May 21: Black Hills of South Dakota

Before I talk about the Black Hills, let me explain a couple of new pictures from Cody, WY regarding Buffalo Bill. The first one is a picture of a restaurant in Cody that was once a bar owned by Buffalo Bill. The crazy thing, is if you look at the bar in the background it was given to him by Queen Victoria as a gift. The second picture is my attempt to join the Buffalo Bill Wild West show. Here I am with a couple of the performers. Unfortunately, neither my horse skills nor my sharp shooter skills were enough for me to join but Randy and I had fun taking the picture with a green screen at the museum.

Now, on to the Black Hills. We have been in the Rapid City, SD area for a couple of nights. Yesterday went to see Mt. Rushmore. Amazing the work they did on this massive sculpture and the lengths they went to make this a reality. They hung men down from the top of the mountain in these little swings that look like the swings that you put a toddler in on the set swings in a park. It was crazy. From there we went to Custer State Park. Probably the most impressive state park I have ever seen. Here, they have brought back herds of buffalo and as you can see from the pictures below, they have the right of way. Also saw, pronghorn antelope and burros. It rained all afternoon but it was beautiful and fun just the same.

Today, we spent the better part of the day in the Badlands National Park. It was overcast and cool but the rain held off. Again, no more words to describe beautiful and amazing. A lot of history here with the Sioux Indians. Not a very pretty history about our expansion to the west, however. This is were the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred in 1890. Very sad.

Tomorrow we leave South Dakota and head to Nebraska for a few days.


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