The badlands were absolutely beautiful! This National Park is yet another location where you can literally just hang your camera out of your window and snap pictures randomly and come out with fabulous scenery. Again, I'm going to let Mike's artistry cover the landscapes later, because I really want to show us having some fun!



Mike was in his element, taking beautiful, luscious photographs. I really can't wait for you all to see them! He'll be uploading them onto his FB account where you'll be able to peruse them . . . after our trip.





That map link I gave you before only seems to have the first part of our trip! Here is our trip from it's farthest point back to our home!

We were able to see some new birds here, being that it's a new kind of habitat, and we were also able to see some more prairie dogs!


I love prairie dogs! We were hoping to see some black-footed ferrets but no luck . . . our consolation sighting was that Si saw a swift fox. Cool!






After a beautiful morning in the Badlands we visited Wall Drug. Boy, this place has changed and grown a lot in the 30 years since I last visited! I think it's at least 2x the size it was. So many crazy things! We had fun (although Simon thought it was more silly than he could be).








If you've never been to Wall Drug, it's a huge store full of every kind of touristy thing you can possibly imagine. In the middle of it all, there is an actual drug store. There are also kitschy statues and stuff all over.





Simon hit the nail on the head when he said that these people have a sense of humor, and have collected all of this stuff because they know it's funny. Gotta love it!






After Wall, we were able to drive to Mitchell, SD and drive by the Corn Palace. We loved that they even have a tribute to the 100 years of Scouting and the BSA anniversary.






We found a local park in Mitchell and grilled out for dinner, which was quite nice. It was good to have some homey hotdogs instead of fancy eat-out food. I think we're tiring of restaurants, and Simon has even been saying that he's kind of tired of steak! I never thought I'd see the day.

I've been trying to get a map of our route, and I hope this works! Our trip might be overload for Google Maps, though. Let me know if it makes any sense to you or not!

Today we left Columbus, Montana and drove into Wyoming! I was sound asleep when we entered the state, but I was awake by the time we reached Devil's Tower. This is the area of the country that I saw about 30 years ago on a long trip to National Center West with the Girl Scouts, and we camped one night near Devil's Tower. It's so cool! It's the core of an ancient volcano, and the mountain is all eroded away while the cooled magma is still there. Neat, right?

It's rained nearly all day today, but we managed to look around and take some fun pictures. We drove down to see Crazy Horse Monument, which is privately owned and funded. There is also a big Native American museum filled with all kinds of artifacts, both old and more modern. Simon coined what sounded to me like a new term . . . "leech town" for the little towns around the monuments where everything around town has something kitschy to do with the point of interest, and it all costs more money than it should. Suffice to say that the Black Hills area is rife with Leech Towns.

We drove around Custer State Park and were able to see some great wildlife. The donkeys were blocking the road with their grazing and begging, but they were really cute!






The Buffalo herds were mostly far away from the road, but there was one large herd that was very close to the road that had a lot of calves. It was exciting to finally see a real herd! I tried to get Simon to run at them and get them to stampede, but he wouldn't play along.




Finally we got to Mt Rushmore. We'd saved it for last because we kept hoping the rain would clear. It didn't, and neither did the fog, as you can see. If you enlarge the pictures you can see better! I did manage to get a few clear shots of the big stone heads with great patience. The visitor's center is greatly changed from 30 years ago when I was here before. It's really big and impressive now, and I don't remember it being like that before.




Tomorrow we will go through the SD Badlands, visit Wall Drug and maybe get all the way to the Corn Palace or further. Then we'll be in the Chicago area, staying with dear old friends, Scott and Tony. So far we're still having fun with one another, too, which is a great thing, don't you think?

We had a great day in Glacier. It rained on and off, but we still saw a lot of things. Mike and Si saw a Black Bear pretty close to the road, and later saw a mama Grizzly and 2 cubs - there are some great pics, but I'll wait til we're sharing Mike's pictures. We saw some beautiful waterfalls, too. It's really lovely with all the mountains and fields and wildlife.



When we left Glacier we drove Southeast through Montana and made our way slowly through the state. We found some cool roadside historical markers from Lewis and Clark's expedition, and we passed a lot of ranches. This is really amazing country! We've seen so many pronghorn antelope and mule deer that we barely even mention them anymore!



We winded our way down to Bozeman, Montana. Montana Univ. has the Museum of the Rockies, curated by Jack Horner, and we wanted to see what dinos they had there. This pic was taken out front. The steel cast was made from the fossil named Big Mike, one of the most complete T Rexes ever found or something. We saw the real fossils inside. They also had a great exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci's machines with life-size models made of wood that you could (often) touch and work. It was very cool!

Outside of Bozeman is National Bridge State Monument, which we visited. The water was running so strong and fast it was nearly deafening! You can see the river disappear underground and then come pouring back out. Cool!





This park was really well designed, too, because the whole area was wheelchair accessible, which made it easily walkable even for someone like me with bad joints, etc.






Bozeman is really small town, but they do have a really nice restaurant! The Grand Hotel had excellent food, including buffalo steaks and elk. We all had an truly delicious meal (even if I did eat too much!)

We left Bozeman and drove about 1.5 more hours to Columbus, MT to spend the night.


After spending the night in a cheap place along the road, we went to Little Bighorn National Battlefield. This ranger was a great storyteller and told the riveting story of how the battle went down, and he pointed out exactly where everything happened. Very interesting. We drove around a bit to see the smaller markers where the soldiers and native warriors fell, and then we moved on. Tonight we are in Sundance, WY. The rain has come in full force since about 1, so we're going to bed early and hoping for some breaks in the bad weather over the next couple of days so we can get some good pics in the Black Hills around the monuments!

Ta-ta for now!