Still in South Dakota

I first want to extend a huge congratulations to Cory's friend Arlin Landers. I had all intentions to do the blog just on Arlin. Arlin graduated this last weekend with the highest honors of becoming an Army Ranger. For those of you that do not reconize Arlins name--he lived with us the summer of 2002, he was a member of Cory's band and spent 3 months in our home. I had hoped so much that I could get some pictures up loaded of him--but I couldn't get it to work. Those that remember him--won't recognize him--when he lived with us he had long hair-in fact I don't think I ever saw his eyes before now--BOY what a change!! He is now married and has spent some time in Iraq and will be deploying back to Irag in 2-3 weeks. Cory and Angel flew to Georgia this last weekend to surprise him for his graduation. Arlin is the guy who introduced Cory and Angel, haven't seen him in 2 years, they were both so excited to get to go!! They were so impressed with his accomplishments and the graduation!! They got to see many routines that the Army rangers have trained for. Cory told me that he has the up most respect for what they do--and how they are trained to defend all of us. Arlin spent the last 61 days in the mountains, swamp and desert surviving. Arlin is among 37% of guys that can accomplish this rank their very first try. We are very proud of Arlin----
(when I get the pictures to work--I will be adding them)

Well, we have moved back to Yankton South Dakota. We arrived here on Friday and we had some small work on Saturday. The rest of the weekend was pretty well blah!! We have done absolutely nothing new to report on. We were told Friday that we should be here for a week, then I have a review that is in Philip SD, which is about 50 miles from Mount Rushmore, so our boss told us to prepare to work here then move to there to pick up more work and enjoy the black hills of South Dakota. So we do have something to look forward to. It will be totally different seeing new country and scenery.

BUT----we are on standy by for the California fires! Three different companies have been in contact with us to check our availability. We will not know anything until Thursday for sure--all depends on the quantity of claims and just how far down the list they go on deploying adjusters. So who knows--we have decided to work here and move along till the phone rings---

Maybe next week--I will have new and exciting news to report---sure hope so! Don't give up on me now!!

Until then.....................

Pheasant Season Has Opened!

South Dakota's pheasant season opened on Saturday at noon. Our boss here in South Dakota hosted a John Deere Risk Protection hunt. We thankfully were invited out to take part in the most impressive Pheasant Hunt either one of us has ever seen. With us having our own hunt at home, we didn't see this to be that big of a deal, BUT, things are a little different here in South Dakota. We arrived at 11:00 a.m. and everyone was preparing to leave the house. There were 14 licensed hunters and 5 extra to help block. We were at the first field promptly at 12:00 nooon to get started. Back in Texas we expect to sometimes hunt all day for 2-6 birds to be found and shot---here in South Dakota--15 minutes 11 birds down---DOWN--not how many were seen. We traveled to the next field 13 birds down. We haven't even spent 2 hours out and the limit was two thirds there. To make the day last longer they took what was killed back to the house at 2:00 to have some lunch. We women stayed behind to cook and get ready for the men when their day was complete. They were gone 1 more hour and came back with 50 birds total. They felt sure that they had shot well over 60 birds total, but finding them was a problem. With the corn harvest being so late, a lot of the corn is still standing in the field, so you must walk the tall corn to get the birds pushed up. Curtis and I were some of the blockers and it was so amazing to see 20-30 birds fly up at once--it literally sounded like a war zone. The dogs worked themselves to death.
This being an annual hunt, the food consisted only of pheasant. We cooked pheasant 3 different ways and then just added the trimmings. We really enjoyed gettting to eat in a kitchen/dining room setting. Curtis requested I make macaroni and cheese--and I cooked my pheasant chicken fried and cream gravy--so we did get to have some Texas cooking. The 2 women that were in the kitchen ask me what we would cook with the pheasant and I told them that we would definetly have red beans to go with that kind of meal---neither one of them had ever cooked much less seen a pinto bean. They requested next year that was to be my support for the meal--they wanted to try red beans. We also missed iced tea--they folks don't serve iced tea. Beer is the staple to the meal---and if you don't drink beer or water, you must bring "POP" along. We have laughted alot about how different our ways are, again!!!
With it being a John Deere pheasant hunt, we were able to meet the top dogs of the company and put faces with voices that we have been speaking with on the phone. So that was very nice-we all gathered at the end of the day to sit in a circle and our boss drug out the guitar for some just old fashion singing. It was very enjoyable to see so many just bellar out those old country songs. Lots and lots of laughter!!
We know we will stay in South Dakota for at least 1 more week--we never know how long we will be in any one place--but for now we have a lot of audits to work on. I will be crunching alot of numbers this week and believe it or not we still have an appraisal to do on corn. By now all of that should be complete but the weather has been such a damper on things--we didn't see sunlight for 5 days this week due to the rainfall.
Never know where our next weeks blog will come from--

Until then..........................

A WHOLE lot of NOTHING!

And this is what we have looked at for 1 week.

