuits are the best I have ever tasted! Even better than my homemade Red Lobster biscuits. They had cheese and green onions in them. I think adding some bits of bacon would be good. Using a 1/3 cup measurer, as per instructions, to form each biscuit worked out perfectly and they looked nice and uniform. I think every Sourdough Starter recipe I try just tastes better and better…and the first one was excellent! HAHA

It was a rainy day and what do I like to do on rainy days? Read. 🙂 I am reading An Inconvenient Widow and I have to say, it brought tears to my eyes several times. It grieved my heart deeply for her. I can understand how people can take something and twist so wickedly that it changes you and what others see. Poor unfortunate lady. 

I added the number stickers to the side of HOWE (footnote 2) outside. These are for the years and say 2022-2025 above the first state sticker map and then 2025- for the second one. I think that clears up why we have the two maps. 🙂 Remember Kevin’s rule: HOWE has to spend the night in a state before we can put the state sticker on the map. HA

Happy 4th of July…a day early! Today is a paid holiday for Kevin since the 4th is on Saturday this year. Now, let me tell myself here (in my journal) something of this area! The three towns, which is kind of one city, have Saturday in the Park music festival. It started in 1991 and draws over 25,000 people. It is held on the closest Saturday to the 4th of July. Well this year the 4th is on Saturday. Our thinking is, this is the 250 birthday of USA so how about having the music festival on a Saturday before or after. Nope. So what does that mean? The entire area pretty much shuts down for the music festival and that means nothing ON the 4th for 250 year Independence Day! Shocking. Believe me, we did our research! So that means the 4th of July stuff around here is today. 

So, what was happening today around the area to celebrate the 4th on the 3rd? A small parade across the Missouri River from our campground at 6:00 p.m. The other event was in South Sioux City at the Knights of Columbus building at 6:00 p.m. We drove into Sioux City to some event Kevin found while searching. It turned out to be just a few established stores and they were having sales. LOL We didn’t stop. The only other thing was a carnival. And it ended tonight and was completely packed up and gone by tomorrow morning. I said, “How about a fabric store!” And he said yes. We found Heart and Hands Dry Goods Company. When I saw it on google, I almost dismissed it because other “dry goods” places have been like ACE where they just have a small section of fabric. But then I saw pictures and it looked good. So glad we went because this place is awesome! Huge with great selections. And the two ladies working there were a delight. When one spoke to me but I didn’t see, Kevin told them I am deaf. They then said they are both hard of hearing and wear hearing aids. Well, that got us in a 10 minute visit about accessibility on phones, hearing aids, and more. Just wonderful! I got three fabrics for my August yard flag. 

Sourdough Starter: Back home I made the Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls from the cookbook Everything Sourdough by Charlene Yoder. They make a lot! I used my Pampered Chef large round baking dish plus the Pampered Chef 9×13 pan. They are scrumptious! Later I transferred to a tinfoil pan the rolls from the 9×13 pan. And then Kevin walked up and gave it to the campground city office ladies. They were thrilled. So happy to share this deliciousness!

At 6:00 p.m. we went to the town event at the Knights of Columbus building. There were about 3 food trucks and a table to buy souvenirs from this day and town. The Nebraska Game Parks had an outdoor cooking demonstrating and the two ladies were dressed as in 1700s. They told about apples and how the apples would be eaten for 18 months. They laid them each in newspaper to slow down spoilage. She had dried apples and made apple pie in a dutch oven. They had some samples ready. It was very good. She said they didn’t sweet things much and we could tell the different. What a fun thing for people to see, learn, and taste. A large rectangle tent was set up next to a permanent overhead next to the building. There were tables and chairs set up with patriotic balloons, hand fans, pens, and buttons. Very cute. They had a little program. One guy read something Kevin said was about the flag. Then a group, all dressed in 1700s, did a little musical. (I am deaf so I just watched.) I think it was about Francis Scott Key. Kevin said the singers were very good. The National Anthem was sung. When we got there, a lady was handing out little stones. Why? She had 250 and wanted to make sure that 250 people sang the National Anthem. Cute. Kevin and I signed the song in American Sign Language. People around told us how beautiful it was. They also had a guy walk around doing magic tricks. He would sit at a table and entertain those around. He sat across from me and being deaf I just watched his hand. I couldn’t see how he did the tricks at all! He was very good. Later there was a band going to play but I think that was going to be closer to 9:00 p.m. It was so humid and hot and we decided to leave.

Happy Independence Day! We really wanted to be in a place that had some celebrations. See yesterday’s journal entry. Kevin found a small town that actually has a parade today. HA It is about 1/2 hour north – Le Mars, IA. We headed there through the dense humidity. It made it so you couldn’t see off in the distance. We learned from Autio (footnote 3) that this is the Ice Cream Capital of the World. Why? It is where Blue Bunny ice cream started. We also learned how the town got the name. Some ladies of the town were asked what it should be named. They put together an acronym of the letter of their first name. HA That is so awesome! This town has population around 10,000. We drove to the middle of town and turned down the main street. We saw a few people sitting on chairs along the street so this must be the parade route. As we went a few blocks more we saw more people out. But, no streets were blocked! HA A police person was stationed at each intersection and even during the parade, would stop the parade and let a car go through. We saw only one. HA Plenty of open space for chairs and for standing. I clocked the parade and it was exactly 13 minutes. If you were 15 minutes late getting there, you would miss the whole thing. HA The parade had no marching bands. It was mostly Elks, Legion, one dance company, and advertising businesses. Also old and new tractors. It is always fun to see Kevin get excited when he sees a tractor like the one his grandpa had. 

At 5:00 p.m. we headed to Lewis & Clark Park for professional baseball game. Sioux City Explorers played Sioux Falls. Our seats were excellent! We got the seats and tickets the other day. We were second row facing right along home plate and first base line. This stadium is very small. I thought it would be packed since it is the only thing besides the music festival today around here. But it wasn’t even 1/6 full. Some people carried a large rolled up flag onto the field and then unrolled it for the National Anthem. The National Anthem had no singers but was played with an electric guitar. We had to wait “until it gets dark” for the fireworks. Maybe waited 20 minutes or so. Thankfully they didn’t wait for it to be totally dark. The fireworks show was good and lasted 20 minutes. It was still light enough outside to see our way to the truck. People were setting off fireworks all around and fun to see. Kevin said this night some fireworks went off up to 1:00 a.m. And then, at 1:15 a.m. the rain started. It rained so hard that Kevin literally put ear plugs in his ears. Sometimes nice to be deaf! HAHA

*The blog posts are taken from my daily travel journal. Would you believe – it takes me a 1/2 day every week to whittle down a week’s worth of journal so it won’t be too long for the post each week. HAHA Thank you for reading!

1. Seaman – this is a toy dog we bought at the start of Lewis & Clark Trail. He is like the real dog that Meriwether Lewis had and took on the Trail with him. We thought it would be fun to take pictures of our Seaman as we travel along the Lewis & Clark Trail.

2. “HOWE” is what we named our Alliance Avenue 36-ft 5th wheel. See: Home On WhEels and we pronounce it Howie. We live and travel in it full-time around the country. HOWE has stayed at least one night in all 48 continuous U.S. states.

3. Autio is an iPhone app that tells all sorts of history and stories about places all over the country. It is narrated and with my iPhone on accessibility, it shows captions of the words being said. So thankful!