Day Two!  Here's Jean at her parents' crypt in Minneapolis.  The lady at the front reception gave Saara perfect directions to get to it-- completely wrong, but perfect.  Jean remembered where to go with no problem.  We also tracked down the  graves of Lilly Anne Nylen (AKA Big Sister) and her husband Paul.  Then we set off for Fargo.  During the drive something pretty nifty happened.  Backstory: I'd called a woman last week who lives in Iowa, saying we'd love to say hello when we passed through her town next week.  Her name: Jean E. Sarchet.  I said we'd found her name online and wanted to introduce her to another Jean E. Sarchet, likely a relative-- not too many Sarchets around.  She said sure, it sounded like fun.  Well, while we were driving today, my phone rang and Saara answered it-- it was Iowa Jean's father-in-law, who is a genealogist in Florida who said he'd been looking for Jean Sarchet Ylitalo for 25 years!  He's THRILLED to know she's still around and can't wait to meet Nana-- she's the last extant child of any of the original five Sarchet brothers born in the mid-to-late 1800s.  She's living history!  He's already begun to send stuff to Saara about the family, and we've brought some copies of photos of the five brothers to share with (the other) Jean Sarchet.  Anyway, big fun, and we've been invited to the Sarchet family reunion in Cambridge, Ohio this year or the next-- it's an annual affair.  Y'all come!

Then in Fargo we ate dinner at a lovely place I researched on line.  (I, Saaraliisa.)   Good good food. An unlikely find in Fargo!

Chris again.  During the trip we've been pumping Nana for information about her boyfriends in Mobridge-- it turns out there were a lot of them, and it's our theory that her dad sent her off to boarding school to save her from disgrace. (She says her dad, an MD, saw too many teen pregnancies!)  There was Jim Claymore, an American Indian.  Far as we can tell, it was when she was about 7.  She started early.  Then there was Billy Spylos, whose family ran the Greek restaurant in town across from the bank where Big Sister worked.  This seems  to have been in her early teens.  But the real heart-throb was a guy named Cuthbert-- "Cubby."  He was a FABULOUS DANCER.  Jean was about 15 and Cubby was 24.  Jean used to tell her dad she was going over to see Big Sister and then go out dancing with Cubby.  If we had to guess we'd say it was 24-year-old Cubby and his great dancing that convinced Dr. Sarchet to send Jean to St. Mary's.  Anyway, we're learning a lot about Jean's adventures in Mobridge-- more as it becomes available...