We arrived in Montana last Saturday evening and it was the longest drive and longest week of our journey. We stayed in the small town of 1200, in a 70's semi-clean motel room, 5 bars and 1 restaurant. We were the strangers that had came to town. Everywhere we went, the people would stop what they were doing and look at us. I have never felt so strange in my whole life. Just a little bit on edge---we were the strangers---and all the people were there to take care of themselves and their hometown. I found it very interesting that not one sole in Scobey, Montana is on welfare!! Noone that wants to do nothing wants to go to a place of nothing. We did get to meet several good people and listen and learn about their life in this area. It is in their lively hood and their blood. We learned you either love it or hate it! I fell into the latter category. We actually could have stayed for another week to finalize our work, but it is the hunters opening weekend and the motel was needing rooms---so, I was excited to say we could move on back to North Dakota to finish the audit work. I was happy to see that in the rear view mirror.
We did adjust some lentil beans for a 79 year old lady that still ran her farm on a day to day basis. She was the most exciting thing there was in Scobey, Montana. We visited with her for about 2 hours, which I could have stayed all day. She was born in her original home and her mother as born there in 1904. She started telling us about her childhood days when her mother worked just as hard as she and had to deal with gunslingers and outlaws. She said the Indians were very friendly when they crossed their land, mutual agreement that if you don't mess with them, they wouldn't mess with you. She told a story of an outlaw coming upon her families place when her mother was attempting to kill chickens for supper. The outlaw ask her mom how many she wanted for supper and with her mothers reply--We need 2 to feed everyone--the outlaw drew 2 silver shooters and blew off the chickens heads at the same time---WAY TO MUCH OUT WEST FOR ME!!!

We traveled over 2100 miles this week--and I am feeling it. Everyday was a huge jaunt--Friday we drove 119 miles before passing the first town--then we drove 248 miles one direction and passed only 3 towns--so you can get the jest of it!! We saw lots of deer and 1 red fox---looked for a moose all week, but it wasn't meant to be. Every farm we visited had seen moose withing the last month. The agency had one in their back yard just 10 days ago. We would have loved to seen one--but I hate to say maybe next time--but I really feel we will be called back to this area at some point. The company has only 2 adjusters in the whole state of Montana! Not enough for the God forsaken country.

Before we left Huron last Saturday, the town was having a scarecrow and pumpkin decorating contest. We enjoyed walking thru the park and checking out all the entries. I decided since their was not much to share about Montana--I would share some pictures of the creative ideas that these people came up with. It was a great event and some really neat ideas. There was 49 scarecrow entries and they have had this event for over 30 years.

We are in North Dakota for just 3 nights and we received the call to go back to South Dakota on Monday. We will be doing some more work for the same people that we had spent so much time with previously. Believe me, we are looking forward to it!! I will keep you posted---

Lots of word about lots of work all over the country--so who knows where we will land.

Until then...................

Up Rooting?! Literally!

We got notice last night that we will be up rooting and moving on to the next destination, tomorrow morning, October 6th. We are so excited about this move---we will be moving to Scobey, Montana. It is in the north east corner of Montana and is 15 miles from the Canadian border. Our work will be adjusting, range land, lintel beans, and forage. I will be doing some auditing also so we will both stay very busy for at least 2 weeks. I googled this town last night to find that we are going to be in neverland---1 motel, 4 restaurants and Walmart 150 miles away! We were told to bring extra supplies for computer and printer--no large town anywhere around. Another great adventure is coming up and the chance to see Canada--so exciting!!
Up rooting, literally was my title name because, not only are we up rooting and moving on, but Curtis woke up this morning with a dreaded tooth ache. He knew he had to get something done today, before driving the distance and not wanting to have the pain for 2 more days. After doing our job this morning, we decided to type in dentist on the GPS system, it took only 40 MINUTES to find the dentist and drive away with one tooth extracted. I couldn't believe how fast it was---the dentist even had to be called from home to come back to take care of this Texas guy with a toothache!! He is doing much better--but feels like a tree has been up rooted out of his mouth! So thankful for the helpful people in Brookings South Dakota to take care of this---

We have traveled many miles again this week--and in doing so we went through Mitchell, South Dakota, which is the home town of the Worlds only Corn Palace. It was so interesting and the pictures do it NO justice. One farmer raises all the corn, milo and rye that is used in making this art work every year. We were fortunate to see it as it was being done for the year 2008. They had almost completed it--as you can see 2 men still working on the production. They use over 300,000 pounds of corn product to cut up, bind together and nail to the wall. One artist designs the entire building, marks it off on black roofing paper and the men are hired to literally nail by number to get the designs, using over 12 different colors of corn. Everything you see is living product!!! The two large columns on each side of the center billboard are just milo heads---it is so cool!!!

A little further North and just East of Brookings we passed a farm that the owner has many extra hours in the winter to do his own artwork. He had so many sculptures--that a road had been carved out from people stopping and driving thru is field to check out all the junk iron he had welded to make his own yard art. I have a couple of pictures here showing some of his unique work. The Noahs ark was the most impressive for me--the ark was an old diesel tank, and I hope you can make out all the little critters as well as the elephants and giraffe. The Volkswagen spider was very cute also. He had built so many things we had to pick out what we liked best---Not enough room here to share it all!

The whole time we have been here, we have seen empty corn cribs on virtually every farm. I had mentioned that if there were so many, why wasn't there corn in some of them. Today--we finally found a full corn crib. The color from the road is incredible. Harvest is here---most all farms grow pumpkins in their gardens, so all houses have decorations galore, put the corn crib out front--your farm decoration is compete! I would say that South Dakota harvest is 1/4 complete--I wonder if harvest will be finished before the first snow?

We will drive 650 miles tomorrow to reach Scobey, it will be a long day and can't believe that in October we are worrying about reaching bad roads due to a snow storm arriving there tonight. One inch of snow is in the forecast with the temperature low being 26 degrees----Oh so glad we packed for winter months--will we see any snow--who knows--but I will be keeping you in touch!



Until then.............