7/21/14 Mt. Rushmore and Badlands, South Dakota

July 19 - Three weeks on the road and loving it -

From Devils Tower on the north eastern boarder of Wyoming, we continued on Route 90 to Hill City, South Dakota where we visit again with John's sister Joan and husband, Craig; we had a cookout with their wonderful (and colorful)

neighbors, Deb and Craig took another ATV trip to an old mine and found a large piece of rock which was mainly rose quartz. John wouldn't let her take it with us (memories of the Lucy and Desi Honeymoon RV Movie  The Long, Long Trailer where Lucy secretly collected LOTS of rocks in their RV....) so Craig said he would hold on to it till we had space.

Speaking of having space, we just found out that our condo building at Champlin Woods in Westerly Rhode Island is the next building to be built!!!!  So we could have a place next fall to move to if we decide by then to get off the road for a while.  We'll see.  At the rate these guys are building, we are planning more on Summer 2016.

There is so much to do and see in the Black Hills.  We went kayaking on one of the many lakes near where gold was first found in the Black Hills.  That brought Custer with a massive scientific survey team to check it out.  We toured Mt. Rushmore which is only 15 minutes from our

campground in Keystone.  It is impressive!  Like Devils Tower you can't really comprehend how large it is without something to scale it by.  It took Gutzon Borglum and a crew of about 500, 14 years to carve these 4 presidents faces.  I am reading a very good historical novel called "Black Hills" by Dan Simmons about a Lakota  Indian's life from living free with his tribe as a boy during Custer's last stand,  to setting up the reservations, the Chicago World's Fair and finally to the last 14 years of his life as a powder-man building Mt. Rushmore.  The protagonist is fiction but it appears most of the rest of it pretty accurate.

Here is John at our Keystone Kemp Campground one morning communing with nature.  This deer is clearly used to being fed.

Badlands, South Dakota

July 21 - We leave today heading for more of John's family in Minnesota.  Continuing east from Rapid City on Route 90 we are quickly in the Badlands where the temperature is 103.  With miles of canyons that dead end, you can see why people went here to hide but I don't know how they found their way out!