​Two day’s worth of notes and photos because of weak wifi last night.
 
Both days were marked by contrasts – from the Cold War to bunnies in the yard and back to the Cold War.
 
First up yesterday was a visit to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. The site has two decommissioned Minuteman missile launchers. The Delta-01 site allows visitors inside, but only 6 per tour and the tours sell out as soon as they become available. So we went to the Delta-09 site, which you can see from the outside and has an excellent cell phone audio tour. At one point there were 150 of these missiles in South Dakota, part of the arsenal of 1000 spread across the upper Midwest. After the START treaty, most were destroyed and verified by the Russians, but a few were allowed to remain for display and these are the ones. A real throwback to our youth and the fears/reality of a possible WW3. This was even more dramatically brought home today at the visitor center, where the film included the iconic “duck and cover” movie from our youth. We were struck by the diversity of service members who worked at the sites, including several women.

Leaving the silo yesterday, we headed to Bandlands National Park and its amazing collection of rock formations. We drove the scenic roads, took a few short hikes, and generally basked in the beauty of this place. It reminded us a lot of parts of the Southwest, but the conjunction of rocks and expansive grasslands is unique. We’ll let the photos in the slide show below do the talking for us. Along the roads in the Park, we saw bison, prairie dogs and big horned sheep – another contrast from the rocks of the Southwest. One final drive and a couple of short walks this morning before heading ​out.

​Our home last night was a cabin in the Park. It was very comfortable, and even the limited dining options were ok. (Less so this morning…) It had a lovely view from our porch that Ed enjoyed last night while writing this. A bunny came by to see what he was doing and returned this morning while Laura drank her coffee and did Spelling Bee.
 

​We left Badlands knowing we were leaving prairie dogs, but not weird roadside art, behind.

​Then the long long drive east and north to Watertown SD, a fairly large city 80 miles from the North Dakota border. We went through several small Indian reservations and passed acres of wheat fields and all manner of agricultural equipment. 
 
And yes, Steve confirmed that his neighbor and friend, Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, is the granddaughter of the artist who made Rapid City’s dinosaurs. Frankly, Suzanne is the better public artist. She is the creator of the COVID memorial flag project In America (https://www.inamericaflags.org). We always enjoy talking with her at Steve’s.

First, the landmark. After our morning adventure (below), we turned east, heading towards home, beginning the last leg of The Journey, after driving 5,200 miles through 17 states over 5 1/2 weeks.

We began the day at Jewel Cave, the third cave of the trip. It is the second largest cave in the U.S. About 5% of the cave has been mapped (calculated by the volume of air that it sends out when the air pressure differential is right.) Until last week, it was the fourth largest (longest) cave in the world. Then caves in China and the Yucatan both found they connected to another cave, edging them past Jewel. There is a theory that Jewel may link to Wind, which would bump it up in the listing. We found this particularly interesting, since the formations in the two caves are very different. Alas, they do not do lantern tours in spring, so we went on a standard tour, which was still fun. The volunteer guide is friends with some of the volunteer spelunkers who explore the cave, so he had good stories.

We then drove the Iron Mountain Highway up to Mount Rushmore. The scenery is not as dramatic as Needles, but the very cool thing is how the tunnels frame the mountain. And the “pigtail” bridges which loop the road 360 degree under itself, that were devised to span big changes in elevation. We've cheated and posted an arial photo from the Internet.

​Mount Rushmore itself was, of course, impressive, particularly after learning what it is taking to carve the Crazy Horse Memorial. (There was a letter at that museum from Gutzon Borglum, essentially telling Korczak Ziolkowski there was no place for him on the Rushmore project and to go back to New York.) An amazing fact - there were no serious injuries among the Rushmore workers. We were struck by the grandness, formality and seriousness of the granite Park buildings and walkways, which were a dramatic contrast with the tackiness of the nearby town of Keystone. 

​And to balance out the day, we proceeded to the Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, mainly for the view of the Black Hills. The dinosaurs are on the National Register of Historic Places, which doesn’t say much for the National Register. Need to check with Laura’s brother Steve – we may know the daughter of artist Emmet Sullivan.

​​We are spending the night in Wall, yes, home to Wall Drugs. We’ve added a spoon rest. Not the perfect SD souvenir, but it will do. We are staying in one of a line of free standing rustic cabins near the highway, a quite comfortable option, particularly given the alternatives.

We finished listening to Dead Lions, the second Slow Horses book by Mick Herron. Now we’re about halfway through Why Fish Don’t Exist, which is very different. No idea what will be next…

Two drives today through the Custer State Park, South Dakota’s oldest and largest park.
 
First we did the Wildlife Loop Road. It wound through some lovely forest where we saw a few deer. Then onto the grassy plains, through a prairie dog town, and through the area where their bison herds were hanging out today. Hundreds of bison of all ages were grazing there, including many babies from this spring, some still nursing from their mothers. They are magnificent beasts. Also saw some mules (donkeys?) in the road.

​Next came the Needles Highway, a civil engineering feat that meanders through some magnificent rock formations, with gorgeous views, and includes three narrow (barely one car wide) tunnels. The story goes that Peter Norbeck, the politician most responsible for the park, went to his engineer and asked if he could build a highway through this area. The response was “yes, if you get me enough dynamite.” He got all the explosives he needed and the road was built in 1922. (Picture with Ed for scale!)

​Our last stop of the day was the Crazy Horse Memorial (https://crazyhorsememorial.org). This is a mountain being carved into a statue of the Lakota chief Crazy Horse on his horse pointing to his historic tribal lands. It was started in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski, a sculptor from Connecticut who was recruited by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to create the monument. They are celebrating the 75th anniversary this year and it is far from complete. Crazy Horse’s head, his arm, and his hand are reasonably complete and they are working on the horse’s head. Currently, the third generation of Ziolowskis are heading up the effort. In addition to the monument, there is an Indian museum, a cultural center and an Indian University.

​Sitting at breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express in Custer SD, we watched a parade of retirees checking out of the hotel, clearly on their own road trips (coolers on luggage carts is the giveaway). So nice to be a stereotype. 
 
The day started at the Mammoth Site (https://mammothsite.org); 140,000 years ago, the forces of nature created an appealing, deep sinkhole filled with water, with sheer sides and sticky mud. Male mammoths (they have found no females!) slid into the hole and couldn’t get out. The result is a paleontology gold mine. They have found 122 tusks, suggesting there are at least 61 skeletons at the site. We chatted with a conservator working on some other Ice Age fossils and a preparator installing a new exhibition. It’s a very cool place. And they had spoon rests!

​Lunch was in Hot Springs, which apparently has been tearing up its streets forever. The ice cream parlor and café offered “bottomless French fries” with your burgers or hotdogs, which we think is a genius idea. It felt good to support a local business through the awful construction. And the fries were excellent.

​The afternoon was spent at the Wind Cave National Park (the second photo is the original tiny opening: https://www.nps.gov/wica/index.htm). which is an enormous network of narrow passages. There’s no water, so no stalagmites or stalactites, but it has the largest concentration of box work – amazing geometric shapes on the ceiling – in the world. The cave has more than 150 miles of passageways that have been explored, but that is only a small fraction (5 – 10%) of the entire cave network.

The park also has an extensive habitation of prairie dogs. As we were watching them, they started chirping and barking, alerting everyone to the coyote cutting across the field. We also saw some more of the park’s herd of bison and learned that buffalo and bison are the same. 

​The hotel hot tub was a nice way to chill out before dinner. We planned to do the wildlife loop in the state park after dinner, but it got dark quickly.

​FIVE WEEKS on the road as of today.
 
We spent the day with our niece Justine, great nephew Felix and great niece Zelda. Eric had to work…
 
But first, crepes for breakfast at a real French café.
 
We drove up Flagstaff Mountain (trying not to over tax Laura’s joints) with beautiful views of the snow covered Rockies in one direction and the city in the other. 

​After a stop in town, we drove up to National Center for Atmospheric Research, housed in an I. M. Pei designed building. They used the local clay in the construction, so while large it blends into the landscape. It’s one of Justine’s favorite destinations, and it has a good view of the Flat Irons. 

We headed east of the city for a late dinner at Acreage, a very hip Boulder spot, catching an amazing sunset on the way.

​Drove through the beautiful Colorado mountains on steep winding roads via Breckenridge (where we had lunch), a ski town. We wondered if its Main St. retained original small scale buildings or is a faux small town. Lots of snow up here, the ski area still operating about half its terrain and lifts. Wonderful scenery.
 
Got to Boulder to find that Target did indeed have the long sleeved shirts Laura needed. Then visiting and dinner with Justine and Eric, who were kind enough to let us do our laundry.

Then north to Colorado. Laura was surprised to see snow on the mountains. (Ed was not.) imagine how surprised she would have been yesterday when Salida got 6” of snow (which is now gone).

​Amazon produced a new fleece sweater. We hope Target in Boulder still has long sleeved T shirts tomorrow.

​It’s been way too long since we’ve been in Santa Fe. It really is one of our favorite places. And since the predicted snow did not materialize, we had a good day.
 
People we met in Big Bend recommended a temporary exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture: Grounded in Clay: the Spirit of Pueblo Pottery (https://groundedinclay.org). It represents a really interesting approach to curation, asking  60 community curators from the 21 Pueblo tribes in the Southwest to select works that speak to them in some way and to write the labels. Many selected pieces made by ancestors or other potters they knew personally. The work is, of course, stunningly beautiful, but it is the personal connections that are so moving. It will be at the Met next year and we strongly recommend it. We also enjoyed the museum’s re-done core exhibition, Here, Now and Always, which also emphasized native voice (https://www.indianartsandculture.org/current?&eventID=5042)  
 
The art on the Museum Hill plaza is always a delight.

​We then went to the New Mexico Museum of Art on the Plaza for an exhibition of wood carving, with was disappointing. But two other exhibitions were more interesting. An American in Paris: Donald Beauregard featured the work of a young man who was just developing his approach to painting when he died in 1914 at 29. You could see how he was processing the significant post-Impressionistic paintings around him. And a small exhibition of the work of Mexican street photographer Manuel Carrillo (https://www.nmartmuseum.org/exhitions/manuel-carrillo-mexican-modernist/) was a nice surprise.
 
We wandered along Canyon Road popping into galleries until it started raining. In any case, we were sated and ready to enjoy our lovely accommodations.
 
Tapas dinner with Laura’s colleague and old friend Gail and her husband John was the perfect way to end the day.

​We spent the morning at Carlsbad Caverns. We could write descriptions, but the photographs really tell the story.

​To reach the Caverns, you walk down about 750 feet over 1.25 miles. Then the route around The Big Room is another 1.25 miles. The room itself is 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 255 feet high, making it the largest chamber in North America You can walk back up (ha!) or take an elevator. This is how Laura managed the excursion.