Georgia

Road Trip to the West

On Tuesday July 24th at about 6:30am. my Mom and I left for a 3 week road trip to visit family in the west and to see some of the special sites along the way of our journey. July 24th we traveled through Minnesota and into South Dakota. It was in the mid to upper 90's that day and I was really grateful for air conditioning.

We had rest stops and then we usually walked around the area for about 15-20 minutes. We usually had our lunch at a picnic table in one of the rest stops all along our journey. I really enjoyed that time just relaxing from our drive. We took I 90 for most of our trip unless we were getting off to see a site.
Corn Palace in South Dakota was our first stop. The first corn palace was built in 1892 as a gathering place where city residents could enjoy a fall festival – a celebration to climax a crop-growing season and harvest. This tradition continues today with an annual Corn Palace Festival. The first Corn Palace became to small and they built a new on in 1905, and a third more permanent building was finished in 1921.

The Palace is redecorated each year with naturally colored corn. 13 different colors or shades of corn are used to decorate the Corn Palace: red, brown, black, blue, white, orange, calico, yellow and green corn! A different theme is chosen each year, and murals are designed to reflect that theme. Ear by ear the corn is nailed to the Corn Palace to create a scene. The decorating process usually starts in late May with the removal of the rye and dock. The corn murals are stripped at the end of August and the new ones are completed by the first of October.

When your close to the picture you can see each individual corn cob. It was beautiful. Inside they have a theater and there are pictures for each year since it's inception. Those were fascinating

The Badlands National Park, in South Dakota, preserves 242,756 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires blended with the largest protected mixed grass prairie in the United States.The Badlands Wilderness protects 64,144 acres of the park as a designated wilderness area. I thought the Badlands were somewhat like the Grand Canyon only on a smaller scale.

Wall Drug Store Who could have guessed that a free glass of ice water offered to travelers on their way to Mount Rushmore back in the 1930s would turn into a sprawling mall that today attracts tourist from all over the world. You can still get a free glass of ice water. Named after the small town where pharmacist Ted Hustead and his wife Dorothy bought a small drug store in 1931. In the beginning the drug store suffered from hard times. It was the time of the Great depression. It is definitely a tourist trap. Then in the summer of 1936 his wife suggested they offer free ice water ti travelers on their way to the newly opened Mount Rushmore Monument only 60 miles away. Soon highway 90 was littered with billboards offering the free water and the tourist found it too irresistible to pass by. Before you get to Wall Drug Store there are a lot of signs along I-90. there are so many that by the time you've actually reached Wall, South Dakota, you'll be so curious that you've basically got to stop. Today there are many more reasons to stop. The huge Wall Drug complex houses shops and a western art museum, a chapel, huge sculptures and of course a small pharmacy.

Wall, SD : The famous or infamous Wall Drug

Buried within the Wall complex is the original Wall Drugs

Wall, SD : Wall, South Dakota: Wall Drug Store: interior

Mount Rushmore is about 71 years old. The colossal sculpture in the Black Hills is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the United States. The stone heads (in order from left to right) of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln represent independence, democratic process, leadership in world affairs, and equality. Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, each of the 60-foot-tall heads required the work of hundreds of laborers, who used dynamite, jackhammers, drills, and chisels to carve away at the mountain face. After more than a decade of work the memorial was officially opened.The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres and is 5,725 feet above sea level. Construction on the memorial began in 1927, and the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939

Entrance to Mount Rushmore

Large Ampitheatre

Surrounding area of Mount Rushmore was breath taking

Devil's Tower
One of my favorite sights during our trip was visiting Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. The site is amazing. I had a hard time taking my eyes off the tower once it cames into view. Devils Tower is 867 feet from the base to its summit and has a circumference of nearly one mile. The top measures about the length of a football field.

The Legend: Various legends are told about the origin of the tower. One story, common to the Kiowa, Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne and Sioux tribes, concerns a group of little girls pursued by a giant bear. According to this legend, seven young Indian girls were one day playing in the forest. A great bear came upon them and gave chase. The girls fled swiftly through the trees but the bear slowly gained on them. Recognizing the hopelessness of their situation, the girls jumped upon a low rock and prayed loudly to the Great Spirit to save them. Immediately the small rock began to grow upwards, lifting the seven girls higher and higher into the sky. The angry bear jumped up against the sides of the growing tower and left deep claw marks, which may be seen to this day upon the rock walls.

The tower continued to soar towards the sky until the girls were pushed up into the heavens, where they became the seven stars of the Pleiades.

Known to the Indians as Mateo Tepee or Grizzly Bear Lodge, the tower is actually the remnant of a volcanic extrusion that occurred 60-70 million years ago

The whole area around Devils Tower was beautiful. On the side of the road was this canyon and in front of us were the red rock hills so different in their beauty.

As I got out of the car to get a couple good shots of the canyon these two friendly horses followed me along the fence as I took the pictures, they stared at me when I got into my car. I wondered if they were lonely

As we left the park the field was just full of these prairie dogs. and there were signs of "Don't Feed The Prairie Dogs"!

The next stop was Yellowstone National Park at least that was our plan. However we had to get off the freeway for a pit stop and we were ready for lunch too. We hadn't seen a rest area in miles, and there was this exit for a visitor center. We stopped and after getting fresh water and taking care of our needs we saw a nice picnic table under a tree near the building and asked if we could have lunch there. To our surprise we were at this historical site in Hardin, Montana (Big Horn County Historical Museum) It was a whole town of the early 1900's. After our lunch we decided to look around. As we walked through the buildings that made up the museum we caught a glimpse of a bygone era. This history was brought to life through the collection of photographs and artifacts that were exhibited in each of the buildings. It was a wonderful surprise for both of us.

This is where we had our lunch right under the shade tree by the gravel