A Bittersweet Father's Day

Before we went off to church yesterday morning, my blonde beauties presented me with cards and gifts in honor of Father's Day. One of them was a Flip Ultra digital video camera pre-loaded with this kyoooot video for me! Here I am (photo above) givin' some sugar to the darling stars of the video.

Another gift was Missy Moo-berg, a carved wooden cow that lives now on the veranda next to Lyle Jerome Opdahl, Jr., a pig that we had bought for the veranda several weeks ago.

The bittersweet part of this Father's Day was the fact that we had to drop off Abigail and Suzanna at Bible camp south of Medora yesterday at 4:00 P.M. and say goodbye to Abigail for a few days and to Suzanna for the entire week. [*sad face*] After church we went to Medora to spend the first part of the afternoon together. We ate in the Rough Riders Hotel dining room, whose decor suggests the late 1800s when Theodore Roosevelt called southwest ND home. In the photo above, notice the animal skin on the wall behind us? It and others around the room are there because of Roosevelt's hunting expeditions to Africa. Anyhoo, the food was delicious (I had a buffalo burger with smoked gouda cheese.)

After dinner, we took a guided walking tour of downtown Medora ("Footsteps into Medora's Past") led by the knowledgeable but long-haired ("He needs a haircut, Dad," said the girls) young man in the dark jacket in the photo above. The man in the red shirt is a DSU colleague of mine portraying a German settler from Medora's early days ("time travelers" appear occasionally along the tour route to explain aspects of life in turn-of-the-century Medora).

This statue of the Marquis de Mores (founder of the town of Medora) stands in De Mores Memorial Park, a project of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration ("The New Deal") in the 1930s. A stop at the park was part of the walking tour.

One is not surprised in Medora to see horses, horse-drawn vehicles, and horse-mounted infantries (historical re-enacters, of course) interspersed among bicycles, cars, pickups, and RVs.

One never ceases to be surprised, however, at the beauty of the Badlands in southwest ND. Medora is right in the heart of them and lies at the foot of this range of buttes. In fact, the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park has its entrance in Medora.

After the walking tour, we all went mini-golfing. Susan won but got a sunburn on her chest, so it was a wash. Hillary was averaging 27 strokes per hole, which we found amusing but which didn't bother her in the least. Afterward we had tasty ice cream in waffle cones from the ice cream parlor downtown, sitting outside to eat while people-watching and enjoying the breeze.

We couldn't delay forever: eventually we had to take the two older girls to Bible camp. Badlands Ministries has a number of camp options for children of all age groups, including day camps for kids Hillary's age; so last week, Susan hauled Hillary to camp south of Medora in the afternoon and went and retrieved her at night both Monday and Tuesday (we opted not to send Hillary the third day of her session since the Zanders were here, and she wanted to spend the day with them instead). Abigail's camp session is a three-day, two-night thing (she comes home tomorrow). Suzanna's lasts until Friday morning. Here they are posing at the camp sign in Medora directing people down the right road to the camp site.

The camp lies along the Little Missouri River and is surrounded by the Badlands. This is a view from the area where the girls' cabins are located. We're hoping that the girls will be too busy to be homesick, but gorgeous scenery like this should help to keep them distracted, too (Abigail's group will be taking a mini-hike into these hills, and Suzanna's group will be horseback riding among them). Watch Pensive? No, Just Thinking for reports from each of the girls upon their return (Hillary has already returned, but she'll get a turn, too).