Oh I Have Seen Things

The Baseball Trip 2026

Day 4 - Thursday, August 6

Update: The Sioux City Explorers hang on for a 7-6 victory over the Lake County Dock Hounds.

Random Observation From Randy: I think Google is going to f*** with me today.

Maybe.

But we start our day off with breakfast at Kate's in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa. Kate's is a small Cafe and Ice cream /sweet shop. Kate's has an interesting origin story. Kate ran the Tip-Top Bar in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa from 1946 to 2000. There is a military base nearby, and she welcomed all of our military personnel into her establishment. There was a fish fry every Friday, where she would boil the fish and throw it onto newspapers spread on the tables and let everybody dig in. She also owned an antique shop next door (now closed) where she would lay out cots and let those who had had too much at the bar sleep it off for the night. The recruits at the base loved her. The granddaughter turned it into a cafe in 2000.

Unassuming, yet, the decor still has the same artifacts from the original joint:

We leave Sioux City, Iowa north into South Dakota, and take Route 50 west. For a long time.

We stop for a break at the Lewis and Clark Trail rest stop in Chamberlain, South Dakota, to visit the Dignity Statue:

From Wikipedia:

Dignity of Earth and Sky (shortened to Dignity for brevity) is a sculpture on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River near Chamberlain, South Dakota.^[The 50-foot (15 m) high stainless steel statue by South Dakota artist laureate Dale Claude Lamphere depicts an Indigenous woman in Plains-style dress receiving a star quilt. According to Lamphere, the sculpture honors the culture of the Lakota and Dakota peoples who are indigenous to South Dakota.

Behind the statue is a scenic overlook of the Missouri River: