We next made it to Bismarck, ND. After a relaxing morning at the pool and water slides, which the kids loved, we took the Lewis and Clark riverboat down the Missouri river.
No, Siena isn't missing a tooth. That's just chocolate.
And Ellia has a blue tongue from a sucker.
Berren was feeling a little woozy so Heidi busted out the barf bag. He fell asleep this way.
The kids got to visit another captain's cabin and steer another ship.
Next day...Bowdon! Bowdon is a small town in the center of the state where my Grandpa Art was born and raised. Current population is a little over 100 people. Armed with Grandpa and several of the great aunt and uncles memoirs, we had our list of sites to visit and stories to place.
We met up with Rod Whitacre, the curator of the Bowdon museum. He has the museum well organized and filled with town relics. Here's the kids in front of the school exhibit.
The girls and I are contemplating the early hair perming apparatus. Ellia and I are glad our hair curls naturally after seeing this contraption.
This exhibit is dedicated to the local town doctor (pictured in the background). This doctor delivered Grandpa Art.
Siena had more fun drawing mermaids than seeing old stuff.
Yaya and Papa Ron check out the school exhibit.
The kids outside of the museum.
Rod then took us to the high school. The school has been closed up to students since 1998 and also served as the grade school. Grandpa Art and the other Torland kids attended school here as children. Of course it was fairly new then.This is urban spelunking at it's finest!
The kids in the gym in front of the class of '94s contribution to the gym wall.
Me trying out my ballet skills on the stage.
This is what remains of the school office. There is still furniture and papers left.
And the classrooms. The desks are for sale for $2 each if anyone is interested. What was cool about the classrooms is that there is a cloak room in the back of each of them.
The kids added their name to the chalkboard of messages.
The floors are quite buckled in many places, as Mason is demonstrating.
Heidi tries to bust into the door to the school attic.
Turns out Rod found the key. Now this is a scary staircase and somehow I ended up going up first. I was trying to determine what kind of poisonous spiders reside in ND the whole way.
A view of downtown Bowdon from the HS attic.
The attic window caught siena on the nose, giving her a nice cut and a nosebleed. I don't think she's anxious to go up there anytime soon. Mason wasn't too fond of the "bird bones" either. There were quite a few of those up there too.
Eating lunch at the Bowdon cafe. Rod, our tour guide, is seated to Luis' right. He was very nice and had a lot of jokes for us about "Ole and Lena".
After lunch we visited the Torland homestead, which is now the town landfill. Yaya found a broom to prop open our van door.
The Torland farm.
Papa Ron on the entrance to the farm/landfill.
We the drove up the road to the Bowdon cemetery.
Bowdon cemetery.
Photo on the grave of my Great Great Uncle George Torland. This was Great Grandpa Rasmus' brother who died at age 22 after complications from being gassed during WWI. The picture on the grave has held up amazingly well.
After Bowdon, we drove on to Fargo, ND for the night. The next day we headed east to Minneapolis. On the way, we stopped in Little Falls, MN to meet a relative of Anna Swanson (dad's grandmother). My dad's cousin David met us there and is with us in Minneapolis. From left, David, Mary Lou, Debbie, Dad, and Charlotte. Debbie and Charlotte are the relatives we met in Little Falls. You'll have to ask dad how the ancestory works. I'm still a little confused but it all goes back to Sweden.
Charlotte and Debbie have the family's old Bible from Sweden. This Bible was amazing. There's some uncertainly as to the year. One page has handwritten 1514...another has a copyright 1817. They know that the that the book was rebound at some point and missing pages put back in and the thought is that this is the work done in 1817. The original was several hundred years before that. It's reassuring that the family Bible is in good hands. They have taken very good care of it.
Charlotte and Debbie brought along some family pictures to share.
They took us to the town cemetery to see some family graves.
The group in front of the Peterson graves.
We headed on to Minneapolis after Little Falls, finding ourselves in quite the thunderstorm. The torrential downpour left us eating dinner of the happy hour menu at the hotel bar. Luis went outside at one point to plug the meter for the van and came in after a minute or two in the rain looking like he had gone for a swim in Lake Superior. This was some serious rain.
The kids in the gym in front of the class of '94s contribution to the gym wall.
Me trying out my ballet skills on the stage.
This is what remains of the school office. There is still furniture and papers left.
And the classrooms. The desks are for sale for $2 each if anyone is interested. What was cool about the classrooms is that there is a cloak room in the back of each of them.
The kids added their name to the chalkboard of messages.
The floors are quite buckled in many places, as Mason is demonstrating.
Heidi tries to bust into the door to the school attic.
Turns out Rod found the key. Now this is a scary staircase and somehow I ended up going up first. I was trying to determine what kind of poisonous spiders reside in ND the whole way.
A view of downtown Bowdon from the HS attic.
The attic window caught siena on the nose, giving her a nice cut and a nosebleed. I don't think she's anxious to go up there anytime soon. Mason wasn't too fond of the "bird bones" either. There were quite a few of those up there too.
Eating lunch at the Bowdon cafe. Rod, our tour guide, is seated to Luis' right. He was very nice and had a lot of jokes for us about "Ole and Lena".
After lunch we visited the Torland homestead, which is now the town landfill. Yaya found a broom to prop open our van door.
The Torland farm.
Papa Ron on the entrance to the farm/landfill.
We the drove up the road to the Bowdon cemetery.
Bowdon cemetery.
Photo on the grave of my Great Great Uncle George Torland. This was Great Grandpa Rasmus' brother who died at age 22 after complications from being gassed during WWI. The picture on the grave has held up amazingly well.
After Bowdon, we drove on to Fargo, ND for the night. The next day we headed east to Minneapolis. On the way, we stopped in Little Falls, MN to meet a relative of Anna Swanson (dad's grandmother). My dad's cousin David met us there and is with us in Minneapolis. From left, David, Mary Lou, Debbie, Dad, and Charlotte. Debbie and Charlotte are the relatives we met in Little Falls. You'll have to ask dad how the ancestory works. I'm still a little confused but it all goes back to Sweden.
Charlotte and Debbie have the family's old Bible from Sweden. This Bible was amazing. There's some uncertainly as to the year. One page has handwritten 1514...another has a copyright 1817. They know that the that the book was rebound at some point and missing pages put back in and the thought is that this is the work done in 1817. The original was several hundred years before that. It's reassuring that the family Bible is in good hands. They have taken very good care of it.
Charlotte and Debbie brought along some family pictures to share.
They took us to the town cemetery to see some family graves.
The group in front of the Peterson graves.
We headed on to Minneapolis after Little Falls, finding ourselves in quite the thunderstorm. The torrential downpour left us eating dinner of the happy hour menu at the hotel bar. Luis went outside at one point to plug the meter for the van and came in after a minute or two in the rain looking like he had gone for a swim in Lake Superior. This was some serious rain.
