2024 05 07 - MN - Fort Snelling

Do to poor planning and weather, we ended up at Fort Snelling on Memorial Day instead of one or two days before.

We did make sure we waited until after the events were over. This year both the governor and a Senator were going to be there. Huge storms earlier in the day so not sure how that all worked out.

When we arrived and when we left mid-afternoon they were still directing traffic.

A few of the memorial sights this year.

... an old man, sitting by himself in a lawn chair, just staring at a grave.

... the family walking back to their cars, with one of them carrying a full sized flag blowing in the breeze.

... the family of 20+ that was all gathered at a grave.

There were also smaller groups that had their lawn chairs set up by graves that were likely spending the day.

The one confusing sight was after we had left and were stuck in traffic. By then it was raining quite heavily. There was a man walking, in the rain, no umbrella to a grave. When he got to the one he was looking for, he removed the flowers someone had put there and took one picture of the grave. Then he took the flowers with him instead of replacing them ... and threw them in the trash (?)

We came after the rain and left when it was just starting again. It looks like we got there about 1:30 and left about 3 PM. My wife had already had enough walking for the day and it was starting to rain with more dark clouds rolling in.

Leaving the grounds through the main gate, there were rows of caps on the group. I couldn't see if they were personal caps or from different branches of the service. I'm guessing now that there were about 40 caps there. I hadn't noticed them coming in as there were a few people standing there. I did not see the bugler there this year.

Getting in from the freeway was easy but slow. Getting out was stop and go for about an hour. Everyone had to take a right turn when leaving the grounds which meant either taking a u-turn through an airport or taking a two lane road for about a mile.

All gates were open so I should have exited from the rarely used gate and we would have been half way to the freeway when we got stuck in traffic.

It looks like I took about 20 pictures of family graves this trip plus a few general photos. This trip I took two of each grave. One with my camera and one with my phone. My phone went for about two months where every picture I took was distorted. Recently it had been fine but I wanted to make sure.