On Sept 3rd this adventure began by loading the horses into the horses trailer and put our rented sheepherders wagon on a trailer and headed south to Yankton. To join in the 125th statehood anniversary wagon train.
But this adventure really started several months before when I first read about the opportunity to join the wagon train and gave it a passing thought, 'oh wouldn't that be fun', but didn't think much more about it at the time. But I found that I kept going back and rereading the website, so I finally mentioned it my husband thinking he'll think I'm completely off my rocker again and that would be the end. To my complete surprise and shock he thought it would be a cool thing to do.
To know my husband his idea of roughing it in nature is to take our completely tricked out RV that comes complete with all the amenities, including the best of indoor plumbing and satellite tv and broadband wi fi. So for my city born husband to think this would be fun had me completely stunned. My inner diva country girl starting doing cartwheels, high fives and screaming YES!!! We have finally converted him to see the light and embrace the country way of life. I'm still amazed when I see him driving the tractor and I remember what seem like just yesterday I was teaching him how drive it.
I knew that I would have to start training our pair of Friesians that we hitch to our winter sleigh to build up their stamina for longer treks with a wagon, pulling something a lot heavier and higher than the sleigh. So my first search was to find a wagon; most of what was described on the statehood website are the big covered wagons you see in movies, but as my search progressed I found to my complete shock and happy surprise a company here in SD actually makes and restores wagons of yore. So I contacted them and told them what I was planning to do and they said they would gladly rent us a wagon if we agreed to let them advertise the company's name on the wagon. Oh heck yeah, not a problem paster the whole thing with your signage.
So I made the drive to see the wagons they have on display and as I'm looking over the covered wagons, 'I'm thinking ok, pretty stark, pretty much a wooded box on wheels with framing over the top for the canvas to be attached to'. At this point I'm thinking...yikes what have I gotten myself into, can I really ride in one of these for 17 days. Then I spy another wagon on the lot that is completely different in looks that really peaked my interest, so I asked what about that one and was informed it was a sheepherder wagon. Designed to be lived in long term with more comforts and amenities. Upon opening the door I immediately feel in love, the whole front section of the wagon was a built in bed, benches on each side for seating, storage, pull out table and the best feature a small pot belly stove. SCORE!! So I chose this one.
Now it was time to get the wagon home and introduce the horses to it. Which went really well. I placed it so that all of our horses to could smell it and then it came time to hitch the team to it. Thankfully our pair didn't have any issues being hitched and both took off at a good walk pulling the wagon. So when my husbands comes home seeing me driving this wagon, he's shaking his head at me and I'm what???? You don't like it??? He says, 'it's not the typical covered wagon is it?' I'm thinking oh dear he's changing his mind. He walks around it not saying anything, finally opens the back door and proceeds to laugh, which completely confuses me. He give me a hug and then says; 'you thought you were countrifing me and it turns out I've citified you, instead of picking the motel 6 version you bring home the Hilton version'. What can I say, he's spoiled me and I like my comforts, especially a bed, a real bed.
Yankton...
Without any drama we arrive in Yankton and met our fellow wagon train adventures. I was amazed at how many people and wagons had come from all over the country to take part in the 125th celebration of our statehood. 52 wagons have shown up with over 200 people taking part to make the 17 day 260 miles trek. Outstanding!! Granted not all of these wagon present on the first day will make the whole journey, we ended up with around 40 wagons that as time has gone by has reduced in numbers. for not everyone could take 17 days off from their jobs, so we are down to 33 wagons now. Still a great number. We are like a small traveling town.
We left Yankton around 8:30 in the morning on Sept. 4th for our first day of travel to Tabor, SD. Tabor is just shy of 17 miles from Yankton and take only about 20 minutes by car to get there, but by slow moving horse and wagon we didn't pulled into Tabor until about 3 in the afternoon. The horses did great and the car traffic didn't bother them to much.
Here are pictures that I took and some were in the local newspapers of the wagon train taking off.
Picture of our Friesian's pulling the wagon. Friesian's are known for having really long tails and manes so as you can see I had to cut them short so they didn't interfere with the rigging. It was a sad sad day for when I cut those gorgeous manes.
You may have been wondering why have we started in Yankton, SD and traveling to Pierre, SD. Well before our statehood Yankton was the territorial capital and when SD become a state on Nov, 2, 1889, Pierre became the temporary state capital Nov. 11, 1889. Also, you many think that city of Pierre is pronounced like the french name Pea Air, but it's actually pronounced pier. Like your are standing on pier.
