Amy Sue's Travelogue: Mystery Tour 2022 Day 3

 Just when you think it can’t possibly get any better, it does. Take breakfast at the Sleep Inn. I wasn’t going to have pancakes until I saw it. A space-age pancake machine right out of the Jetson’s. You push a button and batter drops onto a conveyor griddle inside a windowed metal box about 18 inches long. When the batter hits the end of the runway a fully cooked pancake emerges through a slot and drops into thin air. You catch it with your plate. Let’s do that again! Yup. Twice before I reluctantly gave up my place to the next in line. They weren’t that tasty but so much fun.

Today was jam-packed. First, Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park and a tour of General Custer’s house. A young historian dressed in a period uniform (corporal) gave an outstanding performance totally in character as he welcomed led us through the Custer’s home in their absence. Our group played along, asking the corporal questions as if we really were visiting the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in 1875.

Next we saw a Native American village with unusual domed earthen dwellings. Then to the North Dakota Capitol building, one of only a few skyscraper Capitols in the nation, 18 stories tall. Before the Capitol we ate Irish Stew at the Blarney Stone Pub. I forgot to get a picture of it, thickly scrumptious in a bread bowl. Up next was the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum. Supper was on the Missouri River, ribs and chicken catered by Famous Dave’s aboard a paddle wheel riverboat. What. A. Day.

One thought to end day 3. From a plaque in the State Museum:

“It’s easy to overlook small things. If you take the time to look closely, to really consider them, you will find they tell amazing stories.”

I read this and wanted to put it into practice. To tell you a big story about a small thing for tonight’s update. But nothing struck me. Afternoon ended. I ate my ribs during the riverboat dinner thinking hard about the possibilities. We’d moved so fast today I hadn’t seen too many small things.

Maybe the steel cup the corporal held in his hand as he talked about General Custer? He had put it down on a bench outside the front door when he invited us to come in. Why? Probably an absentminded act as he unlocked the door. Like me on Custer’s grand staircase in the front hall. I’d absentmindedly counted the stairs. Eighteen. Interesting but not really a story.

I thought about the chinking between the pole logs that braced the Indian dwellings. Mud and grass it looked like. Mud floor too. Hard packed. Had the same old air and fur smell I encountered once long ago in a second hand shop with old mink stoles. Again, not quite a story.

I finished eating and walked up the stairs to the riverboat’s top deck. Days end was near. I’d about resigned myself to having no story to tell tonight when I saw it. The dock was in sight. Diesel fumes roiled as the engine slowed. I looked back at the retreating car bridge we had just gone under and there it was. A community of swallow nests, birds darting in and out of their holes, oblivious to everything but their daily lives. Their story is simply their life, no matter who floats under their bridge. Life continues.

Same for us. Daily life is life. One small thing after another, commonplace in our day, novelty when we become history. Life is the story. But the small things that build daily life are hard to see from the inside. Travel takes us out of our daily life. Makes it possible to see small things in new ways. Puts life into perspective as we encounter the lives of others, present and past.

We head for home tomorrow. What has PTS Tours got up its sleeve for tomorrow, I wonder? Something memorable no doubt. Big or small, won’t matter. Tomorrow’s gonna be a good day. I can feeeel it! Good night all.


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