Discovering the Dutch in Orange City.

Why would anyone want to name a city after the color orange?

Apparently, Dutch people who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1880s decided to honor the country they left by naming their new home "Orange City," after the royal line of the Dutch monarchy, which is the (….wait for it…) House of Orange.

As noted on the welcome sign at the outskirts of town, Orange City is proud of its  Dutch heritage.

At the center of town is a park with six model windmills and a large garden that is filled with tulips in the spring.

The chamber of commerce is located in a larger windmill at the entrance to the town.

Many of the buildings in downtown Orange City are marked by Dutch facades. Street signs advertising local businesses use Dutch phrases.

Even the local grocery store advertises itself as a “broodjes winkel” (sandwich store).

Every year in May, the city hosts a tulip festival with a parade and lots of Dutch activities like street sweeping and dancing. Local residents dress up in costumes that reflect the different provinces in Holland. 

Our friend Anita has a costume from the province of Friesland, which is where my mom’s family is from. I told Anita that if the Dutch are stubborn, the Frisian people are the most stubborn Dutch people of all. They have their own language with their own vocabulary and insist on differentiating themselves from people in other parts of Holland.

There's a saying that “You can tell the Dutch, but you can’t tell them much.” That does not seem to apply to the people of Orange City, whom we found to be friendly and gracious.

Must not be too many people with Frisian roots in the town.

The Right Decision

Day 20--After leaving Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we drove to the Dutch town of Orange City to spend time with our friend Anita.

We first met Anita 14 years ago when we were in a church care group together. We learned that she was wrestling with a decision. She loved Oregon and enjoyed her job at a nearby Christian college but felt called to return to South Dakota in order to be closer to her family. So, Anita accepted a position at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, about an hour from her family in South Dakota.

Even though Anita left Oregon, we remained friends. She remembered our birthdays with handwritten letters, wrote to us at Christmas, and always let us know when she was returning to Oregon for some vacation time so that we could see each other.

In Orange City, Anita bought and fixed up a home, planted a garden, and invested in a town noted for its Dutch roots and annual Dutch tulip festival. Anita, a German-Latvian, even bought a Dutch costume and her own pair of wooden shoes so that she could help out at festival time. 

We remembered Anita's struggle to quit her job and leave Oregon so that she could engage more fully with her family. Twelve years later, as we sat on the porch of her beautiful home and heard her talk about her life in Orange City, her job, her church, her friends, her involvement with her two nephews, her daily contact with her 93-year-old dad, who had moved to Orange City to be near her, we asked her if she had made the right decision. 

She looked at us with a smile on her face and said, "Yes. God is faithful. It was the right decision."

We only had one night at Anita's home. Not long enough to truly catch up. But we take comfort in the promise that we will be together in heaven, where time will be no more and where we will enjoy each other's companionship forever.

Glimpses of God's Grace

Days 17-20--For the past four days, we've stepped into the lives of my (Lynn's) older sister, Phyllis, and her family.

Phyl and her husband, Herm, now retired, have lived in various towns in North and South Dakota as well as Nebraska, where Herm has pastored nine churches in his 38 years of ministry.  Phyl has taught in many elementary schools in that time period, in addition to caring for the needs of their four children. The day before we arrived in Sioux Falls, Phyl and Herm celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary.

This is an unusual year in that this is our second visit to South Dakota in four months. Her youngest child, Sarah, was married in May, and Bas, Alisa, Joe, and I spent a delightful six days with the Van Stedum family then.

These past few days, however, we've had leisurely time to talk for hours with Sarah and Alex, about their new life together, their hopes for the future, the decisions that lie ahead for them, the challenges they face with Alex's health. Plus, Alex served us one of his famous breakfasts. 

Sarah also asked me to speak to her fourth-grade class on Friday about my experiences writing and editing books. It was fun to be with her students, sharing how important it is for them to learn to write clearly, effectively, and accurately. During the Q&A time they asked questions like: "How long does it take you to edit a book?" "Did you ever edit a book that didn't have any errors?" "Did you edit James and the Giant Peach?"

I reminded them that when I was in fourth grade, I did not know that I was going to be a writer or editor. I also suggested that someday some of them might be authors. But more important, all of them would be in situations where they would need to know how to write effectively. 

