The Capitol of the Mount Rushmore State

We got an early start yesterday morning because it’s a long drive from the Badlands to Sioux Falls, probably close to 340 miles. It was a beautiful drive with so many fields of sunflowers and wide open prairie. I kept wondering what would be like to call this part of the country home. It’s just…

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What Lies Beneath the Prairie

“A nuclear-missile silo is one of the quintessential Great Plains objects: to the eye, it is almost nothing, just one or two acres of ground with a concrete slab in the middle and some posts and poles sticking up behind an eight-foot-high Cyclone fence, but to the imagination, it is the end of the world.”…

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Four Presidents and One Crazy Horse

“I don’t need no art exhibits, when the sunset does her best, paintin’ everlastin’ glory, on the mountains to the west.”             —-  C. Badger Clark, cowboy poet and 30 year Custer State Park resident   We are leaving Custer State Park this morning. Leaving behind  beautiful scenery like the…

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Close Encounters of a Geological Kind

“I recently had a close encounter—a close encounter with something very unusual.”                                   —-Close Encounters of a Third Kind, 1977   We awoke this morning with every intention of going fishing. We were told that Tuesdays at Custer State…

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It’s Wild Out Here!

Yesterday was our first day at Custer State Park (CSP) in South Dakota. This is a huge state park. It is the fifth largest state park in the country with over 72,000 acres within its borders. We went all over this park and even outside of it to Wind Cave National Park, the Crazy Horse…

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The Skyways of Minneapolis

Think hamster tubes for people. That’s basically what the skyways of Minneapolis are.  I first heard of this labyrinth many years ago from my Minneapolis born and raised sister-in-law. I suppose that I was thinking tunnels instead of tubes because, in my mind, I pictured the system as subterranean, but when we arrived in Minneapolis…

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The North Star State Capitol

  I don’t know about you, but I’ll admit that I have never given much thought to quadrigas. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even know what a quadriga was until I started reading about the Minnesota state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. Although I will not say that they are boring, I find that…

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