Category: on the road LEARNING Page 4 of 8

Wind Cave National Park…where the prairie meets the hills and trees.

We camped at Elk Mountain Campground inside the park. We were the only ones there.

We actually went on a really nice 5 mile hike to explore the area. Watching Dancing with the Wolves with the girls last night helped me appreciate all the prairie grasses 🙂

We took the Centennial Trail to the Highland Creek Trail to the Lookout Trail through prairie grass and ponderosa pine forest and even found another wind cave tunnel.

Prairie dogs DO NOT drink any water. They get all their water from the prairie grasses. Many animals prey upon the prairie dogs in the area, foxes, coyotes, badgers, snakes, birds. Another animal is the black-footed ferret which is the similar size as the prairie dogs. The black-footed ferret is endangered and without the prairie dogs they are in danger of going extinct.

The prairie marches on…

Prairie grasses are adapted to the hot, dry summers and the cold, dry winters. And the CONSTANT wind. They are even tough enough so that when bison eat them down to the ground or they are burned down from prairie fires, they can grow again from its core. The bison till up the soil allowing air and moisture to help the soil around the grasses. The bison also picks up the seeds with its tail and hide and helps distribute grass seeds around the prairie.

The girls made 2 scientific discoveries with their eyeballs.

So we woke up to snow. (it was supposed to be rain starting at 11am)…so quickly packed up and got out of there (so wouldn’t have to put on chains) and went south 30 min.

Made it to our 8th National Park. Wind Cave National Park.

We went to the visitor center, saw the movie, and checked out the natural entrance to the wind cave. You could really feel and hear the wind rushing out of there.

Wind Cave is the 7th national Park to be established in 1903 by Teddy Roosevelt and was the first national park to be established because of a cave.Wind Cave got its name because it is a very large cave and has very few openings so you often hear wind rushing in or out of the cave due to the pressure differential.

The cave is closed so we can not check it out. The elevator has been down since July.

You could feel the storm moving towards us so we went another 15 minutes south to Hot Springs, South Dakota and check out the local warm water pools there. It was a fun pool with two indoor waterslides, basketball, steam rooms, and gymnastics rings. The coolest thing about this pool was it had actual river rocks as its floor.

We took a break from swimming to go to the Mammoth Dig Site in Hot Springs.

The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs South Dakota is an active digging site. It was a large sinkhole where the animals went looking for food and/or water, got trapped, and couldn’t get out. It is the largest site of Columbia’s mammoths. It is also the only site where Columbian mammoths and wooly mammoths have been found together. They have also found the prehistoric short nosed bear, which just looks scary.

we went back to Evans Plunge for a quick swim before we drove back up to Wind Cave and camped inside the park.

Oh and then we watched Dances with Wolves with the girls. Here’s Vera with tatanka

We return in the morning to do the audio tour and walk around Mount Rushmore up close. It was nice we were here yesterday evening after everything was closed because there were significantly less people. It’s kind of crazy on a midweek day in October how many people are here. I mean I guess we are, but still….

Can you name the 4 Presidents featured on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial? And guess why they were picked to be a part of this memorial?

Mount Rushmore National Memorial was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum. The idea came from a historian, Doane Robinson, to promote tourism in South Dakota. He originally wanted American West heroes such as Lewis & Clark and Buffalo Bill Cody, but Borglum though Presidents would have wider appeal. He started the project in 1927 and the memorial was finished in October 1941. Unfortunately Borglum died in March 1941 so he was not there to see the the project to completion. His son Lincoln completed the project. Originally it was supposed to display the presidents to their waist, but due to lack of funding and the fact that Gutzon died, it remained the way it is today.

President George Washington. This was an easy pick. He was our 1st president. He was president from 1789-1897. He represented the nation’s ”birth”.

President Abraham Lincoln was also an easy pick. Borglum was a big fan of President Lincoln. He even named his first son after him. Lincoln is our 16th President from 1861-1865. President Lincoln was to represent the “preservation” of our country during the Civil War.

Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd President. He was picked to represent the “growth” of our country. 1801-1809.

