Cayla and I had another great road trip this summer through Wyoming (the most boring state on the face of the earth) and South Dakota. We headed out Friday and made it to Buffalo, Wyoming, which was just a place to sleep that was close to our first destination. Our only memorable experience there was turning into this beautiful Maverick to get gas, only to discover there were no gas pumps, nor was there anything in the store. We made it there a little too soon as it hasn't opened yet, but it is a really nice looking store (good job Dan!).
Saturday morning we had a 2-hour drive to Devil's Tower where we did the 1.2 mile walk around the base and watched the crazy people trying to climb to the top.
On the Devil's tower road is a huge prairie dog town that was one of Cayla's favorite spots on our trip. There are lots of prairie dog towns in South Dakota but she thought this one was the best. We could actually be entertained here for a long time if we didn't have other places we needed to be.
We had next planned to take a bus tour in Deadwood, SD, but when we got there the next tour wasn't for a couple of hours and the town itself is mostly casinos and saloons. It took us forever just to find a bathroom and there was really nowhere decent to eat so we forwent the tour and headed on into Rapid City. We deemed this the biggest midadventure of our trip.
Rapid City has 39 presidents in bronze on their street corners downtown, so Cayla decided to pose with all of them. She did 24 before she was worn out from posing, and we had to do the rest of them the next morning before we headed out of town. Here she is with the biggest joke of a president (besides Obama) Jimmy Carter, but I do love that pose she has going on here. (I will at some point get all the pictures uploaded to facebook.)
We headed out to De Smet, clear across the state, and stopped at Wall Drug, which is supposed to be a great american roadside attraction that is clearly NOT!! I suppose if you like to shop for hours for meaningless trinkets it might be fun. We did have a great piece of homemade apple pie and the thing that made them famous, the "free drink of ice water" before heading down the road again. (We did make the most of it by having Cayla pose on the giant rabbit.)
In De Smet, population 1100, we stayed at this lovely bed and breakfast that is just 2 houses away from the house Charles Ingalls built for his family after Laura had married and moved away. The B&B is a house built by the banker, Thomas Ruth (from the Little House books) in 1894.
http://beyondlittlehouse.com/2009/03/26/the-prairie-house-manor/The current owners moved from New Jersey 3 years ago to a completely different lifestyle in the small town of De Smet so they could run this B&B. They deem it a Christian business, and have Bibles in all the rooms. I was completely fascinated by their story. They took a family trip 3 years ago to all the Laura Ingalls Wilder home sites. They traveled by train to Wisconsin and then went by car to all the sites. In De Smet they were discussing with the B&B owners how they would like to own one someday, to which the owners told them it was for sale. They went home, prayed about it, and within 3 months had purchased it, and within a year were living there. I just can't imagine going from a New Jersey lifestyle to a small town on the prairie lifestyle, but they love it. I, myself, can't wrap my head around making that kind of a change. I mean, it was a nice little town, but it is hours away from any type of mall or real shopping.
We attended the pageant "The First Four Years" out at the Ingalls Homestead the night we arrived. It was a beautiful night with a huge full moon and a nice breeze out on the prairie. The acting was marginal at best, but the evening was enjoyable nonetheless just to be sitting and doing nothing in the cool evening air. We took our comfy camping chairs which were much better than the hard bench seats with no backs that they provided (planks laid across cinder blocks).
This is the Ingalls house in town, and last house they lived in, built in 1887, two doors down from the B&B. There was a lot of memoribilia inside, as the last owners had stored everything upstairs waiting for Grace to come reclaim it someday, but she died before doing so. Mary's braile bible was pretty interesting to see, along with her bead work, which is hard to imagine doing when blind.
Brewster School, the first school Laura taught at (replica, and not at its original site), but in town next to the museum.
It was pretty cool seeing the actual homestead property. They have a lookout tower where you can see the entire acerage which is quite extensive. They have a walking tour you can take of the property along with pioneering activities. Cayla made a corn cob doll (even got to clean the corn off the cob with an old corn cob stripping machine) and she made another rope, like she did in Nauvoo. She is getting to be a professional rope maker.
Ingalls homestead house (replica) in the actual location.
We got to ride in this rig to the school house on the edge of the property, and Cayla got to drive it back.
I apologize for this video, but I was sitting a little too close to Cayla the Wagonmaster to be able to see what I was taping, I just had to aim the camera and hope for the best.
As we drive out of De Smet on Tuesday morning, we come upon some large birds (ducks, pheasants ?) sitting at the side of the road. A train is coming toward us and reaches the birds the same time we do, thus scaring the birds, who take off away from the train and right into the grill of my van. Feathers are flying everywhere, and in my rearview mirror I see a bird body plopping down the road behind us. My biggest fear was car damage, but Cayla was the brave one that looked when we first stopped, and assured me of no damage, just feathers and blood. After 3 car washes the feathers are still there (I'm not touching them to pull them out).
A ways further down the road we came upon 2 really large trucks and then about 8 of these farm machines. It was pretty fun dodging around them. When the coast was clear from the other direction they would move to the side, allowing us to hurry around/under them, one by one. It did provide us a few miles of entertainment on a long road in the middle of nowwhere.
We arrived back in the Black Hills early enough to go to Mt. Rushmore and the Cosmos Mystery Area.
I like the angle of this picture Cayla took with a view right up their noses. It was interesting to see how much as changed at Mt. Rushmore since we were there 15 years ago. They have a wonderful facility their with a great boardwalk path up to the monument that wasn't there before, and we caught up to a guided tour with a really enthusiastic ranger who was very knowledgeable and interesting to listen to.
