Reflections of My Travel

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Found us an open road to Custer’s State Park this morning. We drove the Wildlife Loop and were very pleased with it. We saw bison, big horn sheep, pronghorn antelope, white-tail deer, burros, turkeys, and a coyote. But the most entertaining part of it all was the prairie dog town. Those things are so amusing. They are like the western squirrels. So happy and chattery. They made the neatest little call when we got too close to them. After enjoying them for a while, we drove by the Crazy Horse Memorial, still a work in progress. We figure we’ll come back and actually visit there when it is finished. It is massive though. The picture doesn’t really show the size but where the armpit will be, all of the faces of Mt. Rushmore would fit. Or so we were told. On the way back to the interstate, we discovered a nail in our tire, so we had to make a stop in Custer, SD at a little feedstore where they patched our tire. They even gave us the screw that caused all the trouble. We spent the night in Spearfish, SD.

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We woke up with 1/2 an inch of snow on our car!! We got out and played in the snow a little before starting on our way across South Dakota. Another very long and desolate drive. The whole way there were signs and billboards for Walls Drug. Nothing ever said what it was that was such a big deal and when we passed the exit, we couldn’t see anything remarkable. We finally got to Rapid City where we turned down into the Black Hills toward Mt. Rushmore. It was really amazing to see how those carvings were done and all the work that went into it. And when we came out of the little movie at the visitor’s center, the guide at the desk was looking at the mountain through some binoculars. There was a mountain goat halfway to the faces chewing on a tree. It was so cute. We then stuck around to see it lit up at night which puts a whole different look on things. We even ran into two Floridians wearing shorts. We managed to find a hotel open at this time of year in Keystone, SD right outside Rushmore. The whole town seemed to be closed for winter. There were two hotels and one restaurant. But that shower sure felt nice.

This morning we woke up and went after some cereal bars and milk and we were on our way. We headed across Missouri to Kansas City where we crossed into Kansas so that I could say I’ve been there (and get a picture of the sign). We then went up into Iowa, which I might say is a very desolate drive. Don’t even try to find a McDonald’s along that road. Since the highway insisted on hugging the border of Nebraska the whole way up without actually crossing it, we had to cross into Omaha in order for me to get that state under my belt. There was a very interesting looking dome there that housed the Omaha zoo. Perhaps we will make it back there sometime to see it. We found a Walmart to stock up on supplies in Sioux Falls, SD and as we came out of the store there was snow falling all around us. Very exciting. I figured we would surely have to get much further northwest before we would see any of that.