South Dakota

Where to start....well I suppose I should start at the very beginning... a very good place to start...sorry, it just popped in there and I couldn't help it!


Anyway, it was a good start! Early, but not too early, and fairly smooth except for the cat who knew something was up and kept trying to escape the house to join us! Other than that, it was a good drive through four states in record time which ended in a very strange hotel with a nice room but that had no actual number on the door.....

The next day we got up and at breakfast the girls met a nice older man who told them about a dam that was releasing water on the MO and it was just a short side trip(under 30 miles round-trip from 90) so we figured why not...wow...WOW...it was...powerful...and made me once again question the wisdom of trying to rein in mother nature and the inevitable consequences that come from that...and I don't just mean floods! Anyway, it was a sight to see and I am glad we did :)

We then traveled through the Badlands, wow…the vastness of the “carving” of the land allows for the name to completely make sense…who wouldn’t get there and go, “Holy cow…what IS that???Looks bad….” :P and then into the Black Hills….they really do look black! We went to Mount Rushmore first and it was by far the busiest day of the trip as far as encountering massive amounts of people and cars…crazy!!! and Crazy Horse which were both...well...the sheer scale was...big...just big..... It was hotter than all get out and the lack of humidity was actually stifling…weird right????

We ended up in Deadwood.....but that is actually where I will begin tomorrow b/c that is where we stayed and it has its own storyline for the day!

So all in all days one and two were very nice and full of only pleasant surprises, which I really liked!

Big Bend Dam, S. D.



Badlands National Park



Mount Rushmore

Crazy Horse

Hope you all are staying cool!!!
 
Blog ya later-
K

Summer Journey

Hello All,

I hope you have had a nice first half of summer!

We have been to the west and back!!  A big circle through Iowa, Minn, SD, WY, Idaho, Utah, CO and KS and awful lot indeed!

We saw amazing things from man-made(and still making even) wonders to wonders carved by nature over millenia!  It was fantastic!!!!  I can already tell it is going to be posts full of exclamation marks but I just can't help it...it was incredible!!! ;-P

Each night Ed & I wrote our highlights from the day into a notebook and then compared, it was interesting to see what we agreed on and what different things we had too!  We took three cameras and at points had all of them taking shots of a specific site/wonder/view so it has been a visual feast to go back through and organize everything and I admit, I'm only halfway through!  I have also been gardening a bit!  We came home to a weed farm.....luckily there were also our plants in there and all things considered they fared quite nicely!  So I have been weeding and then setting up trellising and some more weeding...oh and trip laundry...all in the hottest segment of summer we've had in a while...fun!  :)

So I have decided to do this in segments and today we shall start with the basic numbers!

3591 miles

15 days
14 nights
10 hotel rooms
8 states
6 National Parks
4 National Monuments
2 Window deer...as in they slept outside our window!!!!
1 coyote
1 car accident(not us! )
1 truck blown off the interstate
1 ambulance called to the interstate for a non-accident medical emergency(again not us!! )
0…yes…that is a big goose egg…nada, zip, zilch, zero injuries to K..or anyone else!!!!
Best. Trip. Ever. EVER!

Blog ya later,
K