Tabor pulled out all the stops greeting us as we were directed into a private farm hayfield to camp out for the night. You maybe wondering how do you feed and water the horses, we have rest stop midway each day so we can grab something to eat and water the horses and there is a bus that is provided that take someone from each wagon back to the last location so they can drive your truck and livestock trailers to where you are. It takes a lot of work to take care of just our horses needs with modern day convinces, much less what it would have been like 125 years ago when they couldn't bring hay and oats along and the horses had to forage where they stopped. They had to make sure they followed some kind of water way or haul water in barrels attached to the wagon for both livestock and man. For us a water trucks meet us at each location providing us with all the water needed. Modern convenience at it's best.
Another thing you might be wondering is what do you do for going to the bathroom and showering. There are porta potties at each destination and midway points and showers are either the camper style showers, which are not the warmest showers in the world and with someone like me who has long hair, it's not easy to rinse all the soap out either. That has been a challenge, but very survivable. Also, some of our host has offered their bathrooms, local people have willingly open their homes along the way and truck stop showers have been a godsend. With our wagon having a pot belly stove in it, I've been able to heat water which also is a big comforter as well.
Each night at every location a program is put on by the community for us from local music to local historians telling stores about the regions we are passing through. It has been such a vast history lesson and I wouldn't have missed this for the world.
Thought I would share additional pictures of some the wagons that are a part of the train and some that started out the first day, but didn't stay.
We travel for the most part around 6 to 7 hours each day not including rest breaks, which is more for us humans than it is for the horses. But after a few hours of riding on a springless buckboard, no matter how much padding you add, your ass is killing you and you feel like you're 105 climbing down off the wagon to stretch your legs, back and shoulders from holding the reins. It's took several days to get past some of the stiffness, especially the shoulder pain. I never knew how holding the lines and guiding the horses would take such a toll of your whole body. Our forefathers were some tough stock people that is for sure.
The towns and communities have been so wonder with providing free will food or stands where we can purchase our meals. And we have brought our own food and many of us do our own cooking over open fire pits using cast iron pots, pans and dutch ovens. I've always love cooking with cast iron, but I'm getting a whole new education in using them over an open flame. I've made some pretty good dished and I've had a few disasters along the way.
The chicken and roasted stew came out prefect.
The bread...not so much.
Once you got past the burn crust, the bread inside was really tasty. So dutch oven bread making over a camp fire is not my thing.
Sept 8th
One the 5th day of our travels we pulling into Mitchell livestock area for a rest before we continued onto the rodeo grounds when the family of our wagon master met us with their 97 year old mother straight from the nursing home. What a dear sweet woman and they got her up on the wagon and as our wagon master tells us they hadn't gone a block when she said' boy, give me those lines, I'm driving this team,' and she drove the team right through town and past the nursing home she stays at to have the staff and residences outside whopping and hollering it up as she proudly drives the team and wagon past them. Her son then turns to her and say, 'you still like to show off don't you,' and she said, 'well why shouldn't I," I had tears in my eyes the whole time and was so proud to have witnessed such a joyous moment for her.
Here's a brief look at what it takes at the end of the day to take care of the horses on our overnight stop at the Mitchell rodeo grounds. Thankfully been a rodeo grounds pens are already set up for the horses. You have to haul water by carrying 5 gallon buckets to your horse, some pens have tubs you dump water into, if not then they will drink out of the bucket.
Fellow traveler David hauling water. Everyone pitches in watering and I'm usually the one watering our horses since it's my husband that is drove back to our truck and trailer.
Here is D.W. taking hay filled feed bags to the his pen area and hanging them so his horses can have there dinner before we can have ours.
One last glance to make sure his beautiful grey's are settled for the night.
Sept. 12th
During this journey I celebrated my 50th birthday. I never imagined that I would celebrate my birthday out in the middle of a SD prairie. My husband made it super special by waking me up to breakfast in bed.
Good morning sunshine...
My extra special egg and toast. He's such a dear man!
And this was the glorious morning we woke up to...so pretty with the wind flowers all around.
Another special part that made my day was I was able to get limited cell phone reception and able to log on to my favorite cooking site All Recipes and the all wonderful people that post on the buzz made my birthday extra special by sending me such wonderful greetings, messages and recipes. AR has some of the best of people that share their love of cooking and sharing bits of their lives, they are like an extended family. I've missed checking in on them every day due to very limited cell reception.
That night when husband made the trip back to pick up our truck and trailer, it seemed it was taking longer for him to get back as many of the others had arrived with their trailers and hubby was no where to be seen. And here was why he was late...
He had contacted the local bakery in Mt Vernon to have this adorable cake made up for me. How cute is this cake!!
That night as we sit around the campfire the group sang happy birthday. A perfect ending to a perfect day.
