Road Trip: Up The Middle Of The Country

Day 18: Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - Hot Springs, SD; Crazy Horse Monument; Belle Fourche, SD

Day's statistics:
Weather: lower 60°s, rainy
Steps: Steve 8,425; Linda 7,172
Travel: 268 miles

Today's breakfast was continental.
Linda had a bagel, and I had a waffle and a yogurt.

Since we already visited Mount Rushmore, and The Mammoth Site was next door, we decided to make a small adjustment to our schedule and actually visit next door.
We checked out, drove to the end of the parking lot, turned right, and one-hundred or so feet later turned right again, into the lot.


On the way in, there were some informational placards, and some stones, including a set that looked like Lego®.





We entered and took a selfie by the mammoth model in the first room.


Our tour began with a ten minute informative video about the site.
In summary, a builder was grading land for a housing development when he accidentally discovered a mammoth tusk. It didn't take long before it was realized the mammoth importance (pun intended) of the discovery.
This site is purported to be the site with the most mammoth remains from natural cause.
Back in the day, the location was a hot spring - hence the name of the town - and in the winter, mammoths, mostly males, would come to feed on the lush vegitation around the spring, fall into the pool, not be able to escape due to the sloped sides, and ulimately drown.
They were able to count 123 tusks, indicating there were at least 62 mammoth bodies at the site.
Then we entered the main room. We entered at station 2 (they could have done just a little better of a job making the start at station 1 a little more pronounced), and station 1 was a bit to the right. Then we proceeded clockwise around the site.
There were QR codes at each station that could be scanned with a smart phone to hear audio of each station.

The focus was around the middle of this main room, though there were a few additional displays along the outer walls too.
These are presented in the order they were viewed with little commentary, including some of the placards that I tried to pair with the artifact in the next picture. The white numbers on blue correspond to the audio. There are also a couple close-ups of the larger pictures.




















































We viewed the dig site and was awed by the extent of what was discovered.
After we made our way back to where we started - almost - we came across a lab with active workers doing... work.

There was a small section on the last wall that contained some extremely small fossils - essentially the complete opposite of the rest of the dig. They were tiny clams and snails (there were magnifying glasses to see the artifacts).






We passed through the doors at the end of the dig room, and entered a small museum.





And the museum exited in the gift shop. Of course.
It was a typical gift shop with clothes and other various souveniers.
One thing that caught my attention that is completely lost in a photo, is this 3D poster (there were different subjects).

We were in the site for nearly two hours.
On the way out, we could see on the other side of the café, the hotel we stayed at next door.

Also, when we arrived, we were the third or fourth car in the lot. It was much more crowded now.

It was time to head to our next stop.
Even though we "passed through" Wind Cave NP yesterday, we had to go back - it's not like it was out of the way or anything - to get our stamp.
We had to go back through the town, and it's construction, in order to get to the other side.

We stopped for gas on the way out as we knew that there may be a decent gap between this town and the next sign of civilization. One very interesting thing about this gas station was that it sold REGULAR gas. I don't think I've seen that since before, like, 1990). I'm not saying it doesn't exist - it's just really rare.

As we were heading through town, we pulled up the GPS and discovered a route that actually went into the holls to the west of town, and around most of the construction. So we did that and saved a few minutes - at least that's what we'd like to think.

After making our way out of town, we headed to the NP.
We didn't see a big variety of wildlife - especially no elk - but we did see more of these pronghorn antelope, and some bison.




The Wind Cave NP Visitor's Center was less than a half hour north of town.

Wind Cave is called Wind Cave not because of the prairie, but because of the... cave. It is an underground spectacular that we could only enjoy on a video in the VC because the elevator was being worked on and visitors, sadly, could not enter the cave.
So our stay at the NP was actually rather brief. I'm glad we didn't plan a whole trip around visiting this park.
We did walk out the few hundred yards to see the original, small opening to the cave.




We exited the parking lot out the back, rather than the way we came in.
We took a route north to head to our next destination.

Our trek took us through Custer, about 20 miles north of the park.
We decided to stop somewhere for lunch. While we could have had something from one of the chains, we decided to stop at a local eatery. While Linda tried to find something on the Google machine, I just pulled into a parking lot.
Pizza it was. And Pizza Mill it where [sic].

Orders are placed and paid for at the counter, then the meal is brought to the table.
We reviewed the menu and chose our pie: medium italian sausage.

There were only five or six tables inside, with mostly-country music playing in the background.
The under-crust was thin, the outer-crust was light and fluffy, the sauce was very sparce, there was mozzarella with a hint of cheddar, and huge chunks of sausage.


We both agree that this was probably one of the - if not THE - best pizzas we had ever had. Seriously.

After our absolutely yummy meal, we continued north on route 385 toward Crazy Horse Monument.



