I crossed something off my bucket list today: Jeffers Petroglyphs. It was a three-hours-one-way drive that was mostly pleasant, especially when I was sleeping. No, I really do love rural MN and this time of year it is particularly GREEN. Almost aggressively green. Almost the kind of green that isn't seen in nature...except that...uh....
And it rained a lot. We hid out in a Hardee's (we have no Hardee's in urban MN, but they are all over rural MN, same with Casey's convenience stores) for lunch wait out the rainstorm. Jim had it all worked out from his favorite app (Accuweather? I'm not sure, but it's a weather app) that the rain would be gone by the time we reached the historical site and he was right. When we started the drive back, the rain resumed. Lucky us!
Anyway the petroglyphs were hard to pick out at times. The park did offer interpretive signs so you could tell what you were looking at, though, and then I kind of learned what to look for. I was expecting a few little pictures here and there, but on the little outcropping of quartz, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000-5,000 individual carvings. There are several theories of why the ancient people carved what they did, and Jim's and my theory is that the ancient people's kids were bored, found some rocks, and did the ancient version of drawing on scrap paper, carving squiggles and stick people into the quartz near their settlement when the adults weren't looking.
We also saw an outcropping of rock that had parts of it rubbed smooth by buffalo scratching themselves on it. I touched it and yes, it was really smooth. Glassy almost.
Our feet got wet from the walk, but it was worth the drive. Also saw a bird on the path, presumably stunned due to a smack against the glass of the park building. It was too stunned to fly away when I bent down to touch a feather. I didn't bother it beyond that. I hope it's ok.
On our way home, I got some pictures for my watertower picture collection. Then we stopped at the giant yellow candy store in Belle Plaine for a couple pieces of candy and a pie. They opened for the season today, and it was packed.
Pictures? OK!
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| Arlington's watertower is disguised as a baseball. Jim liked this one. |
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| Classic style for Winthrop |
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| Nice use of the stem, Franklin, although Catfish Capital? Really? |
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| E's stunned. |
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| prairie flower |
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| outcropping with interpretive signs and ropes to show us where not to step |
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| hard to see, but the petroglyphs are there. There's a bulbous image near the bottom of the picture. |
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| an upside down horse or buffalo |
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| a three-pronged thing |
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| several images near to each other |
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