Lost!

I found another farmstead on the steam thresher grounds that seemed to be from an earlier era, before tractors, and it drew me like a magnet.  This portion of those 210 acres dedicated to past farming methods was the most peaceful yet, and I was lost in the past.

I would love to have ridden on this thing, but I never figured out where they boarded.  

 Time for this steed to go to work.

 These guys have work to do also.

 On the other side of that team of horses, people were sitting on the ground.  After the rain of the previous day, I hesitated to join them on the grass, but a guy assured me that the sunny areas were already dried out pretty well, so I down I went.  I did have my cane-chair with me, but on hilly, uneven ground, it's a little "tippy".  I knew I wouldn't be very graceful getting up off the ground, but I always manage; and I'll never see any of these folks again, so who cares?

It was at this point I remembered I had a husband somewhere and decided to check in.  For one thing, it was getting close to noon and I was starting to get hungry.  So I decided to call him.  As I opened up my phone (yes, we still use flip-phones), I noticed it had very little battery left and felt a slight stab of panic.  It took about three tries to even get my phone to ring through, but finally he answered.  He was watching a parade of steam engines, he said, not far from where I had left him.  I had no idea where he had been when I left him; I'd just been meandering wherever my feet carried me, counting on our cell phones to keep us connected.  I tried to explain my location to him ("Remember where we got on the train yesterday?  Right across the tracks from there, at the red barn").  He was clueless, but was going to try and find me.  I was to stay right where I was.  And by the way, his phone, he noticed, didn't have much battery left either.  He'd try to find me.

Well, I was obviously stuck in the horse-and-buggy era for awhile, so I noticed another old farmhouse I hadn't yet visited.  While this one looks really old, it was actually built fifty years ago by a member using plans from over 100 years earlier. 

This handsome little boy almost managed to distract me from the fact that my husband was missing.

The "lost" situation became worse:  Apparently there's only one cell tower in the boonies of Minnesota, and the closer it got to noon, the more difficult it got to get any call to ring through.  People were trying to connect with their loved ones so they could eat together, and I was using up what little battery my phone had left in failed attempts to call Cliff.  

He finally got through one last time, and said, "Meet me where we got on the train yesterday.  Stay there.  My phone is almost...."

And that was that.  Poof.  No more cell phone conversations.

I think at that point he made his way to a tram stop, asked if they went to the train depot, and was on his way.  It felt like I waited for at least an hour on Main Street, sitting on a bench where the people were lined up for the train.  But we DID finally get together again.

I want to go again.  Honestly, we each had more fun when we were each on our own.  We've been married 51 years, but our interests aren't always the same.  Once we got together, neither of us saw as much of what we wanted to see, and we missed seeing a lot of interesting displays just wandering around.  If we do fly up there sometime and rent a car, which IS the only way to go unless you're a seasoned truck driver and love driving long, boring miles on I-29, we now know we have to set a time and place to meet, because when it gets near meal time, cell phones are useless.  We might even remember to charge our phones before we arrive.