May 15 - Falls Park, Sioux Falls, SD
Wow, these falls are pretty impressive. The quartzite rock the Big Sioux river runs through is very hard, almost as hard as diamonds – the river has been flowing through this same landscape, apparently, for over 10,000 years.
In 1881, a mill was built on the side of the river, diverting some of the water to turn a turbine to power the milling equipment. But due to a lack of water (hmmm) and a lack of grain, the business went bust a couple of years later.
Here are the remains of the mill building.
We walked across the bridge at the right side of this picture and strolled up the west side of the falls. The observation tower is in the background.
I shot this video from the bridge.
I caught up with Jen at the lookout close to the largest waterfall.
On the way back to the bridge I found this guy.
From the observation deck, I took this picture. Quite the site!
We strolled up the other side of the falls and I found this interesting plaque.
Back in the van, we headed downtown for a coffee. We walked along Phillips Ave and found a lot of "street" art. This one caught my eye.
We found a French cafe and had a bite. Pretty quiet place for a Sunday morning.
We then headed to the Yankton trail park and walked the paved bike/pedestrian trail for about 3 miles. The sun was shining with a slight breeze – it was very pleasant.
Back at the rv park, we bumped into Terry, the park owner. The wifi hasn't worked since last night so I asked what was happening. I won't bore you with the details, but it doesn't sound like we'll have wifi before we leave – technical problems somewhere.
Tomorrow we head east on I90 - the lesser of all evils - as it's the only highway that goes where we want to go. We're heading in the direction of Green Bay, WI but that's too far for one day's drive so we might just spend the night in a rest stop as we have done before.
We'll see you in a couple of days.
