Watertower Festival

This weekend was Pipestone's annual Watertower Festival. It seems that every town in Minnesota has a festival - I'm convinced it's part of the MN constitution that before your city can be incorporated, you have to set aside some time each year for a big party. For instance, Rochester had RochesterFest this past week, which included lumberjack competitions and a SPAM vendor selling my new favorite fair food: deep fried SPAM curds. The festival that takes the cake and that I have yet to experience is Viola, MN's Gopher Count where they'll still pay you $1.25 per pair of gopher feet you turn in during the festival. I'm sorry, but does this remind anyone else of The Simpsons' Wacking Day episode?

Here in Pipestone, MN, no animals are harmed during the Watertower Festival. Named for the town's castle-like watertower, it seems appropriate that this year's festival theme was "Nursery Rhymes & Fairytales".

The Watertower that Makes it all Possible!

It technically started on Friday night with a street dance. I thought that sounded fun until, by the time Nathan got home from work at 10pm, our downstairs retirement-aged neighbor had declared that he was going down there to get "stone drunk" and the band had stopped playing songs like Black Hole Sun and moved on to imitating dying cats. Needless to say, we decided to sit out the street dance.

The next morning, a parade started at 10am. Glen, the park's superintendent, said they had so many entries that the parade was twice as long as normal - one whole hour. Actually, it reminded me a lot of the Brown Deer 4th of July parade - just with more men in drag. You had your normal community organization floats and high school bands, but Pipestone's parade went one step further to include, liteally, men in tights and giant farm equipment. This entry from Titan Machinery was pretty amazing - yes that is a normal, one-story building in the background!

Titan

Typical Themed Float

Not Everything Was For Kids

Nathan had been in charge of the Pipestone National Monument Float. This was the first time they'd ever entered one and true to its preservation theme his float was minimalist, recyclable and pulled with an electric truck, which topped out at around 27 mph during the parade.

Nathan's Green Float

The one thing I think they'll have to add next year is candy. EVERYONE throws candy at this parade - even the dentists.

Would you accept candy from a guy wearing a gas mask?

After the parade you could head over to the City Hall front lawn for some delicious grilled foods, a flea market, and a lucky spot under the big tent to listen to a teenage Kiss cover band. For lunch we got a pretty good seat watching the fire department's version of Tug O' War, using a barrel hoisted in the air.

Despite the festival, my favorite place in town is still the park. Saturday was the first time I got to see it when it wasn't raining. Even this snapping turtle took advantage of the sunny day.

Next year, I'll make sure we hit the festival rodeo too. Whoever said small towns are boring? They've obviously never been to Pipestone or Medora.

Pipestone Part II

While I've been in Rochester for the past two weeks, I left off a whole day from my Pipestone trip, so this is a make-up.

I got to do the Pipestone Loop again on Saturday under cloudcover, but in better light than Friday night. In the following pictures you can see the sign that greets you at the road, Winnewissa Falls (the highlight of the tail) and proof that Park Rangers are trustworthy since their vending machines in the back room are just boxes stuffed with food.

Winnewissa Falls

Something tells me the real Vikings weren't so trusting

Just inside the park, you will meet the "Three Maidens". Large stones where quarriers will make an offering of tobacco or other precious substance before taking Pipestone out of the park. Off limits to non-Natives there is a sweat lodge and sun dance area for sacred ceremonies. I also found out that the Pipestone owl necklace I bought can mean anything from death to change is coming depending on what tribe you're affiliated with. The folks that actually made the necklace think the latter, so I am free to wear it without fear of death.


On Sunday, I decided to check out the two nearby State Parks. Split Rock Creek was the closest, but an unfortunate sewage spill upstream kept me from staying long. A group of ten of our friends will be camping there in August, so I'll have plenty of time to explore it later.

Twenty miles down the road is Blue Mounds State Park. I still yearn for my Rocky Mountain hiking, but Blue Mounds has 15 miles of hiking trails, beautiful quartzite cliffs, bison, a swimming beach, and rock climbing. I had to kick myself for not coming prepared to hike. With no water, I only got to do a two-mile loop - a very pretty one starting in a prairie along the base of the cliff, climbing steeply through the trees to the top of the cliff and back to the parking lot. I'm excited to strap on my pack and go back. The entire 15 miles will at least keep me busy hiking for one day...


I'm headed back to the park next weekend for its Watertower Festival. Nathan is now in charge of the Pipestone National Monument float, which I hear will include a giant caterpillar.

As promised last time, here are some photos of our loft in Pipestone. They demonstrate why I could never be a real estate agent.