Here is Cayla at Cosmos, trying to stand up straight. It may all just be tricks to make us look like fools, but it is still a fun place to go, and quite baffling even if you know it is just some kind of illusion. It sure feels real.
Wednesday was overcast and perfect for our outdoor adventures that day, which included Reptile Gardens, the Black Hills Maze, and Bear Country.
This tortoise at Reptile Gardens loved to be scratched and the more you scratched the higher up he stretched. When you quit, he would slowly lower himself down until the next person came along to give him another scratch.
This was my first trip to the Maze and it was a lot of fun. These pictures only show half of it. There are four towers and some bridges. You have to get to all four towers to stamp your ticket, and using the bridges is crucial in getting to where you need to go. We made it to the exit in just over an hour, with 45 minutes to an hour being the average time, so we did pretty good. If the sun had been out and cooking us, I don't know if I could have lasted.
Then it was onto Bear Country where I could sit forever and watch the bears, especially the baby bears in babyland.
Thursday I woke up to my phone talking to me and making static sounds. I found it sitting in a puddle of water that was from the ice bucket condensation. Being from the dry state of Utah, I had no idea condensation could cause such a large puddle. As we went about our day, I tried to dry the phone out. At one point, while trying to find a store to buy some rice, we ran across a small Verizon store in Pringle, SD. I decided to stop and see what they advised. It so happened that they had a bag of rice that was dropped off by another customer that no longer needed it, as he was able to save his phone. We put my phone in the bag of rice and went about our day.
On our way to Wind Cave (the 4th largest cave in the world) we came across a LOT of buffalo, some even blocking the road. The buffalo in front is a pretty normal-sized one, but the one behind was monstrous. He must be the great-grandaddy of the herd.
Wind cave was a lot of fun. The tour we took had 300 stairs (mostly down) and at the lowest point we were 225 feet below ground.
After a stop for lunch we went to Flinstones Bedrock City. This was pretty much a waste of money. While we had found it entertaining when Alyssa and Brittni were small, it doesn't look like they have done any maintenance in the 15 years since. It was dusty and broken down and a waste of time. We tried to make the most of it by taking Cayla's picture in every vehicle and picture spot available. This is one place I will no longer be recommending as a must-see. We considered this a half-midadventure.
Since Cayla had asked for and received, for Christimas, a woodcarving kit, we also went to the National Museum of Woodcarving where we ran into a busload of old people from Delta, Utah. I guess we didn't take any pictures there since I can't seem to find any.
We headed to Crazy Horse Memorial in a downpour, but by the time we got there, the rain had stopped and it was just nice and overcast, making for a pleasant visit there out of the sun. We ate dinner in the Laughing Water restaurant while we were there. Because of the rain, there were no bus tours going to the monument, and no blasting going on. Cayla would have liked to have seen some dynamite blasts going off. She can take her own kids their someday, as I doubt it will ever be finished in the next few lifetimes.
Friday morning I got up hoping to find my phone in working order. It seemed to work, but could not connect to service. I googled a few solutions and called Verizon, and it was decided I would have to go into Rapid City to see if it could be fixed or if I needed a new phone. I was due for an upgrade, and sort of wanted the new version of my phone, but didn't need it enough to actually do it. As it turned out the transmitter in my phone was shot, so I ended up with a new phone afterall. I love how they have now made all their phones mandatory to have at least 10 dollars worth of internet per month (unless you want the cheapest of cheap phones). However, in talking with other tourists in De Smet, who have AT&T, they hadn't had phone service for 2 days, and with Verizon I was never without it so I will stick with Verizon nonetheless.
We had an appointment at Jewel Cave for the afternoon, so on the way we stopped and browsed the main street of Hill City. I ran across a great store with some old hats that I just had to have for our costume closet. They are classic and look like they have never been worn. I never buy souveniers so I decided I would splurge on hats. I got all four for only 43 dollars, which I thought was a great deal.
Jewel cave was our last destination of the black hills. It is the 2nd largest cave in the world and the tour we went on had a total of 723 steps, both up and down, and at the lowest point we went in the cave we were 379 feet below ground.
This picture shows the "bacon" feature of the cave. It is a little hard to see, but in real, it looks like a perfect strip of bacon and is 26 feet long.
Saturday morning, it is time to head back home, but we are only going as far as Rawlins, Wyoming, so we weren't in a real rush to get up and on the road. We had decided to stop at Independence Rock (picture below) to scale it to the top this time. On the way past our first day, we had the wrong shoes on when we got to the rock and decided, after we got 1/4 of the way up, that we couldn't climb it in those shoes, so we decided to do it on the way home. This time we were prepared with our good shoes and sun screen. Unfortunately, my good walking shoes have only a strap on the back rather than a full heel, and as I tried to climb the rock, my feet were slipping out of the shoes. We were rather disappointed as we wanted to get to the top and see the inscriptions written there by the pioneers, but I promised Cayla that next year, when I have hopefully dropped another 40 or 50 pounds, and I have REALLY good shoes, we will take a weekend trip and hike the rock, as well as do the trail at Martin's Cove just down the street a ways.
We only had a 4 hour drive to get back home on Sunday so we stopped at Little America, WY, to grab some lunch. It's always a nice place to stop coming or going. They are a little slow, but the food is always good, and they have free ice cream cones if you have the patience to wait in line.
