Pipestone National Monument Archives

MN Buffalo Ridge series [The To and From] [Gibbon, MN] [Pipestone National Monument] [Blue Mound State Park] [Morton, MN Monuments]

We had wonderful weather for our exploration of Pipestone National Monument in Pipestone, MN. It is amazing to see these quarries and the amount of Sioux Quartzite rock that was removed by hand with only hand tools to expose the pipestone. We were not fortunate enough to witness the actual mining of the pipestone, but did speak with the artisans inside that were carving pipestone and working with sumac to form the pipe stems.

I won’t ramble on with the complete history of this very interesting place. Just let you imagination wonder while viewing the photos of what it must have been like in a different time. If you want to know more, visit Pipestone, MN and see it first-hand. The National Park Services has a wonderful website about all things in Pipestone, MN.

Catlinite (also called pipestone or pipeclay) is a type of argillite, usually brownish-red in color, which occurs in a matrix of Sioux quartzite. Because it is fine-grained and easily worked, it is prized by Native Americans for use in making sacred pipes such as calumets (Fr: “hollow reed”) and chanunpas. Pipestone quarries are located and preserved in Pipestone National Monument outside of Pipestone, Minnesota, in Pipestone County, Minnesota, and at the Pipestone River in Ontario, Canada.
~Wikipedia

MN Buffalo Ridge series [The To and From] [Gibbon, MN] [Pipestone National Monument] [Blue Mound State Park] [Morton, MN Monuments]

After a short drive to drop off the furry kids at grandma’s house, we set out for Buffalo Ridge – specifically Pipestone, MN. I have wanted to make this in-state journey for some time now and just haven’t gotten around to it.

Back in-the-day, when I would travel anywhere, it was balls to wall (just recently learned the origin of this) with no time spent in between stopping for anything. These days, when Cyndie and I travel, I look for most any excuse to take a back road or generally deviate from the prescribed path the GPS has set forth. We stop for bakery’s, ice cream, antique stores, nursery & greenhouses, interesting small towns – we’ve managed to create an exhaustive list of excuses to stop. More often than not, we stumble upon fun, interesting, and often times tasty things. For all these reasons, if the route says 2 hours, you can count on it taking use at least 4 hours. After all, it is all about the journey.

This is the first of five post detailing our recent excursion to Buffalo Ridge and as the title states, these are the shots heading to and back home from our destination.