Happy New Year!

From: Dan Trumble
Sent: Monday, January 01, 2007 10:25 PM
Subject: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Today our family went sledding.















Elizabeth


Stephen
























Jim



Stephen













Dan & Beth




Elizabeth

Dan & Will

Some mystery kid with Jim standing in the background.




Another mystery kid.




And yet another mystery kid. Wipeout!

Mount Rushmore 16 November 2006

From: Dan Trumble
Sent: Saturday, November 18, 2006 3:47 PM
Subject: Trumbles at Mount Rushmore 16 November 2006

Greetings.

On Thursday, November 16, the Trumble family visited Mt. Rushmore.

Mt. Rushmore is in South Dakota and depicts the images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln in the side of the mountain. The size of these guys would be about 465 ft tall or approximately 140 meters.

We had visited in May 2002 and stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Keystone, the town right near Mt. Rushmore. However, it turns out that much of the town of Keystone shuts down during the offseason and November is certainly part of the offseason. The Holiday Inn Express we had stayed in before was closed for the season and the place we ended up staying has lots of rooms but only keeps 6 open for use during this time of year. The guy at the hotel said there are two places in town to eat. During the summer there would be numerous options. We ate at a pizza place and it was really good. One of the pizzas we got was Ta Tanka (Buffalo).


The Mountain


A deer running in front of the mountain


The “devil eye” thing is just the reflection of a light on this picture but this gives a feel for the scale of the faces.


This is a picture of a display that shows how the faces in the mountain compare to some other large things in the world.




Trumble family




Will, Elizabeth, Jim, and Stephen


George & Stephen



George, Abe, and Elizabeth


George, Will, Jim, Elizabeth, and Stephen


George (in the distance) and Jim


The Presidents and the Kids


Dan & the Presidents


Beth, Will, and Jim and a mountain goat


Pizza

The Corn Palace and Laura Ingalls Wilder

From: Dan Trumble
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 2:49 PM
Subject: The Corn Palace and Laura Ingalls Wilder

Let me take a moment to answer a couple of burning questions that you probably would like for me to answer:


Question #1:
Dan, has your family ever visited the famed Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota?
Oh yes, we’ve been there (although Beth stayed in the car while the rest of us looked around).

The Corn Palace is a structure where conventions, basketball games, and presumably other good stuff, can happen in the fine community of Mitchell, SD. Each year it is decorated differently using Corn. This year’s theme is the rodeo. This is not the original Corn Palace but this one has been there since 1921. The Corn Palace, in some form or another, goes back to 1892.

_________________________________________________________

Question #2:
Dan, has your family ever traveled along the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway?
Oh, yes, we’ve traveled it (at least part of it).

Near DeSmet, South Dakota, is an old homestead property of Pa Ingalls (Charles) and it has been turned into kind of a museum. Included are a couple of representative dwellings (a sod house and a regular, above ground, house), a schoolhouse, a barn, and other good stuff. It is closed for the season but they allow people to walk around and check things out and we did some of that. My, but it was cold.

Quoting from a description posted inside “Ma’s Little House”:

In the Spring of 1880, to shelter his family of six, he [Charles] built a “half-house” of 140 square feet [13 sq meters]…In 1881, he added the second half, (an additional 140 square feet…While Mary attended the Iowa School for the Blind, Pa and Laura worked hard and saved money to purchase an organ as a surprise on her arrival home. Pa built a 16 foot x 20 foot addition to make room for the pump organ…This reconstructed claim shanty was built according to the description Pa wrote on the papers he filed with the government.


We visited the Corn Palace & the old Ingall’s homestead on Friday, the 17th of November before we got to my Aunt’s house in nearby Brookings, SD. After spending time with my family on Saturday, we left to drive to Iowa on Sunday at which point we continued down the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway which eventually took us through Walnut Grove, Minnesota. There’s even a Nellie’s Café there.

Corn Palace Stuff




Trumble Kids at the Corn Palace



Dan at the Corn Palace (I took the picture myself)









In these two pictures you can see how the ears of corn are used to make the pictures. That’s art, people!











Inside the Corn Palace there are pictures of many of the prior year versions.

1905


1997 (that’s me in the reflection!)












Laura Ingalls Stuff



Stephen & Elizabeth with “Ma’s Old House” and the stable in the background



Will & Jim in front of “Ma’s Little House”
















Elizabeth & a windmill


Windmill at Sunset



Pa & Ma. Pa sure doesn’t look much like Michael Landon!

The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument Aug 06

From: Dan Trumble
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 1:50 PM
Subject: Trumbles at The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument Aug 06

Listen, this is not as exotic as the whole “travel around the world” thing but it is what it is (and the family is along for this one).

We’re on our way to Oskaloosa Iowa where Beth’s folks live (as I write this sentence I’m sitting in a McDonald’s in Council Bluffs, IA). So, we did the Arch thing in Kearney, Nebraska. It’s not all that cheap ($29 for our family) but it is quite nicely done. It’s basically a museum documenting the travel to the west from the early pioneers to the miners to the cross-country railroad to a road for cars. Apparently Kearney is about 3 miles from the middle of that automobile road that ran from Boston to San Francisco (1733 miles to Boston, 1733 to San Francisco).

Outside there is a maze that kids can go through (that was $10 for the four kids). This morning, outside of the hotel was some thing. Steve thought it looked like a crust but it was really a flat frog. I had battery issues with the camera and didn’t get a picture. Somewhere I have packed some rechargeable batteries but I don’t know exactly where they are. $4.38 for 2 batteries at the place where we stopped for gas. I had a couple of batteries I had purchased in Indonesia in the community where we visited the project. I paid something like 70 cents for 4 batteries but when I put them in the camera the camera said to change the batteries.

What lessons can we learn from this?

• Have a good battery strategy so that you’re prepared to take pictures of flat frogs and other wonders.
• If you have rechargeable batteries, know where they are.
• If you pay 20 cents or less for a battery, don’t get your hopes up
• If you have to buy batteries at a convenience store/gas station, you will pay through the nose…ouch.

Here’s some pictures from the Kearney, Nebraska area.

Arch spanning I-80 and four Trumble kids in the bright sun.

Big Bison.

Bright Sun.

Beth helping some cross-country travelers push their wagon.

Four Trumble Kids and a bunch of Mormons with handcarts

I-80 from the Arch

The Maze. There are 4 corners and the goal is to get to each tower and punch a card and then return. It is timed. The Trumble kids did not break any records for speed.

Jim in the maze.

Sunset 3 Aug 06