Welcome to a little taste of WY, NE and the first stop in SD

 Warning...this post contains a lot of pictures. Hope you enjoy!

What an amazing week we have had in Hot Springs, SD. So different than Denver, that is for sure. Let me catch you up on our adventure. We left CO and headed to WY to a Harvest Host sight for a night. It was a lot of fun and hubby and I had a great time. WY is so pretty and I can't wait until we can go there again and explore more of it. 

After WY we headed to Hot Springs, SD via NE. This is the first time I have been to NE and the route we took was very beautiful. I can't wait to explore more of that state as well.

Notice how the NE sign reads, "Home of Arbor Day"? Well, I researched that and found out that J. Sterling Morton had an enthusiasm for trees and advocated strongly for them to be planted in this "Plains State". On January 4, 1872, Morton first proposed a tree planting holiday to be called, "Arbor Day". The date for this celebration was set for April 10, 1872 and prizes were awarded to counties and individuals who planted to most trees. On that date they estimated that more than a million trees were planted. Arbor Day became an official holiday in 1874 declared by NE Governor, Robert Furnas; then April 22, 1874 was selected as the date for its permanent annual observance. So, exciting to learn about different states.
 
"He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers." Psalm 1:3. If we plant ourselves next to the Lord, even in hard times, we will prosper.
 
After NE we drove to Hot Springs, SD/Black Hills KOA. It is beautiful and the weather has been amazing! We have been able to explore, hike, tour Wind Cave, visit the Mammoth Site, and see Crazy Horse Memorial. We also ate at another restaurant from the "Road Food" book.

Hot Springs is known for the largest find of Woolly and Columbian Mammoths. A sink hole was discovered in 1974 when a bulldozer was excavating for an up-and-coming housing development. As the tusks were uncovered the bulldozing stopped and the land was donated at cost and the discovery of mammoths began. To this day, they haven't even begun to see all that is in that sink hole. Hubby and I had a great time there.

This is one of the best intact skull and tusks that we saw. Below hubby is standing with pictures of elephants and mammoths. The tallest is the Columbian Mammoth.

We went out looking for Cascade Falls and it was closed, but we stumbled upon Cascade Springs. Very cool to watch the water bubble out of the ground. 

Our visit to Crazy Horse Memorial was very interesting. A fellow RVer had a pass and gave it to us, love meeting all the new people in our lives and how amazingly nice they are. 

The statue behind us is 1/34 the size of the one they are working on in the mountain for the statue. It was foggy that day and so we were not able to get a good picture or even go to the top of the mountain to see it. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was an amazing man. He and his wife, Rose worked with Chief Henry Standing Bear to start this project for all Native Americans. Korczak was a self-taught sculptor. 

This is just one of his pieces entitled "Fighting Stallions", if you ever have a chance to visit Custer, SD, I think this is a MUST place to see.

The Purple Pie Place is known for its homemade pies and ice cream. It also has a few items (and I mean a few) that they serve for lunch and dinner. We enjoyed this place and would go back again. If you want more information on places to eat while you are out and about, go to roadfood.com. I am so excited for ID for many reasons, but one of them is there are seven restaurants that we will be able to try out while we are there for a month. 

The Wind Cave was very interesting. It is the 3rd largest cave in America, and they haven't even explored all of it. They keep finding more and more cave. Two brothers discovered it in the 1890's while they were out hunting. They heard this loud noise that even scared the horses, as the story goes. They found an opening and went to investigate. They felt wind coming out of the ground and started playing with their hats. They would hold it over the hole and the wind would push the hat up into the sky. The brothers went back to Hot Springs and share this discovery with their friends. The next day a group went out to watch the hat float into the sky, well, this time when they went to do their trick, the hole sucked the hat inside and that freaked them all out and they left the hat in the hole. 

It is hard to see, but you can see 1890 graffiti on this rock inside the cave. There are multiple "rooms" with the signatures of people who toured the cave. They had to walk down around 13 stories just to see this part of the cave and then to get out, they had to walk 20 stories. So, the guide would let them sign their names to help the morale.  

Hwy 385 runs through the Wind Cave National Park. It is a very beautiful drive where we saw Prairie Dogs, a coyote and buffalo. The speed limit for this part of the hwy is 45 miles per hour, but it is worth it to see the animals. 

The black dot above is a buffalo and below is one too close to the street, I think.

So, in Caprock State Park, in TX we encountered Bison, but here in SD the Park and the Park Rangers call them buffalo. So, I looked up the difference between the 2 Bovidae (they are both in the same family) and this is what I found from Britannica. "It is easy to understand why people confuse bison and buffalo. Both are large, horned and boxlike animals. There are two kind of bison, The American Bison and the European bison, and two forms of buffalo, water buffalo and Cape buffalo. However, it is not difficult to distinguish between them, especially if you focus on the three H's: home, hump and horns. Buffalo do not roam in the America West. Instead, they are indigenous to South Asia (water buffalo) and Africa (Cape buffalo), while bison are found in North American and parts of Europe. Another major difference is the presence of a hump. Bison have one at the shoulders while buffalo don't. The hump allows the bison's head to function as a plow, sweeping away drifts of snow in the winter. Next, we exam the horns, buffalo have very large horns that can grow up to 6 feet with very pronounced arcs, bison's horns are much shorter and sharper. And, if you want to throw a B into the mix, you can check for a beard. Bison are the hipsters of the two animals, sporting thick beards. Buffalo are beardless." 
 
Well, now we know what we have seen in SD are bison. Hmmmmmm, should I go to correct the Park Rangers?

We are now in Sioux Falls, SD and can't wait to share the sites with you next time.

 

Drop a comment for me and let me know your thoughts on the blog.
 
God, the RV & me...