Presidents and Indians

  It's our last night in the Black Hills and it has been a very good stay. Monday and Thursday were spent pretty close to home due dentist appointments, but Tuesday and Wednesday we did some more exploring.

  Tuesday we headed to Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monuments. I had been to Mt Rushmore before but it was a very long time ago, I was probably ten at the time. I didn't appreciate what I was seeing at ten years old, the beauty was lost on me. This time was different.  Before going to the monument we stopped in Keystone to go through the Gutzen Borglum museum.  He was the man who carved the mountain. Doing the museum first was a good idea. It gave us a better perspective when we got to the monument itself. I could bore you with a description of what we saw but I wouldn't do it justice. So I'll let these do the talking.

 After Rushmore we headed to the Crazy Horse monument. They're still working on it and probably will be after I'm gone. It's taking so long because it is not funded by government in any way. They rely solely on the profits from the welcome center, gift shop, restaurant etc. I hope to see the finished product one day, it will be spectacular. The artist was Kolczak Ziolkowski, he started in 1948 after being commissioned by the Lakota Indians. Ziolkowski died in 1982 but his wife and 10 children continue to work on the project.

It's not the destination, it's the journey.

  That really rang true today. We decided to go to the historic town of Deadwood South Dakota today. That town made famous by the likes of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. From our campsite it was just 14 miles away,14 miles that took us almost 3 hours. No, we had no truck trouble, there were no accidents, traffic jams or road closures. What there was was scenery and plenty of it. We took highway 14A which is also known as Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway. It travels south from I-90 through the Black Hills National Forest along side of Spearfish Creek. Like yesterday's trip to Devil's Tower, the pictures below don't do it justice. There are three sets of falls along the route, we saw two.

Bridal Veil Falls

  Spearfish Falls

Spearfish Creek itself also was very picturesque.

  The entire route was straight off a postcard.

  Deadwood was slightly less than appealing. Granted we were there on a Sunday afternoon at the end of the season, so maybe it was bad timing on our part. Both Penny and I thought it was a little too commercial. It is a tourist attraction so we should have expected it.

  I don't think I have ever paid an admission to get into a cemetery.  I did today, Mt Moriah Cemetery, where both Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried.

The Devil's Tower National Monument

  I had planned on blogging once after our entire stay in the Black Hills area but it looks like it may be several blogs. I hope you don't mind.

  Today we drove 63 miles west to the Devil's Tower National Monument. I'm sure you're familiar with the location or at least the monument itself. It's been in movies (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind) TV and magazines.  But to really get the full effect you NEED to see it in person. There's a reason it's one of the Seven Wonders Of The World,  it is magnificent. So much so that you almost believe it's man made. There several different groups of people climbing when we arrived and if you look close at some of the photos below you can see them. You're able to walk around the entire monument there. It's a 1.3 walk on a paved path, and if you go, take the walk.

South Dakota, I-90, Mitchell and Wall

  Originally we had planned on taking only two days to cross South Dakota after leaving Watertown on the eastern side. Plans change. We decided to take our time and see some things. We left Watertown Tuesday morning and headed to Mitchell where we would find the Corn Palace. We didn't get there till after 4 and the Corn Palace closes at 5 so we decided to spend two nights there so we could get the full effect. As it turned out the "full effect" took less than an hour to get. It seems the Corn Palace on the inside is just your average everyday arena, they were practicing basketball. The exterior was the big attraction. It was covered with corn, all kinds of colored corn and straw. They redo the exterior every year and were in the process of doing so when we were there. Fortunately, just a few miles away was the Prehistoric Indian Village. An actual archeological site where there was a Mandan Indian village around 1000 A.D. Now that was worth the stop. They had one building that had several artifacts from the dig site along with a full size replica of one of the earth lodges the Indians lived in way back when. The other building was a large nine sided structure. When you entered you took a walkway up and around the interior wall. As you went up and looked over the railing you saw the actual dig site, still in process. No digging was going on at the time, in fact they only have archeologists there for one month a year that come from England. It was very interesting to see and learn so much, not only about Mandan Indians in 1000 A.D. but what an archeological dig site looks like and how it works.

  We left Mitchell early on Thursday morning and headed to Wall, home of the world famous Wall Drug. We gained an hour when we entered the mountain time zone so we got to our camp site, set up, and to Wall Drug by about 3:30. This gave us until 7 to explore the place. Don't let the name full you, it has a drug store in it but it's much more than that. It was mostly touristy stuff, refrigerator magnets, T-shirts etc. But we had fun and that's what counts. Tomorrow we head to Spearfish in the Black Hills and plan on staying until Tuesday, lots to see lots to do.

Watertown South Dakota a great small town.

  It's Tuesday morning and we're about to start packing up the camper to head west. We've had a great time here in a nice park on lake Kampeska. We also got some wonderful family time with my sister Liz and her kids and grandkids. You don't realize how much you miss your family until you get to see them and then have to leave again. When we arrived Saturday evening they were all waiting for us at Liz's house. Her daughter Kim, her husband Travis, their two kids Jaxxon and Avi, her son son Corey, his wife Debbie and their two kids Aidyn and Kaelyn. Of the four grandkids we had only seen Jaxxon in person and that was a few years back. All four are great kids. Kim and Travis had to head back to St Cloud Minnesota the next day but the rest came out to the park on Sunday for a good time. We even were shown something about the camper we didn't know. We have have what's called day/night shades on all the windows. They have two sets of shades on them, one for daytime and the other for nighttime...DUH. Anyway we were debating on replacing a couple with just regular blinds because we didn't think they could be opened all the way so you could see clearly outside. We tried and Penny's brother Mitchel tried and we all came to the conclusion that you could only have the one of the two shades. We were explaining this to Liz & Co. on Sunday when Debbie says "you just pull them up" and reaches over and within seconds were looking out just the window no shade. Thank you Debbie you just saved us some money and time replacing what we now truly enjoy.

John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep Walk Into a Bar...

  We left Kamp Komfort near Normal Illinois on Wednesday and headed west. We traveled about 200 miles to Amana Iowa. Amana is composed of 6 colonies that were established arond 1870. They were a religious communal society of german immigrants. The 6 colonies are on about 26,000 acres of farm land. Today their primarily comprised of farms, homes and shops, museums and crafts geared towards tourists. The biggest money maker after farming is the RV campgrounds. The campground is about 500 square yards with very few trees and most of those are young saplings.  However it was a good campground, full hook ups with plenty of room between sites. Amana is also the home of Whirlpool's Amana division, the only industry in the area.We stayed two nights and spent Thursday exploring the colonies and their shops and Museums.

  Now about the title of this edition of my blog. On Friday we headed west again on I-80 towards Nebraska. We passed a couple signs of interest and decided to stop and explore. We ended up in Winterset Iowa in Madison county. Winterset is the birth place of Marion Robert Morrison and Madison county has several old covered bridges.

Three Nights of Great Company

  Hello dear readers, I know it's been a while since I posted something, but for a good reason. Since Sunday we've been staying at Kamp Komfort RV Park, which is not the good reason. The good reason is that the aforementioned RV park is only 20 minutes from my brother John and his lovely wife Marla's home in Normal Illinois. So the last three evenings were spent in their good company. Their two sons, Kyle and Cameron were also on hand Sunday evening, along with Cameron's partner Andrew, Kyle's friend Bethany and her fiance Ray. Good times were had all three nights.