Our last day on our Sarchet Odyssey, our last breakfast in the Midwest.  This one was great, not so many transfats....

 The corridors of our hotel function as a gallery.  Note: the black garbage bags at Saara's feet are made from bronze and the guys behind her are 8 feet tall and made of latex. 

Got to the airport early, just in case, had a nice lunch and then waited for FOUR HOURS as our flight was pushed back again and again.  Got home around eleven.  Nana said she'd had a great time, but was happy to return to her own bed. "Well, that was really fun, who gets to do that!" said she.  In the plane she said New England was the best part, being in the house where she was born. 

Home again, home again, jiggety jig. 

 We started the day swimming in St. Paul.  It was a "free day" we'd built into the schedule in case we needed it on the road, so since we'd made good time, we spent the day shopping!  Saara, future grandmother, and Nana, future great-grandmother again, bought some clothes for Vanessa and Tim's future production.  Much fun.

 In late afternoon, we checked into a very nifty hotel, Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis.  It's an artsy place with lots of art on loan from the Walker Art Center.  The whole place reeks of hipster cred and has a black-and-white minimalist sheen.  Above is the bathroom.  Can you find the TV in the bathroom?  Right in the center of the photo, reflected in the glass.  It faces the toilet.  What won't they think of next?  Saara got an unbelievable deal on the rooms-- some glitch at Travelocity  They usually go for $799 a night.  Two rooms, $1598.  But wait!  Your price?  Only $160 a room!!  How does she do it-- Saara doesn't reveal all her tricks....

 Here's Nana in her room-- Saara snapped a photo as she was leaving her to her nap.  Wave to the camera, Nana!

 The evening found us out to dinner with Jean's brother-in-law Ron, with his sons Grant, left, and Craig, right.

 Left to right, Kris (Craig's wife) and Saara and Jean.  We're at Ike's restaurant right downtown in MPLS.  Two blocks away was a One Direction concert.  You've never seen so many 13-year-old girls in one place, unless it was a Justin Bieber concert.

11 PM at le Meridien.  All is quiet.  We believe we are among the few guests in our rooms and not out being hip.
Tomorrow home again. 

 Fun stop at an A&W Drive-In somewhere between Fairmont and Faribault.  Not many other customers-- it was 90+ degrees.  Who sits in a hot car to eat a hot dog on a day like that?  Well, we enjoyed it.  Look closely-- just over Chris' shoulder is Nana in the back seat deconstructing a BBQ sandwich.

 Nana at St. Mary's, where she went to high school, most recently 76 years ago.  (Class of 1937)  This is the Dining Hall.  Nana told us that the raised platform was where the headmistress ate, and when students first arrived at school they were seated close to the platform so she could pass judgment on their table manners.  Nana got off probation quickly, and (as you all know) is still a stickler about table etiquette.  I still get a lecture if I set down the napkin with the crease facing her.  NEVER DO THIS!

 Things got very interesting when some very friendly St. Mary's administrators (the Head Master of Shattuck St Mary's and the Head of the Middle School) sat down to show us Jean's yearbook.  (He brought along John's yearbook from Shattuck as well-- we found out that John, or "Yil" as he was known, was a handsome devil at the age of 18.)  We had great fun paging through the yearbook and finding Jean's face in pretty much every club portrait.  Best of all, though, was her class picture, under which were cryptic notes about her.  Most of the girls had little nicknames or words like "perky personality" or 'Bridge addict." 

This was what was written under Jean's picture:  "Dark Corners.  Anonymous Letters.  O.U.L." 

Doesn't that sound like an abbreviated Dan Brown novel?  She doesn't remember what O.U.L. stands for, nor what the other phrases refer to.  The mystery deepens, but we can't help but think that Cubby's somewhere in the mix....

 The Drawing Room where the girls had coffee after dinner; now it is just a student lounge. 

 Above, inside St Mary's Hall; below, the graduate in front of the sacred building.  In her day the whole school was in this one large building: classrooms, dinning hall, and dorm rooms.  Now it is the middle school and there is a new building for the high school.  But as much as its changed, she felt very much at home and remembered a lot about the good old days.  She had a lovely time, and everyone was happy to take her around and talk with her. 

The Birthday Boy-- we will fete him when the whole family is together in DC next week. 

 Saara and Nana began the day with a nice swim in Yankton.  It was a relaxing day-- not too much to do but move toward our next destination, Nana's high school in Minnesota-- we'll be there tomorrow.
For those following the original itinerary, we've excised the Iowa portion.  Sadly, the other Jean E. Sarchet can't meet with us, so we're heading straight to Faribault and St. Mary's School where Nana graduated in 1937.

 Here's a mid-day feast at Burger King.  Chris had begged to go to BK, and after whining and whining, he got his way.  Lunches have been on-the-road affairs generally, and dinners more judiciously chosen.  But we've been eating TOO MUCH, like good Americans, so it'll be a relief to return home and be fed by the more health-conscious Saara.  (Sadly, here it is about 10 hours later, and Saara and Chris are both making frequent visits to the bathroom.  We're blaming the oil the onion rings were fried in.  No more BK for this trip...)

