A Lot of Mounds

It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened.  Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many.

--Huckleberry Finn

Today was a day full of mounds.  Last night I stayed in Blue Mounds State Park in Minnesota, and today I visited Effigy Mounds National Mounds before I stopped for the night at Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa.

My cousin Mike, his wife Fe, and our breakfast

Fe, my cousin Mike’s wife, cooked a huge breakfast of eggs, French toast, sausage, and bacon before I left Fargo yesterday. It was enough to feed about 20 people, so I did my best to load up with as much as my belly could handle before hitting the road.  As I drove away from their house down Interstate 29, I hit a new low.  Low temperature, that is.  It was 37° at about 11am when I left, and the wind was howling which made it feel like about 25°.  When I had to stop for gas, I was very glad that I had thrown a winter coat into my van before leaving Arroyo Grande. It really was an afterthought—I haven’t used that coat in at least four or five years, and I don’t even remember why I originally bought it. It sure did come in handy though. 

I stopped for the night at Blue Mounds State Park in Luverne, Minnesota. This actually was my second option of places to stay.  My first choice was going to be a bit further east in Kasota, Minnesota.  The reason for that was there is a place there where you can drive a real tank.   It sounded fun and I was looking forward to it, but when I called them I found out that they only operate on a few weekends each month.  I tried a bit of a sob story saying I would only be driving through on a Tuesday, but they apologized and said they didn’t operate on that day.  Bummer.  So I ended up going to Luverne (not Shirley) instead. While it wasn’t as cold as Fargo, the thermometer was still struggling to reach 40°.  It also was rainy and foggy out, so there wasn’t much to do but hunker down in my van, turn the heater on, and catch up on reading Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck. 

Looks more pink than blue to me...

By morning, the fog and rain had passed and sun streamed into the windows on my van.  I woke up and went for a short hike through the park. It was still cold out—about 38°--but at least there was no rain.  Exploring the park, I couldn’t figure out why they called it “Blue Mounds.” There were no mounds and it certainly was not blue.  There was, however, lots of red and pink quartzite throughout the park, both in cliffs and in large boulders strewn throughout the prairie grounds of the park.  I later found out that the pink quartzite apparently looked blue in the distance as early settlers approached it.  I’m further guessing that it’s called a “mound” because it is at the spectacular height of at least 30 feet, which on the incredibly flat prairie really is like a skyscraper.  As I walked through the trails of the park, a herd of bison grazed in the distance.  I made sure to stay far away so that I didn’t end up in the middle of a stampede for a second time on this trip.

After a short three-mile journey around the park, I returned to my van, packed up and headed for Pike’s Peak State Park in Iowa (It actually is named after the same Zebulon Pike as Pike’s Peak in Colorado.  Apparently this Zebulon guy liked peaks across the US).  Shortly before I reached Pike’s Peak, I saw signs for Effigy Mounds National Monument.

See the bear shape?  Me neither...

Figuring that it fit in with my mound theme for the day, I stopped in to see what it was.  A friendly lady with short dark hair and round glasses greeted me as I walked into the visitor’s center.  She asked if I’d been there before, and I told her that I hadn’t; I was just driving by and saw the signs and figured I’d check it out.  She explained that the park was created to protect mounds of dirt that were created by American Indians who lived in the area between 850 and 1400 years ago.  The mounds apparently were made for a variety of ceremonial purposes—some of them even are believed to have been used as burial spots.  Most of them look like nothing more than areas where the ground rises up a couple of feet, and it would be hard to distinguish them from the surrounding landscape.  A few of them, though, are in the shapes of bears and birds.  They still are hard to distinguish unless you are looking at them from directly overhead, but after walking around them a few times at ground level you can get an idea of the shapes.   

The Mississippi River

Eventually I made it to Pike’s Peak State Park, located in the northeastern corner of Iowa near the town of McGregor. This park offers some very nice views of the confluence point of the Mississippi River and the Iowa River.   Tomorrow morning I’ll continue my journey south along the Mississippi River into Missouri.  Driving along the Mississippi River makes me wish I had a raft so I could just sail on down it to an adventure.  And with all this talk about rafts and Missouri and the Mississippi River, I’ll give bonus points to anyone who can guess where I’ll be stopping tomorrow…