"Tatanka", as Kevin Costner would say.

Sunshine and clear skies! today we are hiking on the prairie to see if we can find Tatanka.

Of course there were occasional vistas

And we had stream crossings

But having read Tom brown's tracking book, I could find faint tracks of our elusive game.

From another angle it is easier to see the trace left by Tatanka

Fairy Houses???                    (This reminds me, Jodi doesn't like mushrooms)

With perseverence we followed the trail and found....Tatanka!

Don't try this at home

but we also saw

and best of all

We're off to see the laser show at Crazy Horse mountain.........

There's Hot Sauce On the Ceiling!

     Yesterday we made Raman noodles and opened a squeeze bottle of Sirachi hot sauce. The lower air pressure at the altitude of our campground made the hot sauce squirt up in a fountain---Joy just noticed it is on the ceiling!

     We started the day going to Wind Cave- another giant cave with a different geology. The picture of its ceiling (below) is covered in these delicate "boxwork" structures. It used to be an ancient seabed. The cracks in the mud filled with minerals. When the cave's limestone eroded away, these harder minerals did not.

     This cave was much more claustrophobic in some sections. Long convoluted passages with narrow sections, low overhead. We could really feel the phrase "in the bowels of the earth".

     Nearby is an ancient sinkhole that trapped many mammoths. They have dug out much, but give tours of the active dig site. the picture below has the not-yet-removed bones of a mammoth skull with tusks, and a nearly complete body skeleton.

Yes, everywhere you drive out here there are amazing vistas:

It started raining again so we went next to a woodcarving museum. Look at the chair below, particularly the legs

Tomorrow we move to Hardin, Montana to see the Little Big Horn park. All this rain has produced widespread flooding. We just checked highway conditions.  I90 has been re-opened. the state road we take is open as far as the campground..........crazy weather!

Hardy south Dakotans

There are tent campers here who are staying despite heavy rain and hail(!) at the campground. One guy was cooking over a wood fire in the rain. We are soft, happy, trailer campers.

 Of course snow was just unnecessary on Memorial Day weekend.

Today we are going to the Homestake gold mine in Lead and the Deadwood a fun town with casinos. Here we are ready for the tour at Homestake-- the second largest gold mine in the world when shut down in 2001.

 The original open pit part is 1200 feet deep. The underground part is 8000 feet deep! They are establishing a science lab at the bottom to detect neutrinos as they go through the earth. The mine operated for 125 years before they quit due to the price of gold not covering the cost of extraction.
   This mine employed 3000 people at its peak. To get things up and down the mine shafts they use a cable to raise and lower the elevators. Here's the spool for the first 4000 foot shaft. There is another undergoung going down to 8000 ft. The motor that turns the spool is electric and 1,500 horsepower.

Within the mine they used locomotives run by compressed air!

Seven tons of rock ore gives 1 ounce of gold. So it takes a huge amount of processing. They break they rocks down to fine dust to get at the gold. First they tumble the rocks with iron bars that get ground down in the process. The ones below are a new bar and one only one week old.

The rocks are reduced to sand by the bars and then tumbled with the iron balls until it's as fine as talcum powder. We has to get a momento---here's joy's new ring of Homestake gold.

We went to Deadwood for the afternoon-- a restored frontier town with lots of restaraunts and casinos. Joy had a good day at the casinos and we had a great steak dinner that evening. All frontier re-enactments were rained out.

Joy strikes gold in deadwood!

Proof in the picture!

More in amazing South Dakota

We started today with a drive to see wildlife and saw pronghorn antelope, buffaloes with lots of brand new calves, burros, deer, turkeys,...

Then we went full cowboy in the Dakota hills--- Joy rode Wild Bill; I rode Ghost

Then we went to the Crazy Horse site, which has an excellent Native American museum as well. This next one was astonishing-- see the certificate--- it claims to be some of the original beads used by the Dutch to buy Manhatten: the folklore is true?!!!