I dropped Linda off at the entrance because it was raining lightly. I circled the front of the parking area and on the second time around, noticed a spot in the first row and took advantage of it. I don't mind walking, and I know I could have used an umbrella, but I just didn't feel like it.
Most of the building was a Native American museum, though there were two movie theaters showing ten or so minute filmns about Chief Crazy Horse, the man that start the monument, and his family that continues the quest to complete it.
There were shuttle buses up to the base of the monument - but we didn't think the view would be any better than from the museum building. Plus it was raining and that would have just made it crappier.
We entered the museum, turned right and began our tour. We didn't finish the tour before they called for a seating in the theater. So we stopped, watched the film, and then finished our tour at the other end - after seeing the monuemtn from the indoor viewing area / platform, through the window (as it was raining). The Native American artifacts included artwork, clothes, tools, stoneware, and more.
















We watched the movie, then headed to the far end of the building to see the monument.


We then continued our tour of the museum starting at the back now, and continuing forward.







This is a close-up of one of the pieces in the last picture above. I took the one above, Linda this one.
Do you see something... different?!!? Unusual?

(Rabbit ears. The answer was rabbit ears.)
And we continuted on.

























Some information about the monument.

A model of what the final monument is supposed to look like.

Comparatively, there wasn't too much progress made in seventy-five years.

But there certainly was in the last three.

We departed the museum and in the parking lot, got a couple last shots not through a window.


We were at the museum for about an hour and a half.
And then we headed to our next destination.

During our two hour drive to the next stop, we saw some slightly interesting sights, including some buffalo statues (some cities have bears or dinosaurs...), a resort, and a few other interesting views as we drove north, first through some mountain terrain and then on interstate 80.

We finally arrived at the town of Belle Fourche - we were told it is pronounced "bell foosh".

The GPS was having a little challenge getting us exactly to our location - but that was primarily because we couldn't drive all the way there. I'm only talking about a difference of a couple hundred feet, but it became a matter of "Turn here, no wait, it's over there, turn there, no it's over there."
We parked in front of a small museum and found a couple signs.


There happened to be two women that were heading out and we asked them about the marker, and they said it was around the corner. So we took the path... around the corner, and found a couple memorials on the way.





According to the sign, we technically were NOT at the tried-and-true real center of the US as that was a few more miles away. We were actually at a proxy marker that represents the center. But we're taking credit for visiting the center because had there been a marker at the REAL center, we sould have driven the few remaining miles to get to that point anyway.
According to Wikipedia: "While any measurement of the exact center of a land mass will always be imprecise due to changing shorelines and other factors, the NGS coordinates identify the spot as an uninhabited parcel of private pastureland approximately 12 mi east of the cornerpoint where the South Dakota–Wyoming–Montana borders meet. For public commemoration, a nearby proxy marker is located in a park in Belle Fourche."



We did the best we could to get a selfie - but it was a little hard to get both of us and the marker which was directly below us in a good shot.


We were only in Belle Foursche for less than twenty minutes including the drive time to get into and out of the town.
And we continued on our way to Bowman, ND, about two hours away.








I'm certain this Buffalo does not have a professional football team... If someone builds a house in this town, do they have to pay for the house and a new road sign?!!?

Linda really wanted a shot of this pond / body of water. Plus we were trying to figure out what that white stuff was.
We passed by it at 80ish, stopped, did a u-turn, went back, did another u-turn, and then pulled up along side and stopped to take the shot. There literally was no one else on the road so this maneuver was a piece of cake. Mmmmmm... cake.

A little further on we encountered another road construction zone - the Infrastructure Act in full force! Unlike the others ones we encountered on this trip, this one actually provided a vehicle escort through the zone - something we had never seen before anywhere, including not even on this trip.

As we traveled due north, the sun started setting in the west. Linda's cell pictures had long shadows, mine had sun glare.










We eventually passed our final groound-level state line.
We were considering crossing the Montana state line on tomorrow - I'll provide more on that tomorrow - but it was just a little too far away.

We eventually arrived at the Super 8 in Bowman, ND, at 8:00 local time - probably the latest hotel arrival of the trip.
We checked in and made our way to the room.

I haven't provided too much commentary on the hotel rooms, and an occasional bathroom such as a small space or a lack of towel bars. Here is one more: the space between where the water flowed and the back of the sink was WAY too narrow - especially for someone with larger hands like mine as I could not easily wash and rinse in the space provided.

We had a couple cookies and some wine as we planned for the next day.
This is a borrowed map of the time zones of the US.

Who possible thought it was a good idea to NOT have the time zones follow the state lines - like most of Texas, Oklahoma, part of Kansas, and norther North Dakota. Why not just a straight shot fron western Nebraska to Canada?!!? But nooooooo.
THIS is what the Mountain TZ should look like, IMO...

But why does this matter?
According to our travel route, we would be, at some imprecise point, driving out of the Mountain Time Zone and into Central TZ - and thus losing an hour (turning the clocks ahead). As we HAD to be in Bismarck early enough to enter, and preferrably tour, the capital before it closed, we had to make sure we got to our first destination in the morning about two hours away, tour the Park, and then drive to Bismark another two hours away.
Timing on this day, unlike any other, had to be a specific as possible because if we missed Bismarck, we had no other chance to make it to the capital - on this trip, at least.
So we set our wake up time for 6:00 instead of 7:00 - taking the one hour TZ difference into account. Between the breakfast and the drive, regardless of what TZ the park was in, we would be there when it was open.
We relaxed a bit, washed, and went to sleep.

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