Theodore Roosevelt. Our 26th president. 1901-1909. The most controversial figure for the memorial. He was a fairly recent president and there was a bit of controversy as whether not he should have been placed in the memorial. The crux of the scandal was that Teddy Roosevelt was good friends with the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. According to the audio tour, he was picked to represent the “development” of our country.

We left a giant rock memorial that had been completed to go to a rock memorial that was in the beginning stages of its completion, the Crazy Horse Memorial just about 20 miles away also in the Black Hills.

There was a lot of initial controversy over Mount Rushmore. It is located in the Black Hills. (I was recently told anywhere you see ponderosa pines, you are in the black hills). The Black Hills were originally gifted to the Lakota people via the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, but the U.S. took it back in 1876 after they found gold there. The U.S. then deciding to put giant faces of U.S. Presidents was very difficult to the Lakota people for 2 reasons, 1. it was on land “taken away” from them and subsequently heroes of American culture that forced the indigenous people from their land was erected, but even more so 2. the “Black Hills” in particular are considered sacred ground.

This is the part of history that I have never been aware of or cared to seek out before, but grateful for this journey to be able to see beauty in all the ways. There is beauty in seeing this rock sculpture as a work of art. Because I feel like it is…a work of art in itself And what a feat. But there is also beauty (albeit the sad parts of beauty) in the understanding of history, the background, and the controversy.

So we went to the memorial honoring Crazy Horse, a Native American, and guess what, controversy there too. In response to Mount Rushmore a Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear commissioned Korczak Ziolkowski to carve the Crazy Horse monument in 1948. “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.” It would feature Crazy Horse on his horse pointing to his lands which are “my lands are where my dead lie buried.” Crazy Horse’s family feels that Standing Bear never had the right to ask Ziolkowski to do this and the monument is a “desecration of the landscape and environment of the Black Hills, and of the ideals of Crazy Horse himself”. In addition, Crazy Horse was very aloof and humble and made a point to never having his picture taken. “…will you imprison my shadow as well?…”.

Crazy Horse is one of the most notable Native Americans of his time. He was never a chief, but was a great warrior of the Lakota and very much respected. He has been credited to the warrior who led the defeat of the 7th cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn and along with Sitting Bull took up arms agains the U.S. Army to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people. “…his life shows how great he was, because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because [though] he may have surrendered, … he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never captured. His dislike of the oncoming civilization was prophetic. Unlike many people all over the world, when he met white men he was not diminished by the encounter.”

At first the Native Americans were split about the project, but because of the for profit business the Ziolkowski family has made of the monument, the lack of Native Americans working at the site and museum, most feel as though the family is no longer honoring Crazy Horse, but profiting from him. The project started back in 1948 and is very far from completion. The site is owned entirely by the Ziolkowski family, is run as a non-profit, and no money being donated to the local tribes.

Once completed it will be the 2nd largest statue in the world measuring at 563’ high by 643’ wide. Crazy Horse’s fade will he 83’ high. (The heads at Mount Rushmore are 60’ tall). Beyond the controversy it was neat to see it in its initial stage and and I will come back in another 30 years to see where it’s done.

We have more to learn about Crazy Horse and the Native American tribes of this area that is for certain…so forgive me…because we are learning as we are going…and its A LOT of information to take in.

We just stopped in for a quick look and sunset and then camping out tonight and will return for the audio tour tomorrow

9th State.

We started the day with a sunrise bike ride. In PJs 🙂

So technically this is Devils Tower National Monument. It was the first national monument established in 1906, by Teddy Roosevelt.

I know I’m above called it Bears Lodge. That is because that is what 20+ Native American tribes called it. Actually they had many different names ranging from Bear’s Tower to Bear Lodge to Bear’s Tipi to Bear’s House, but Bears Lodge is what most have agreed to and they have been trying to change the name ever since it was called devils tower back in the late 1800s. There was legislation back in 2005 to change the name but United States Representative Barbara Cubin, argued that a “name change will harm the tourist trade and bring economic hardship to area communities”. It was not changed. In November 2014, Arvol Looking Horse proposed renaming the geographical feature “Bear Lodge”, and submitted the request to the United States Board on Geographic Names. A second proposal was submitted to request that the U.S. acknowledge what it described as the “offensive” mistake in keeping the current name and to rename the monument and sacred site Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark. The formal public comment period ended in fall 2015. Local state senator Ogden Driskill opposed the change. The name was not changed.

