heritage tour ND-style

One highlight from our time in NC was visiting the places that both of my parents grew up.  So we were eagerly anticipating this day too!  We were missing Julianna (on a youth group trip), but added my niece Kaelynn, and she fits in perfectly!

Jan and Luther grew up on farmsteads just a short drive from one another, and the farmland is still there, and still farmed... but neither of the homes that Luther lived in are still standing.  It was really cool to stand here and listen to the stories and imagine their worlds -

This is in the church graveyard at Perry.  The earliest stones were written in Norwegian, immigrants born in Norway in the 1860s and settling here before North Dakota achieved statehood.

We stopped by a farm near where Luther grew up, and visited briefly with an old friend of his and Jan's who was just starting his wheat harvest.  We watched the combine harvesting, and the grain cart dump a load into this truck.

When full this truck holds almost 10,000 dollars worth of wheat (wheat prices are really high right now)!

We also visited Grandpa's one room school house where he attended elementary school along with 9 other students. And then drove a few miles to Grandma's childhood home church.  Luke Joseph is named for Grandma Claudine Josephine (Jan's mom) who died when Lydia was an infant.

Then we stopped at Golden Lake for dinner :).

A really great day!