You are gonna think this is crazy
The Mississippi River on the Completion of my first RAGBRAIs at age 70. This has led to a pathetic attempt to prove I’m still young by doing the Tour D’ Afrique in January 2023 at the age of 78+. The ride is from Cairo to Cape Town, about 7,000 miles over the span of 4 months. This blog is created to document in real time, the training and the actual ride.
On the morning of June 30, 2022, my 78th birthday, I packed my camping gear and two bicycles in my Toyota FJ and began a West Coast Odyssey. One purpose of the trip is to learn and practice the blogging process. So here goes.
After driving two hours north to Spencer, Iowa and having breakfast with my brother Dean, l headed west. My destination was Pipestone National Monument just above the Iowa border in Minnesota, but more about that later.
While still in Northwest Iowa I felt compelled to seek out Iowa’s point of highest elevation,
Mount Whitney, elevation 14,505 feet above sea level is the highest point in the lower 48 states and by default, California’s highest peak. Naturally, when seeking Iowa’s highest, one would assume the probability of a promontory of one sort or another.
One would be wrong.
Ocheyedan Mound, once thought to be Iowa’s highest point, comes to mind. It is a glacial Kane, a mound of gravel and rocks dumped from a melting glacial lake some 12,000 years ago. Think of it as the sand left behind in the bottom of an hour glass – after the hour glass disappears.
However, with the advent of more sophisticated measuring tools, Iowa’s highest point was determined to be 12 miles northwest of Ocheyedan Mound and 15 feet higher.
Thus, and most unfortunately, giving credence to Flat Earthers and all non-native Iowans who mistakenly think all Iowa is flat.
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The Pipestone Monument sits on the southern edge of a land form dipping down into Iowa’s extreme NW corner. Named the Cocteau Des Praries or “Highland Prairies” by the French fur traders of the late 1600’s, it is a finger of land that escaped glaciation between two lobes of the Wisconsin Glacial Episode 25,000-75,000 years ago
The primary features of these highland prairies are the pinkish hued Sioux Quartzite rock formations. Sioux Quartzite was formed between 2.5-1.6 billion years ago when quartz sand flowed down an ancient braided river, Probably similar to, but much larger than today’s Platte River.
Then, over hundreds of millions of years the sands were pressed into a rock harder than steel. A period of environmental change then washed clay into these river beds and then ultimately covered them up again with 10 to 20 feet of more Sioux Quartzite.
Over 3000 years ago the indigenous peoples of the areas discovered this vein of claystone and found its softness, about the consistency of your fingernails, to be ideal for carving. Especially for carving sacred pipes.
The sacred pipe was revered as a holy object and the sacrament of smoking was employed as a major means of communication between humans and sacred beings. The narcotic affect of the tobacco (The plains Indians used herbs bark and other plant matter) and the symbolization of the Indrawn and ascending smoke affirmed that such communication took place. – britannica.com
The lands of the pipestone were seated to the US government in treaties of the 1800s but with perpetual rights to quarry lime stone. The pipestone national monument was created in 1937 and rights for a Native Americans to continue to quarry Pipestone were maintained. The land is a land of unparalleled beauty.
And finally, as I was walking the trail of Pipestone National Monument, I noticed this rock used as a step in a stairs on the path.
The ripples on this rock were formed from waters lapping at the sands of a shoreline over 1.5 billion years old.