Ugh, I understand that it is normal to demonize people that you are attacking. It makes one feel better about what they are doing. Makes you feel right. Makes you feel justified.

But can we all just agree that Bears Lodge or Bears Tower or Bears Tipi is just a nicer name for a beautiful place? Instead of Devils Tower? Because it really is quite beautiful.

Beyond all the stories behind the Native American culture of how this rock got its name (I’ll post some of them below) the name Devils Tower arguably comes from the fact that we used to call Indians “red devils”. This place was a place of worship for many tribes. It was their “church”. Therefore somebody coined it “devils tower”. And the name stuck. Even to this day.

It is the bear’s claws that creates these vertical lines. Geologically it’s called columnar faulting. It’s extraordinary up close. It’s the largest example of columnar faulting in the world. Some are more than 600 feet tall and are 10 to 20 feet wide. Some are 4, 5, 6, and even 7 sided.

Geologist agree that the tower is a igneous (hardened magma) intrusion. There are 3 versions of how this may have happened.

Anyway it was a really beautiful place. I really remember back when I was in Australia 1998 and I went to Uluru. It was a similarSpiritual feeling walking around the base of this giant rock the sun shining on it. I highly recommend this place for anyone who is in the area.

Petroglyphs dated back to 11,000 years ago were on the drive from Thermopolis to Cody, Wyoming. After our evening soak when we decided to drive to the petroglyphs and camp out on the side of the road so go see them during sunrise. as we were driving the last few miles it to the petroglyphs site was pretty neat because everything was clear except versus one misty area in the valley. it was as if the spirits all Native Americans were hovering right there where the petroglyphs were. Of course that where the mist was wasn’t exactly where the petroglyphs were probably about a half mile away and when we parked we could smell the salt for a knew there must’ve been a hot Springs close by but it was kind of fun to think about as we were driving in. It was pretty great we were there as the sun was rising because the sun shone right onto the rocks.

Do you know the difference between petroglyphs and pictographs? Petroglyphs are carved or etched into the stone with a tool. Pictographs are painted on the stone.

Since we are driving through Cody to get to Little Bighorn Battlefield and decided to stop in to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West museum.

There was a rifle exhibit

The Buffalo Bill exhibit. William Frederick Cody 1846 – 1917. He worked for the Pony Express. Became a scout for the US Army during the Indian Wars. Became ‘Buffalo Bill’’ in honor of the amount of buffalo he killed (supposedly he killed 4,282 and 18 months between 1867-68. You can put it in an 8-hour buffalo shooting match to exclusively use the name “Buffalo Bill” against Bill Comstock where he won by killing 68 animals to Comstock’s 48). His legend soon followed him as he was written about and became a symbol of the “Wild West”. He later became a showman and toured the country with his famous “Buffalo Bills Wild West Show”. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was also credited for making Annie Oakley famous as well.

After going through the exhibit, the girls were quite sure why he was/is famous and celebrated.

And didn’t even realize and almost left before we walked through was the Plains Indians exhibit. It was really nicely done. As we were leaving I was bothered that the exhibit was in the back past the cafeteria (which is why we almost missed it) and felt like it should’ve been more prominent like the rifle exhibit which caught our attention first…i imagine people going for that would’ve found it 😐

There were approximately 670 Plains Indians tribes. The Plains Indians were nomadic. Their tribal survival depended on the hunter-warrior society. A man’s ambition was to provide for his family by being an expert horseman, successful hunter, and adept warrior. His status in the tribe was derived from his bravery. Spiritualism in the belief in oneness with his/her respect for the natural environment are central to their religion.

Women were vital to the nomadic society. Their responsibilities involved strenuous labor in running the camp, drying meat, cooking, preparing hides, making clothing, and moving their lodges as the people moved. Through it all, they reared their children.

Every adult in the village played a role in a child’s development and education. Grandparents were especially important. They cared for the children, made them toys, and resources of cultural knowledge and wisdom.