Bas and I also had time with the family of Phyl's oldest child, John. For the past five months John and his wife, Ann, have been on the roller coaster of chemotherapy and hospitalizations after learning that John had cancer. Just a few weeks ago he was declared cancer free, for which we all thank God. 

They are the parents of three active children. The T-shirts the family is wearing in the photo feature a recent fundraiser for their youngest child, Lydia, who has a chromosomal disorder and apraxia. 

Noah, a seventh grader who stars in several sports, ran on the varsity cross-country team in a twilight regional meet on Friday night.  Even though most of his team and competitors are several years older and several inches taller than he is, he ran very well. It was such a treat to be at his meet and cheer him on.

We've had many glimpses of God's grace in the days we were together. We shared stories, prayed together, laughed so hard that at points we laughed tears. It was good for Bas and me to share in the fabric of their lives, even if only for a few days. We ate freshly picked veggies from their garden, Phyl's zucchini bread, her famous yogurt pie.  We listened as she sputtered and muttered her way through learning how to use her new iPad mini, an anniversary gift from Herm. We laughed as Herm tried to fix the many things that Phyl managed to break or disconnect. One night we heard him mutter, "Why can't they ever make anything Phyllis-proof?"

One of the glimpses of grace came during a conversation with Sarah. She was reflecting on key change points in her life. She shared how during her freshman year in college she had read a book that deeply changed her perspective of God and herself. We, of course, asked her the name of the book, and it turned out to be a book I had edited while working for Tyndale House Publishers. When Bas asked her what about the book changed her, she replied, "The questions at the end of the book. I journaled the answers, and that was a turning point for me." 

Amazed, I said to my niece, "Guess who wrote those questions at the end of the book?" I had no idea when I wrote the study questions for that book that they would touch my niece at a difficult time in her life.

Just glimpses of God's amazing grace. 

Change of Scenery

Day 16--This morning, a few miles after leaving our campground in Custer State Park, the landscape changed. Gone were the mountains. Instead, we headed into rolling grassland. We were on our way to Badlands National Park, the last national park we’ll be in until we get to Maine.

After seeing the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, the Badlands is somewhat monochromatic. There is some color, even though it is muted. However, the park is striking in its immensity. 

The landscape visibly reflects more than 100 million years of time in a single place. Each of the colors below was created millions of years apart as the result of giant seas, lava flows, and erosion.

While the Badlands terrain is very desolate, we did, in fact, see some life. Bighorn sheep live on the grasslands that border the cliffs and valleys.

Buffalo graze on the nearby grasslands. There is the occasional bird or butterfly. Several fields are home to small prairie dogs, who generally blend in with the browns and grays of the terrain and are difficult to photograph.. However, we did find one prairie dog that was easy to photograph.

And we were very glad not to see any of these..

Today we said good-bye to the mountains. We also said good-bye to several weeks of traveling on our own. Tomorrow we arrive in Sioux Falls to spend several days with Lynn’s sister and brother-in-law and some of their children and grandchildren. This begins six weeks during which we will spend only one night alone. Otherwise, we’ll be with friends and family.

We’ve enjoyed our time together, seeing so many beautiful places. But we also look forward to special times with those we love in the days ahead.

Caves, Crazy Horse, Custer, and Carved Faces

Days 14-15--We didn't make it to Custer State Park on Monday, as we had planned. We made two unscheduled stops instead.

The first was to Jewel Cave National Monument, where Bas descended 730 steps into the cave, the third-longest cave in the world. I, who tend to be a bit claustrophobic, settled for the non-strenuous tour into the first room of the cave. 

Later, as we drove into the town of Custer, we decided to explore the Crazy Horse Monument site. When the monument is completed, it will be the largest sculpture in the world. After 50 years of work, sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and his team have completed only the profile of Chief Crazy Horse.

The vision of this man and his family of ten children is remarkable. The sheer size of the undertaking is almost unimaginable. A video indicated that the size of all four faces at Mount Rushmore combined are equal in size to part of the head of Chief Crazy Horse.  But, there's a huge amount of work to do. At the current pace, this project may take another 100 years to complete.