Living Room

Bedroom

Bathroom

Kitchen

Getting Stoned

I'm visiting Pipestone, MN this weekend and, although it's a small town of 4600 people, that is 46 times more people than Medora had in the winter and I expected there to be a lot to see and do here. I'm not disappointed.

I left work at 1:30pm Friday to start my trip to the other side of the state. The scenery was a little disappointing as there were too many farms and not enough signs for Wall Drug, but the amount of windmills in the area was impressive and only driving 3.5 hours instead of 10 or 24 to get to one of Nathan's parks is a treat. I did get a chance to stop in Blue Earth to see the Jolly Green Giant, who I kind of feel sorry for. Poor guy has to live outside in Minnesota without any pants, plus there is a little platform right between his legs were you can stand an impressive 6 extra feet off the ground and look at the parking lot or...um....up...what's that about?

On the way to Pipestone, MN, you take Hwy 75 through Luverne and past two state parks: Blue Mounds State Park and Split Rock Creek State Park. I hope to visit those tomorrow if it's not too soggy.

Nathan lives in the loft of a cute little house-turned-apartment near downtown Pipestone (pictures to come in an upcoming blog). The main strip, appropriately named Main Street, is only two blocks from his house. Just like any historic downtown, Pipestone has historic buildings and shops, except that here, they are all made out of the native, brilliantly purple/pink quartzite rock found everywhere around here. Downtown has a couple of clothing stores, a card shop, hardware shop, appliance store, a pub, and several restaurants including Pizza Ranch, where we headed for dinner Friday night.

Downtown Pipestone

Pub/Restaurant

Pipestone County Courthouse (1902)

Despite its Western theme, Pizza Ranch is located no farther West than North Dakota. It did, however, have a very nice small-town feel to it, exhibited by the fact that the cashier asked us if there were any particular kinds of pizza we wanted them to make for the buffet. After seeing their vision statement displayed prominently on the wall which read: To glorify God by positively impacting the world we live in, I did expect the pizza to taste a little more, well, heavenly, than it actually did.

After dinner we headed to the monument to hike the 3/4 mile nature trail. Nathan and I had a hard time not comparing it to Glacier as we walked. The good news is it reminded us a lot of it - there were lots of familiar plants, including my favorite anticoagulant, yarrow and the rocks made us believe that pikas would come sheepishly crawling out if we sat quietly long enough. The trail bends from a green prairie oasis, dotted with periodic quarries, into enchanted forest with pink rock walls and the famous Winnewissa Falls. I only regret that it was getting dark and I couldn't hold the camera still enough to get great pictures on the trail, so you'll have to wait for those too.


I did get to see some Pipestone, which you can see in the picture below - the deeper purple stone making up the floor and the bottom layer of the wall in this picture is Pipestone. The pink stone above it is the quartzite.

We got to see the quarry that one of Nathan's friends at the monument has been working on for 27 years. You have to have a permit and be Native American to quarry in the park and it doesn't look easy!


This morning I woke up to a downpour. Not to be detered, I foraged in the Alero for an umbrella and set off to explore the town. I didn't get very far when I landed inside the Pipestone County Museum. Two very nice women worked there and told me all about the surrounding town festivals, including the Watertower Festival coming up in Pipestone on June 27th, which includes a dance, craft fair, parade, and, although not mentioned on the Pipestone Event Website, plenty of drinking.

I enjoyed the museum! It was well-narrated with signs mostly explaining the origins of common phrases, such as 'deadbeat', which comes from the fact that old, empty railway cars made a different noise as they ran over the tracks than the cars that were full. That was called a deadbeat as those were the cars that weren't pulling their own weight (i.e. making money). They also had many displays of household items from the late 1800's through around 1950. The top floor was the Minnesota Room where they had pictures and articles explaining all of the "Minnesota State ________" - both official (Lady Slipper is our state flower) to unofficial (luckily Wood Tick is not our official state insect). There was even an article on supercomputing in Minnesota, which, to my horror did not even mention IBM, whose Roadrunner project, partially worked on in Rochester, MN, broke the petaflop barrier last year.

A couple of other noteworthy items were the large, gorey mural that was displayed in the kids' play area of Native Americans harvesting bison:

It's important that kids know where their food comes from

There was also a wooden, transportable toilet (an early Port-O-Potty if you will) that I really understood the value of after being without even an object as crude that on our Kilimanjaro Trek last year! Ah, to have a wooden toilet seat....


All-in-all Pipestone has been great - can't wait to take another trip through the park this afternoon!