Many tribes consider the Buffalo a sibling and provider of life because it provides protection, nourishment, and roll materials. It symbolized protection.

The Bear was power. The grizzly symbolizes inherent strength.

Realizing how much change happened in such a short amount of time must’ve been so difficult beyond traumatic. Plains Indians were assigned to reservations in the late 1800s and expected to “settle” on single family plots. Remember, they were nomadic.

When are driving to Montana, well, you see some colorful folk.

Right when you drive in to Little Bighorn Battlefield you see a large grassy field filled with tombstones. I’ve been to plenty of cemeteries before in Hungary, but I’ve never been to any associated with a war like the Civil War or a World War in Europe. There’s something different about seeing all the matching tombstones and knowing it all happened in one occasion.

I have to say part of me felt happy (happy not quite the word) to know that there were times when Native Americans defeated the Americans. The more you travel around and see and feel the country and learn about the Indians, the worse you feel about the Native American’s end of the stick. At some point, sadly this was probably inevitable, yet the United States definitely did not go about it admirably or honorably. It is definitely a black stain on our history.

Interestingly, right when we walked in I asked the Ranger what tribe he was a part of (it was evident he was Native American). I think I was expecting to hear him be proud in someway about what happened here, that the indigenous people had some redemption, but that was not necessarily the case. He was part of the Crow Indians and currently lives on the Crow Reservation. The Crow Indians actually helped Lieutenant Colonel George Custer scout for the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians. He said the Crow showed Custer and his men where all the Indian tribes were camped. Lt. Col. Custer said thank you that’s all they required of them and dismissed them. He said the Crow Indians went up the hill to “watch the show”. One of the Crow Indian scouts name was (no joke) “White Man Runs Him”. The young lady behind the desk helping the Ranger in the visitor center mentioned that she was a direct descendent of White Man Runs Him. This is where I am happy that me and Edwin are not afraid to talk to people and we spent more time talking to these two Crow Indians then looking at the displays inside the visitor center. After I apologized if I was ignorant by asking her, “Are you proud or embarrassed of your heritage of being a descendant of White Man Runs Him?…helping the white man locating the Indians and telling Custer where they were camped. She responded with “…that is a little tricky to answer. But what I can say is…is that the Crow people were a peaceful people. Family is very important to them. They took care of their elders and their children. They were concerned with keeping their families and their land intact. They had worked with the white man and made an agreement for their reservation land. They were concerned with longevity of their own tribe. The Lakota and Cheyenne has been their natural enemies. These tribes were originally located in the Dakotas. They moved into their territory into Montana and began a hunting the animals that they felt they had a right to. The wanted those tribes “out” of their land. So yes, they helped the white man. And do do not/did not regret it”. We really appreciated her talking to us and giving us frank and honest answers.

They say Lieutenant Custer poked the hornets nest. There was help just a few days away.

We rounded out the evening with a lovely sunset and found some native american humor at the trading post…

We just needed a day of not moving again and it was really nice just sit in the hot springs and so we are planning on doing that again today. This is an area where a lot of dinosaurs are found so we did go to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, checked out the wind river canyon that we drove through on the way here but didn’t want to stop because we wanted to get to where we were staying for the night, of course went back to the star plunge to have a nice evening soak.

The 2 main things this dinosaur museum is known for is the “Supersaurus” and the “Archaeopteryx”

The archaeopteryx is important because it provided the link between non-avian feathered dinosaurs and modern birds.

Just in case you thought T-Rex 🦖 is scary…

The supersaurus is the longest dinosaur, part of the sauropods and is the largest dinosaur found in Wyoming.

We then walked into town and had lunch at the One Eyed Buffalo 🐃

You know how I know Edwin’s loud…when he was across the street kiddie corner and we are on the phone with each other but I can hear his voice better from the echo off the brick building without the phone to my ear 😂

Wind River Canyon

Walking around hot springs state park. The “big spring” serves the area and 2.1 million gallons flow from it each day. a few They have travertine terraces similar to mammoth hot springs in Yellowstone and they also have a swinging bridge (but not as fun as the one in Libby”

now off for a soak…