WOW Another Monday!

Posted on March 14, 2011March 14, 2011 by Dusty Roads

I dropped the ball today. I usually take time on Sunday to prepare a post for today but instead I went “gallivanting” out to Plymouth Harbor to take pictures. Apparently while out there I caught a cold that has settled into my lower back..OUCH***..But enough excuses..Let me ramble on a little and you can comment with your cheers and jeers .

First Plymouth Harbor is a pretty little harbor. The Mayflower isn’t out of winter dry dock yet so it was pretty quiet. I like their sea wall. It isn’t just this cement wall rather it’s made of stone and cement. There are rocks set in the top row that kind of point up. It reminds me of a moat on a medieval castle. I think it’s mostly decorative.

I got a couple of nice sunset pictures. The sunsets this time of year seem to be more pastel than red.

When I got home I was reading one of my travel magazines that came Saturday. There was an article about Arizona ...Arizona for all seasons… so I checked that out. It covered the whole state and since we won’t have time for the southern end , south of Phoenix, that section was merely interesting but not useful for our upcoming trip. The northern recommendations involved mostly road trips and did hit some of the high points we have planned. One place that came up in the article and in an article in Popular Photography was Canyon de Chelly. I wish we had time for that but I think this trip is going to be packed to overflowing. We’ll have to see.

And the last but not the least thing I want to mention was an article in the same Travel Magazine about The Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota. Sandy and I were there last June and had a wonderful time. In the article this family was there for 2 days…1 weekend….48 hours and they saw, according to the article, everything we saw in a week!

There are pictures with the article too. They even went to Crazy Horse Memorial.

Like us they used Rapid City as their base but they didn’t mention much more about the city than that. They went to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial (We only drove by Crazy Horse) Wall Drug, The Badlands (can I assume they mean they drove the Badlands Loop?)and Custer State park. They mention seeing buffalo, antelope, big horn sheep, the Beggin’ Burros and prairie dogs…Ok I got all those with my camera too and I bet they didn’t get a prairie dog with a flower either!

Scout

But to do it all in 48 hours? I like the way we did it much better. Even if the authors think we were slow it seemed like we had full days so I wouldn’t do anything different.

Well, that about wraps up my travel thoughts for the day.

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Not much to say about the spring trip until we start booking and that’s going to be soon. I’ve started exploring options for the 2012 trip but that’s still in the early, early stages..not ready for publication so I’m not sure what we’ll talk about tomorrow but I’ll think of something. Toss out some suggestions if you like. Maybe they will get my creative juices flowing. Maybe Scout has some tips up his furry sleeve.

Name The Prairie Dog~The results

Posted on February 21, 2011February 21, 2011 by Dusty Roads

Editor in Chief

Well the votes are in as you know and there was a 3 way tie between Scout, Flower and Whiskers.

Our editorial panel has been considered the choices because they liked them all but after much deliberation and consideration of all your comments the final choice is………

Prairie Dog with Flower

Flower is a skunk in Bambi and Whiskers is the name of a cat food. But Scout is what a Prairie Dog does. He’s curious and “scouts” his area to watch for predators so he’s always on the alert.

SCOUT

Thank you all for participating. The suggestions were all great. I was surprised that “Scamper” didn’t make the cut because I thought that was kind of cute too but Scout it is.

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The Journey Museum, Rapid City, South Dakota

Posted on February 5, 2011February 5, 2011 by Dusty Roads

The Journey Museum is a modern facility located in Rapid City. The museum is set in 7 acres of gardens. The premise of the museum is of a journey through the time and history of The Black hills. The journey begins with the Native American Creation stories before moving on to the geology exhibit, paleontology, archeology, Native Americans and the pioneers.

I confess that we didn’t spend the amount of time to do this museum justice. We were limited by the time restraints of the trolley schedule. We also only glimpsed the gardens because by now the weather was taking a turn for the worse.

The geology presentation was interesting if a bit dry. I’m sure “rock hounds” would eat it up but before long I was edging to the back so I could slip into the next exhibit.

The exhibit halls were roomy and well presented and the facilities immaculate. The next room had Teepees set up so you could actually see how the plains Indians lived. There were some holographic presentations but some of them were not functioning. Native American Artifacts and pottery were displayed in cases around the room.

We moved on to the Paleontology exhibit where the dinosaurs seemed to be alive. That was an excellent exhibit.

If I get back to Rapid City I am definitely going to revisit the museum. From what I’ve read, we missed a lot by being pressed for time.

