Appleton, MN - Beet Harvest - Week 1

 We head to Appleton, we were going to spend the night in Fergus Falls, but the electric boxes were poorly positioned and the water was orange so we decided to just head straight to Appleton.  Traffic was light but we did have to move over the side of the road when this went by.

We arrive in Appleton

 

We are a week early and are the first ones here so we claim the tree

The view of the fairground buildings across from us

 

 

We are concerned about the prison directly behind us.  But we find out later that it is empty.

Tucson likes his new yard

He stopss and has lunch with the only fairground cow left this time of year.

We find a resident frog by our water hookup

and slowly but surely, others arrive but keep socially distant

We take a drive one day out to the Beet Piling Station where Gary is going to go to drop his truckloads of beets.  He will be driving up that ramp.

The beets will come out this end and pile up

We take a ride to Big Stone Nature Preserve

You can see how it got its name

The Yellow Bank and Minnesota Rivers run through it.

We come across a herd of goats with this dog watching over them

Looks like they are a hungry bunch

and thirsty too

The watch dog is wary of Tucson and has been keeping an eye on him.  He chased our truck quite a ways when we left.

There are places to pull over and look for migrating birds.

Not much now other than seagulls, cormorants and canadian geese.

This guy managed to catch lunch

We stop and take a short hike

On our way out we spot this Heron in the river.

A nice little get a way.  We enjoy the Fall Foliage on our way home

Gary and another guy go to pick up two more trucks in St. Cloud with the owner.

They are new trucks on lease

They still have that new truck smell

Gary however, does not get one - he gets this

It does not have the new truck smell - more like dead beets and dirt.

 He will make the best of it - it's only 2 weeks!  Harvest is scheduled to start Thursday, October 1st with the evening shift of 3pm to 3am.  Gary starts Friday on the morning shift 3am to 3pm.