Wyoming to South Dakota

Oh, it was hard to leave the Grand Tetons behind, but I'm sure we'll return there some day. Our next stop was Cody, Wyoming, for a visit to the Buffalo Bill Museum. Within the walls are five separate museums: Guns, Natural History, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Western Fine Art, and Plains Indians. We spent four hours there and should have returned the next day for another four hours! And in the gardens are sculptures reminiscent of the era. I found Squaw with Papoose enchanting. We also find the Wyoming landscape enchanting. Last summer, when we drove from south to north through Wyoming, we both loved the wide open spaces and lack of traffic. This summer, we felt a sense of deja vu as we traveled through Wyoming from west to east. What we don't love are the wooden structures (snow fences) meant to hold the blowing snow from the interstate! I guess that's a clue to us!

Devil's Tower continues to be a sacred setting for the Plains Indians. The trees surrounding the base of Devil's Tower are strung with prayer cloths and prayer sacks placed there by Natives. Clint played his flute there for a bit. Very haunting. Upon entering the National Monument, we were greeted by our first Prairie Dog Town. We learned that the black-footed ferret had nearly gone extinct from the plains and were recently reintroduced. The ferrets not only take over the prairie dog towns, but make meals of the prairie dogs, too. The ferrets are active at night, so we didn't get to see any.

The Black Hills are such a beautiful group of mountains. They are full of granite outcroppings and the trees are just sparse enough to allow visitors to peek among them to see the undergrowth...rather unlike the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The Black Hills are a destination unto themselves--especially for families. There are countless small mining towns that cater to families by offering miniature golf, water slides, and bike trails. One of the towns that caters to adult entertainment is Sturgis where 300,000 descend upon this town of 8,000 for two weeks each year during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Clint and some buddies rode their Harleys from San Luis Obispo to Sturgis in 1991 and it was a real zoo then! Imagine it now!

I'm sure you've all heard the poker term, "Dead Man's Hand." Well, we saw the saloon in Deadwood where Wild Bill Hickock was killed with aces and eights in his poker hand. So much for Old Bill. Deadwood is architecturally beautiful. The gaming (I won some buckaroos on a slot machine!) proceeds have gone to restore this town to its prior splendor.

From Deadwood, we drove to see how the Crazy Horse statue is coming along. When I was in the Black Hills 24 years ago on the way to my Granny's 100th birthday celebration in Iowa, Crazy Horse had just been started. There is now a huge visitor's center and some progress. Good to see. We camped that night on Legion Lake in beautiful Custer State Park.

The next morning, we drove through Wind Cave National Park on the way to Hot Springs to see the Mammoth Site. A tour of Wind Cave included 763 steps, so we opted out of that cool offering. Hot Springs is an amazing town built nearly completely of sandstone blocks. As a consequence, the buildings are a soft coral color. About 25 years ago, a developer was preparing a site on which to build houses and the bulldozer found some really interesting, big bones. Turns out, the site was a sink hole into which fell hundreds of mammoths, woolly and otherwise, ancient camels, wolves, and short-faced bears. The bones are in-situ and the archaeologists continue to unearth the bones with the help of EarthWatch and Elderhostel volunteers.

Driving from Hot Springs to Mount Rushmore, we were fortunate enough to get a wonderful close-up photo of a pronghorn antelope. He stood perfectly still for us. We had seen hundreds of pronghorn in our travels through Wyoming, but none so close. The pronghorns are second only to the caribou in the number of miles traveled during their migratory season: 1,300. Pretty amazing, huh? We had read that burros had been used to cart people and their belongings up a steep mountain in the Black Hills, but had been released and become a wild hurd. Well...let me tell you. They're not wild at all! This little fella came ambling out of the shrubbery as soon as another woman and I got out of our cars to photograph him. And he was looking for some lunch. I was sorely tempted to share one of my special honey crisp apples with him, but remembered the warning not to feed the "wild" animals!

That night, we stayed at the KOA close to Mount Rushmore as they offer a shuttle service to see the monument during the evening performance and lighting. I had done that 24 years ago and found it so impressive. I was not disappointed this time, either. The Ranger asked some trivia questions about the four presidents sculpted on the mountain, then he performed some pertinent quotes. We saw a wonderful, patriotic movie, then we all sang the national anthem. He then asked for current and former military to come up on stage while the American flag was retired for the evening. Clint went up on stage to be included in the honors for having served our country. He was among a couple of hundred people on that stage. Very moving.