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!