Saying good bye is never fun or easy. So we did some things to aid in the process of leaving Yankton.
With the weather slowly creeping up to reach the low 90’s and even higher after we left, I was eager to get in my remaining water time when it wasn’t too unbearable. If there hadn’t been been a pretty strong current and wake to contend with due to boats, inner tubers, jet skiers, and the like, I very well may have fallen asleep on my little floatie on the river. It was a very relaxing day.
That night we were treated to “Catcher’s mitt” ribeye steaks, the juiciest chicken thighs we’ve ever had, homemade (purple) bacon-potato salad, and some good-ol’ dog kisses. Nate and Heather bbq’d and we all visited and had such a relaxing, calm evening.
I know there are other great people in this town. I’ve met them. But we just may never get to know anyone else because we enjoy hanging with Nate and Heather so much in our free time!
Here I am…”grieving”😂
So, one of my favorite things to go through as I get older is the changing of my own mind, basing my thoughts and opinions on real information and facts, as opposed to past assumptions or not fully understood experiences. In this case, I’m talking about weed. More specifically, the process of growing it and the people who do. The best way I can describe my prior way of thinking is this: Say you meet a drunk guy at a bar. Maybe you have little to no experience with alcohol yourself, so you begin to associate this one dude with all alcohol and alcohol-related circumstances, therefore making that one experience your baseline for all your feelings about alcohol. As you get older, you meet more people who drink, but don’t behave at all like the first guy you met. They seem normal and smart and can hold conversations. Your opinion then morphs into a different baseline about alcohol, as well as now a developing understanding about the people who consume it and the like. THEN, let’s say you meet the people who actually MAKE alcohol. They are extremely smart and educated, relying on science, process, and facts to create a good product to be consumed by the public. They keep books, and run clean facilities, and hire staff, and are almost the extreme opposite of the first guy you met in the bar. This encounter then changes your mind yet AGAIN about alcohol and it’s relationship to people, thus opening your mind even further to the how’s and why’s about it all. You could have stopped with the first guy and just kept yourself blissfully ignorant and kept your opinion strong about it all without even trying to understand any deeper. But then you miss out on a lot more knowledge and a deeper understanding of a lot of different kinds of people.
All that preamble is to say Jared and I were floored when we got to tour this grow facility. With the legalization of weed for medicinal and recreational purposes in WA (and several other states), we’ve definitely seen an increase in the openness of its use and availability. But we were still largely ignorant to the process behind it all. Since Jared and I don’t partake in it, we honestly had very limited interactions with its history or any behind-the-scenes efforts to create it.
A far cry from your neighbor’s basement ran by the McConaughey, “Dazed and Confused” stereotype, this grow facility, which is still in it’s infancy, is shaping up to be part nursery, part sterile hospital ward, part show room / dispensary, and all heart. The owners refer to the young plants as their “babies”, and they treat the whole process with the care and attention to detail as a new mother would as well! They proudly showed us the incubation station and the growing room, their newest crop and the self-built and implemented water, filtration, and humidifying system. I honestly was overwhelmed by the amount of work and effort already put into it, not to mention the ambitious plans for the future and goals for the product. I was also really impressed with the amount of learning they still seek about the process. With the constant demand for product, alongside the ever-changing availability of it, growers, botanists, and chemists are always coming up with new ways to create products that best suit all the demands.
Honestly, if you’ve even read this far, I’m impressed. This topic makes some people really uncomfortable and almost everyone has an opinion on it. Maybe you learned something new and maybe even changed your mind about all the “pot smokers” out there. It’s way more technical and intricate than I ever imagined. Whether you partake, know people who do, or just saw it in a movie once, weed is as much part of our communities now as dog groomers, liquor stores, dry cleaners, and coffee shops. So I think it’s best to remain educated seekers of knowledge. Medicinal and healing purposes are quickly becoming a huge part of the industry as well as the creative search for the “dankest smoke”. Not to mention whoever gets to name the strains. Who knows, maybe someday there will be a bright, joyful, easy-high smoke named “Champagne Sun-Dank”!
All of those “babies” you saw up top will soon be transplanted into each one of these soil pots to grow and then dry.
Another thing we got to do to keep busy while still in Yankton was volunteer a few tunes to the recreation hour at the senior facility that Heather works at. Daughters of some of the staff members joined us as well. As you all know, Champagne Sunday’s demographic is 5-95, and that just held true on this day. The residents were all smiles as we told stories, played their old piano (well, Jared did), and walked around singing to them. I always love not being tethered to cables and a microphone stand. Plus, I’m loud enough that any more amplification would have had them throwing their hearing aids right on the floor.
A couple of smiley ladies asked us to make sure we came back next year. You bet we will!!
Our last full day in town fell on Yankton’s “Music on the Meridian” night and we were so excited to get to just be watching another act. We remembered with fondness the performance that we did on that same stage two years ago (and not with fondness the unbearably hot load in), and smiled and cheered on the band from a breezy spot in the shade. The band, Ghost Town Blues Band, from Memphis, was on fire (musically AND temperature-wise). The trombone player NEVER stopped dancing and swinging his horn around, the vocals and original tunes were well-written, well-sung and well-crafted, and the drummer was absolutely rock solid. Bass and keys were great as well. Overall, a really fun night. We went to Charlie’s Pizza afterwards and ate entirely waaaay too much, as we had been craving pizza for two weeks! But it was entirely worth it…
As we sat in Muddy Mo’s for our last morning, this big and beautiful sunflower was my table companion and just a lovely reminder that all things, even as vibrant and lovely as they are for a time, must come to an end, hopefully to regrow fuller and even more wonderful down the line. Yankton, this was our longest stay with you and we felt so loved and enjoyed every second. Thank you all. We’ll see you next year…but with Rudy.