 Nana's been enjoying the vast plains and rolling fields.  She was really impressed with all the windmills along Route 90.  Saara took this shot through the windshield-- at one point we could see more than 200 ranged across the horizon.  Nana seems very content to watch the prairie roll by, keeping track of our progress on her map.  She hasn't napped once; doesn't want to miss any of the scenery.

 With few exceptions, this is the kind of place we've stayed in.  Minimum-security-prison-modern.  Very comfortable, but dispiriting somehow-- enervating.  We suspect there are ennui-radiation generators in the walls.  Can't complain too much though: all is clean and comfy and uniformly bland. 

Didn't we have Mexican last night??  Yes!  And we're having Mexican tonight as well!  This time, though, we shared some appetizers, skipped entrees, and tried not to over-eat.  I quit after my 7th margarita, though-- no need to overdo it...

Forgot to put Chris in front of his house, like Nana in front of her's.  This was Monday.  Now we are off again!

Here we are in Mitchell at the Corn Palace-- THE ONLY CORN PALACE IN THE WORLD.  The top photo shows some workers nailing some corn onto the building, and down below Jean and Saara are holding a bundle of dried grass ready to be stapled to the wall.  If you like corn it's a hell of an attraction.  After Mitchell, on to Yankton.  We drove through beautiful countryside, flat and filled with crops.  Nana said, "I love all the nothingness!"

OK, now the rest of this day is about Chris and his younger years in Yankton.  Nana and he cooked up this trip because they were both from South Dakota.  So now we are going around looking at things and places that are important to Chris.  I thought Nana would want to rest, but she said, "No he had to take me around to all my cities and houses, now I want to see where he came from."  Here he is in Yankton next to his great grandfather's gravestone: Joseph Ward is one of the founders of the state of South Dakota.  Nearby are the graves of Chris' father and grandfather.

The boys: Guy, Bob and Chris.  They went to grade school, middle school and a bit of high school until Chris moved away.  They're his oldest friends.  Guy and Chris are in full geezer attire; Bob's in work clothes-- he's a stockbroker.  He's also a long-term survivor of pancreatic cancer-- his case is so rare that he's literally one in a million.  Living in Yankton all their lives, Guy and Bob know everything that's happened in this small town for the last 50 years.  It's fun to hear their stories and giggle about the old days.  After visiting with Bob, Chris and Guy went to the Ice House, America's only drive-in bar.  They pulled up and rolled down their windows and ordered some beers from the waitress, drank them in their car and drove away.  All perfectly legal, by ordinance-- as long as the bar is owned by the Einar Anderson family, it's legal.  Don't you wish every community had a drive-in bar?

Couldn't resist this one.  Guy made this happen, he wanted to humiliate his friend, and he did.  Wednesday is Chris' birthday, so we have started to celebrate early.  (Note from Chris: that hat was really heavy.)

Nana in front of her house in Mobridge.  With the exception of a large carport, it looks exactly as it did in 1928.   We had a nice photo that had been taken in the early thirties and gave it to the owner, who seemed underwhelmed.  (She just bought the house in April and had no idea when it was built or who ever owned it - and didn't invite us in)  Nana knew the neighborhood well and we drove around and noted all the places that still seemed the same: library, Masonic temple, bank, etc.  Mobridge has a pleasant small-town feel-- few stop signs, since there's not much traffic and everyone drives about 15 miles an hour.  

Nana's house on the right.  At its immediate left, the home of Cubby, her ardent swain.  Kathy tells me I got it wrong-- he wasn't ten years her senior, only nine years older.  Mea culpa.  They were unquestionably a woosome twosome.  Nana tells us that she and Cubby liked to cross the river and park on a bluff for extended periods.  When they returned home, they'd park in his garage to say good night.  In Nana's words, "It took us a long time to say good night."  Romance!  We drove by to see the garage.  Nana was disappointed to see that it had been torn down replaced by a patio.  Saara and I now understand with even more certitude why Dr. Sarchet felt it was a good idea to send his 15-year-old daughter to a girls' academy a few hundred miles away....

Eventually we drove by Big Sister's house.  Our family had stopped by in 1995 and met the new owners at the time.  The were renovating the whole house.  It really is beautiful now, the nicest house by far on the central park, but they were not home.

A lovely drive from Mobridge to Mitchell was enlivened by (as Hunter S Thompson would put it) a King Hell Bitch of a rainstorm-- it rivaled any downpour we'd seen in Costa Rica.  We pulled over due to low visibility and high winds.  A few minutes later, the sun returned.  Jean loved looking out the window at the thousands of hay bales and the dilapidated barns-- "I'm feasting my eyes!" she said.  She had the map in her lap and navigated the whole way. 

These towns are on the old Milwaukee Road rail line-- Dr. Sarchet moved to Mobridge to work at their affiliate hospital, and Big Sister's husband Paul Nylen was a brakeman for Milwaukee Road.  Every town has a depot; almost all are shut down now since the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe line uses different routes and ships freight instead of passengers.  Here in Mitchell we dined at The Depot, a nifty restaurant in the old Milwaukee Road depot.  For the last four days we've been eating Midwestern style: in short, TOO MUCH.  So we tried to eat light tonight.  But even the smallest portions are Brobdingnagian.  Nana likes to point out all the very very large people we see.  It keeps her busy.