Flandreau, South Dakota and being back on the ROAD

March 31, 2006
When we began the drive toward Madison, WI, for our next screening, we decided to stop in South Dakota and spend the night with Courtney's grandparents. I’m sitting in the back of courtney’s car. Stirling is in the passenger seat. We are in Minnesota, driving to Madison, where we need to be by 6:30 for a screening tonight at the University of Wisconsin. We left Denver at 9am yesterday morning and drove straight to Flandreau, South Dakota. The landscape was barren and desolate most of the time. We hit some heavy rain and were driving on poorly-lit (if at all) state highways in Nebraska and South Dakota. Everytime a semi went by, we were momentarily blinded (by the brights they refused to turn off) and the wave of water they sent up to us. It was terrifying. We finally got to Courtney’s grandparents house at around 11pm.
a view of downtown Flandreau

Marlys and Vern (Courtney's grandparents) were really sweet people. There old “farmhouse” has been completely renovated. You’d never know it is over a hundred years old. Every room is wallpapered and full of country knickknacks, porcelain dolls and old family photos.

Marlys set out plates of cold turkey, american cheese, bread, miracle whip, taco flavored Doritos, peanut butter cookies, apples, and diet 7up. She let us know about the ice cream sandwiches in the fridge and showed us the long john pastries she had gotten earlier at the bakery for us to eat for breakfast. She was worried that we weren’t eating anything (I didn’t want to tell her about being a vegetarian) so I ate a peanut butter cookie and Stirling had some chips. I mentioned how full I was from the half of a burrito I had eaten earlier at Taco Johns (disgusting). We talked for a while, mostly her and Courtney talked about family. Then Vern took us downstairs, where he has created a miniature world of hobby trains. It was amazing and huge. He said he’s been collecting and working on them for the past 50 years. He has a hard time finding trees and people that are the right scale. And a hard time working on the wiring because he has to go under the tables and is afraid he might not be able to get back up. Marlys said it must have been nice to have a man on the road with us (little did she know that Stirling doesn’t know how to drive).

We went to bed. Got up at 7:45. Drank sour-tasting coffee and ate a banana and got back on the road. Courtney mailed an application for a teaching position in Seattle at the old post office. We stopped in a small town in Minnesota to find espresso for me. The only thing we could find was a Christian-run coffee shop/ Bible book store. They didn’t have soy milk. I felt like an urban snob for asking. Well actually there was one other option: A lutheran-run cafe. I guess you have to take what you can get.

I had an altercation with people in a grocery store in the town just across the Wisconsin border. An engraged older man made a snide remark to me and stirling that "There are rooms for that kind of thing" - but all we were doing is standing next to each other in an aisle. Then a woman who worked there ran into me on purpose and didn't say anything. But we got good bread and an avacado and mustard and had the most satisfying sandwiches in the world. Also, the rain continued to pour all day and even once we got to Madison.