July 25 - Day 36

We started by driving to the Crazy Horse Monument.  Jerry had thought that we would make it the day before, but since we stayed until 9:30 p.m. at Mt. Rushmore, it didn't happen. Our hotel was only 2 miles from Mt. Rushmore, which was really convenient. 

We got to Crazy Horse by 11:00 a.m. The size of the project is enormous. It's going to be a 3D monument instead of a relief sculpture like Mt. Rushmore. It's also a lot bigger than Mt. Rushmore. In fact, all of Mt. Rushmore could fit in the hair section of Crazy Horse (which is not yet complete). I got a book that is written by a Native American with whom I spoke. What was interesting about the book is that he said that the stories are told from the Native American

viewpoint. I think he self-published the book, but I was interested.

We also ate while we were there. Jerry had a buffalo burger and Molly had a buffalo sausage called a Buffaloski. They both said that their meals

tasted like beef. It made Jerry wonder why they didn't just domesticate the buffalo instead of importing cattle. 

Then we drove to Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, SD.

Apparently,

about 12,000 years ago, a huge sinkhole formed that filled with hot water from a spring below, and mammoths fell into and then couldn't get out. The land was to be developed which lead to the dis

covery of this site that seems to be filled with bones. Most of the sinkhole area is enclosed in a building and exavation of the bones is occurring currently and will continue for years. It was really interesting. It's hard for me to imagine such big animals, so se

eing the skeleton of one mammoth as it was found in the sinkhole was fascinating.

We drove south to the Nebraska state line. We drove to the state sign, took a picture and then turned around. We took some wrong turns and took forever to get back to 90 east. I thought that we were going to be stuck in SD. It became one of those car moments where the kids had to go to the bathroom in the middle of nowhere, we didn't know where we were, and we were both silently blaming the other! In fact, we stopped at this one place that seemed to be a live ghost town. The GPS said that there was a restaurant/bar and across the road seemed be a gas station. The gas station was locked, but the prices were current.

The saloon looked like it hadn't been painted, ever. The was no one around except for one guy who appeared to be

passed out on the steps on a shack beside the saloon. I told the girls to get back into the van and we took off. Yikes!

We drove past the Badlands. We didn't stop, but took pictures from the van. They looked neat. The girls were glad that we didn't stop and watch the visitors center's video on how they were formed! We also saw some huge cows, really black cows, and antelope along the way.

We made it to Wall, SD. That was fun. There were old type of billboards for at least 30 miles before Wall for the drugstore, which apparently was the drug store for miles that people would go to back in the day. One billboard said "Free donuts and coffee to newlyweds!"

We ate dinner, and then the girls stopped in a shop and tried on cowboy boots, gloves, and hats. They had a great time, and Brooke bought herself the pair of pink boots that she tried on. She looks adorable!

Around 9:30 we started looking for a hotel in Wall to stay the night. We tried about 5 hotel that were near the interstate and all of them had no vacancy signs. So we drove about 30 miles to the next town of Kadoka, and found a place there. We took our suitcases in and went straight to bed.