On Tuesday morning we woke up to a western blue-sky day and headed to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, where the sun shone on the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. It is an amazing and beautiful sculpture created by Gutzon Borglum, who was gifted with the same vision, determination, and creative spirit that characterized Ziolkowski, the artist who started the Chief Crazy Horse project. 

Before we left the memorial, I needed to complete the picture with the face of another visionary president.

In nearby Custer State Park we drove the Iron Mountain Road.

Don't know what a pigtail is? Neither did we. It is actually a bridge that loops back over its own road, like a spiral. This creates a switchback that allows the road to climb rapidly up a steep hillside.

And the tunnels? They are one-lane tunnels, some so narrow that we had to fold in our side-view mirrors in order to pass through. The tunnels were carved out of granite through the mountain. The narrowest tunnel was 8'4" wide, and the lowest tunnel was 10'7" high.

The Needles Highway winds through a spectacular drive several miles long through tall, granite formations that look like needles stretching into the air. Many of these "needles" are hundreds of feet high.

The park is also home to wildlife. We saw several dozen pronghorns, some burros, and several hundred buffalo, one of whom obliged us and lumbered alongside our van.

Later in the evening we drove the Wildlife Loop again and watched an entire herd of buffalo move across the road in front of us to a different pasture.

Finally, we met two different groups of Dutch-speaking people today and stopped to share a few stories. Bas held his own with his Dutch-language skills. Then in the afternoon, at an overlook in Custer State Park, a man asked us where we were from, what Bas did there, etc.  One thing led to another, and we learned he is a Christian dentist who wants to do dental mission work. Bas, of course, could talk with him about that. We also learned that he and his wife had lived in Wheaton, where his wife had grown up next door to Ken and Margaret Taylor, the founders of Tyndale House Publishers, where Lynn worked as an editor for many years. The wife worked for IFMA, a mission organization that used to be right around the corner from where Bas and I worked when we lived in Wheaton. It is amazing to us that we continue to have these unexpected contacts with so many interesting people on this journey.

Next stop, Badlands National Park.

Scenic Byways and a National Monument

Days 12-13--After leaving Yellowstone on Saturday, we drove into the Rockies on the scenic Beartooth Highway. The road winds into the clouds, peaking at nearly 11,000 feet. While taking some photos at the summit, we were surprised by a snow squall. Even dimmed by the clouds, the views were spectacular. 

On Sunday we joined the Lutherans of Lovell, Wyoming, (pop. 2000) for worship. When we greeted the pastor after the service, we learned he had just been in Tigard two months ago, visiting his brother, who is the pastor of a Lutheran church in Tualatin. Another it's-a-small-world experience. 

That afternoon, we climbed over the Bighorn mountain range on the Medicine Wheel Scenic Byway. This time the summit was only 9,500 feet. At one viewpoint, we had a 180-degree view stretching out 50 miles. A late-afternoon rain storm ended in a rainbow that arched over wheat fields.

We camped Sunday night at the Devil's Tower National Monument. 

We awakened at sunrise to catch the morning glow on the many-faceted tower. 

Next stop Custer State  Park 

Fumaroles and mud pots and geysers, oh my!

Days 9-11--From Tuesday afternoon through Saturday morning, we explored the wildly diverse geological and hydrothermal features of Yellowstone National Park.   

In this post, we will let a few of our photos speak for themselves.

We walked for miles, stopping to see some of Yellowstone's 200 geysers erupt...

Hot springs bubbled from the subterranean heat...

The mud pots gurgled...

We marveled at the colors created by the minerals and bacteria...

As we drove from site to site, we would often see elk or bison...

And what were the sounds of Yellowstone? The whooshing and splashing of geysers; the hiss of steam vents; the gurgling and splatting of paint pots; the roar of the waterfalls; the chatter of hundreds of people speaking in dozens of languages; the click, click of cameras and smartphones; and the dings of videos starting and stopping. 

On Friday we walked both the north and the south rims of the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone," a 1000-foot canyon carved by the Yellowstone River. The canyon includes two powerful waterfalls.

On Friday night we experienced another serendipity. Bob and Carol Hamlin, our friends from Boise, texted us to say they were in Yellowstone too. After repeated attempts to text each other from the few places in the park that had any cell coverage, we met up for some hugs and an attempt at a four-person selfie in front of their Dutchmen camper.