Crazy Horse Mountain is an unbelievable story-- a talented young sculpture working on Mount Rushmore was approached by several indian chiefs to make a similar mountain tribute to an indian hero. The sculpture accepted in 1948 and spent the next 40 years carving away half the mountain to get the rough stone shape to work with. Seven of his children and his wife worked with him and continued the effort after he died. It took 11 more years to carve the face (completed in 1998). It will take several generations to complete the work. In the photo below, compare the untouched left side of the symmetrical mountain with the mostly-dynamite-carved right side. The mountain has been thinned as well as shaped---the hole through seems to be a confidence builder, that meaningful progress is happening. The white paint lines are for the start on the horse's head and ear. Look at the model sculpture farther below.

To have generations of people dedicate their life work to a monument that will last as long as the pyramids is something!

This Blew Our Minds

But first--- these were obviously planted by the tourism bureau:

We went to Jewel Cave today. You know pictures can't capture what is so neat about a cave, so only one picture here:

Our tour lasted about an hour and a half. But this cave system is really big. They discovered that as the weather changes "high pressure, or low", the cave breathes to equalize the pressure in its system of caverns. Winds in the cave can reach 35mph! So they started exploring in the 1950s. Here's a section of the cave map showing each chamber, its features, size, etc.

Fifty years later they've added to reach 153 miles of a suspected several thousand miles (based on air flow as the cave breathes).

To go beyond the tour area for recreational caving or to explore new areas, each and every person must get through a passage with a cross-section 8.5" x 24". Incomprehensible! Teams exploring/mapping go in for 4 days and camp. It takes one day in and one day to get back out. Two days measuring, diagramming, etc. to create the map and detailed notes.

This afternoon we relaxed by climbing Harney Peak. over 7000ft high (though the trail starts at 5000ft).
The views had to be approaching 100 miles and were spectacular, though all the picture shows is the high winds trying to blow me off the fire observation tower at the top.

The Black Hills

It was in the 30's last night. Some people are sleeping in tents (yikes!)

Today we drove over the scenic, but narrow winding "Needles highway". Yes, there is a thunder storm going on as I write this, but it's not bad: last week the Needles highway was closed due to a snow storm. the Needles are these vertical spires of granite. We are included in the photos to show that there are hours of good weather and we haven't gone crazy yet.
     The vertical granite does scary looking things: This "Needles Eye" is at least 100ft high.

And the road builders thought tunnels 8ft 4in wide would be fine for cars to get through:

There is wildlife everywhere.

Then we went to Sylvan lake (Sandy-thanks for the recommendation) which is surrounded by granite upheavals. We had a picnic because we only saw two small patches of unmelted snow; and because Joy brought hot soup in thermos containers (genius!)

You know we stopped here.

It is pretty amazing....

Why is Teddy Roosevelt included with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln?  A clue may be that the head of the project knew Roosevelt personally....

Wildlife is prolific here. This guy was one of several wandering the site. As we walked around our campground a group of six deer walked through.

I rushed yesterday's blog, so here's a few additional notes. The Journey Museum in Rapid city had a great section on fossils and dinosaurs. We were impressed by the knowledge and scope shown--for example these fossil dinosaur eggs with one broken open on the right, showing the bones of the almost-hatchling. The exhibit showed how they used "CATscans" to get clear pictures of each bone or fragment.

Then we wondered if we shouldn't be so easily impressed. The picture below is genuinely unretouched from our drive here from the Badlands. Glad were not sleeping in a tent.

No Rain (until afternoon)

The weather broke for several hours yesterday, so we went hiking in the Badlands. We honestly could imagine being pioneers hiking thru the grasslands.

Why wasn't this sign in the parking lot instead of miles into the hike??!!

Then we came to slick clay/mud in the eroded areas:

Afterwards we visited a sod homesteaders house that was built around 1910 and was still lived in 'til about 1950. The homesteader was 55 when he decided to to it in 1910(!!!). He moved to this land, built the house, and lived there happily with his wife and child 'til they were quite old.

This was life on the prarie into the middle 1900's. The rural electrification program had not reached this homestead.

It did have extra bathroom capacity-- a two holer.

Today is raining hard, so we're going to Rapid City --- plan B.