That about wraps up our time in the Badlands. We had an early flight out of Rapid City in the morning so we grabbed the trolley back to the Dinosaur Park where we’d left the car and headed back to the hotel to pack and call it an early night.

Next post: Final thoughts and South Dakota wrap-up

Rapid City, SD~City of Presidents

Posted on February 4, 2011February 4, 2011 by Dusty Roads

Rapid City is sometimes called The City of Presidents because it proudly displays life sized bronzes of United States Presidents on the street corners of downtown. We strolled around the downtown taking pictures of and sometimes with each statue. I am not going to include them all in this post. If you want so see them all you’ll have to go yourself but suffice it to say this is an on-going project that will eventually included all of the presidents with new ones being added consecutively.

Ronald Reagan

The project is funded entirely by private donations and each artist has ties to South Dakota in some way. . Each artist researched the president they were assigned to depict the familiar and/or notable characteristics of that president in their work.

Lincoln

Some of the older presidents were hard to identify. For example William McKinley is presented with a telephone in his hands because he was the first president to use the telephone in a campaign for office.

William McKinley

I did not know that so seeing the phone I thought of Alexander Graham Bell even though he was never president. I wondered if they were statues of famous people , not just presidents, especially since there were several statues of Native Americans, but I was wrong.

Using a map we picked up at the visitor center I believe I have identified all of the statues we visited.

1) James Monroe 2) John Quincy Adams 3) Lyndon Johnson 4) William Howard Taft 5)Martin Van Buren 6) John F. Kennedy ( I definitely recognized him as I’m from Massachusetts) 7) Andrew Jackson 8) Franklin Pierce 9) Theodore Roosevelt (another familiar face) 10) James Buchanan 11) Warren Harding 12) Woodrow Wilson (With a little discussion we also got his identity) 13) Millard Fillmore 14) Zachary Taylor 15) John Tyler 16) Harry S. Truman (Yes we recognized him too) 17) Henry Harrison 18) Gerald Ford (Another familiar face) 19)James Madison 20) Thomas Jefferson (We recognized Ol’ Tom with his copy of the Declaration of Independence) 21)George Washington (Of course. He has the most famous face in US history) 22) Jimmy Carter (Oh yes, we knew him too) 23) Andrew Jackson 24) Ronald Reagan (Yes we knew Ronnie’s statue) 25) Dwight D. Eisenhower (Yes again) 26) Richard Nixon (Of course) 27) James Polk 28) Grover Cleveland 29) William McKinley 30) Ulysses S. Grant (another yes) 31) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Yes) 32) Herbert Hoover 33)Calvin Coolidge 34) George Bush Sr (of course) 35) John Adams.

LBJ

It was fun and challenging trying to ID all of the Presidents before we checked either the plaque or the map. I thought about making flash cards from the photos to practice so I will remember them but I’d rather just look it up. HA HA

JFK

It took quite awhile to walk all those blocks so we were glad to get back on the trolley.

Jimmy Carter

The trolley continued through a park that we hadn’t even realized was there and then pulled into the Journey Museum. As we hopped off here the driver told us the last trolley was at 4:30 and not to miss that.

Nixon

I’ll tell you about the Journey Museum in my next post.

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Dinosaurs, Trolleys and Presidents, Oh My!

Posted on February 3, 2011February 3, 2011 by Dusty Roads

It’s the last full day of vacation and the one place we haven’t explored is Rapid City. It just seemed wrong to have spent a week in this city and not explore it at all but we’d been busy exploring all around it. So today we’re going to see Rapid City. Unfortunately we have another gray day. Occasionally it sprinkled but there were no downpours.

So after breakfast at Denny’s we drove to Dinosaur Park where we parked our car and prepared to climb the stairs to the park. Dinosaur Park has been around since 1936 and is filled with vintage , life size Dinosaurs.

That is something to keep in mind when you see them. They have not been updated to reflect current knowledge of dino anatomy, but that is part of their charm.

These sculptures aren’t off limits at all as kids climb all over them. It’s not a very big park so if you don’t have children that want to ride on a stegosaurs you will probably be done there pretty quickly. Still it’s worth the climb to be able to look out over Rapid City. The views are amazing.

Leaving the Dinosaurs in the little hilltop park we browsed the gift shop and then caught the trolley for a ride into town. Like most of the trolley’s I’ve been on, this combines a sight -seeing tour with transportation. This trolley is at least partly supported by the City of Rapid City which seems to be a common way to subsidize their operating costs.