The weather for the most part has been gorgeous with mild temps in the 70's, most days have been sunny or partly cloudy. We did have one night that it looked like it was going to rain on us and some of the storm system was not looking the best. If you don't know I'm a storm chaser during sever weather events and being out in the middle of the prairie had me thinking YES a storm system is coming our way, then reality kicked in and I'm realizing, oh dear we are in the middle of the prairie, no shelter except for a light weight wagon if mother nature is in a pissy mood and I've got horses to think about keeping them safe and not get spooked by a storm. All the worse case scenarios started racing through my thoughts, worse than most people' thoughts since I am a storm chasers and have seen mother nature do her worst, but thankfully the good Lord was definitely watching over this small moving town and the system went around us and the sun peeked out between the clouds before setting on the horizon. Whew!! A glorious higher being was watching over us that is for sure.
The setting sunset was spectacular.
There have been a few days and nights on this trip that mother nature decided that it couldn't all be perfectly warm weather and we've had a few days where it didn't get out of the 50's, cloudy, gloomy, got down in the low 30's at night. The horses don't mind this kind of weather, but their human counterparts it was a whole different matter. We had brought coats with us, but they were light weight coats and not the heavier ones that 30 degree temps required, so while sitting on that hard wagon seat, cushioned by a lawn chair cushion, everyone was wrapped in blankets and huddle close to the campfires at night.
It's hard to believe that we've been on the journey for 14 days now. Where has the time has flown? The horses have done really well, better than I expected. I really felt that we probably wouldn't make the whole trip because of something that might happen to one of the horses. Knock on wood we've had zero health issues, but we've had a few tantrums with horses, Dominic one morning didn't want to be hooked up the wagon, he kept side stepping or bucking. Poor Royston just looked at him like "dude!! really?!? get your butt over here and join me, so we can get this show on road." Royston has loved this whole experience and seems to enjoy getting hitched up to the wagon so he can toss his head and show up Dom. But for the most part they have been great big babies.
A lot of the time we have been traveling the back roadways, but a few times we have traveled through private property pastures, which has brought this whole experience into prospective of traveling before the existence of roads. Yesterday we actual travel a old wagon trail outside of Wessington Springs. At times you could faintly still see the old trail road that was carved into the ground hundred of years ago. That trail really brought the feeling of comrade with our forefathers to the forefront of why we were doing this trek.
September 19th
The last full day on this bittersweet journey, tomorrow at noon we will be riding through the streets of Pierre to our states capitol building. Tonight we are camping for the last night on the prairie just outside of Pierre. A part of me is ready for the trip to end and a huge part of me is not. This has been the most amazing journey with some of the most amazing people. I will leave this trip a wiser person I hope, with just a smidgen of understanding of what it took for our forefathers to pack up everything they possibly could and head out for the great unknown and find a place a long the way that they fell in love with and decided to put down roots in this vast open country.
They had such hardships to endure, the every day task of survival alone just amazes me. They were coming to an area that very few white people had traveled. Coming into a land that was the native american's home first and they were not happy to see these lumbering wagons, with their strange oxen, mules and draft horses filled with white people that wanted a piece of what they had had for 100's of years. Coming with strange customs, building wooden homes when trees could be found or building homes out of sod when on the prairie there isn't any trees. Our native american's for the most part were nomadic people, moving from area to area depending on the season and what kind of prey was available, so the white people moving in, changing and endangering their very way of life was so upsetting to them. Hence, the battle of Little Big Horn that took place in South Dakota and all the other battles that were or were not as famously known.
Since my first marriage was to a Sioux native I have a better perspective than most the prejudice on both sides of the board and I totally understand the native american's views, but now after taking this journey and recalling my grandmother's story of coming to SD in a cover wagon from Pennsylvania I can see the white man's point of view a little bit better too. From my grandfather telling us stories of how his father came to this area to homesteaded on the South Dakota/Minnesota border, of how he walked all night so he could be at the land registers office in Sioux Falls first thing in the morning to register his piece of ground that he choose to raise his family on before two claim jumpers tried to claim it first. Land that still remains in the family 100 plus years later.
Such incredible people have partaken this journey, people from all over this great nation, from Texas, Montana, our sister state North Dakota, which is also celebrating statehood, California, Vermont and even a couple from Canada joined this adventure. I've made new life time friends and have been touched and moved by every person along the way.
So in conclusion I want thank each and every one of you that have taken the time to read my story and followed a long with me, seeing just a bit of SD's history from my point of view from the seat of a wagon. A wagon that has been home these last 16 days and will be bittersweet when I return her back to the company that we rent it from. My body on the other hand will be thanking me and I'm so looking forward to taking a nice long bubble bath in my home, with my stuff around me and my cats sitting on the edge of the tub batting at the bubbles.
The end of the trail...the capital building in Pierre, SD.
