On our way to S.D. we saw deer, lots of pronghorns, and a flock of wild turkeys. They were all too quick for me to get a picture.
We stayed in the small town of Custer, S.D. It is not far from Mt. Rushmore. To the south of Custer is the Wind Cave Park. We traveled through it going to and from church. There we say deer, another flock of wild turkeys, lots of bison, and lots of prairie dogs.
We went to the wind cave that is the largest barometer. There is only one small natural opening and over a hundred miles of known passages. Depending on the barometric pressure, the wind either moves in or out of the natural opening. The cave is also know for it's box formations. They are actually calcite crystals that look like the sides of boxes, some going across the bottom. It is a little hard to see them in the picture.
We went through the black hills and broke out into the prairie. We made a swing down into the bad lands. It is easy to see why they got this name.
Learning about the formation of this area is very interesting. The whole plains area was once seabed. Then it was a fresh water lake. Plus it received many layers of volcanic ash which turned to clay. Thus all the layers of color. The colors were more vivid than my photos show. I need to get better with my camera.
The Bad Lands are continually changing. When there is rain it erodes more, washing the soil out into new flat lands and moving the rim, or edge of the prairie, back further. The light gray is clay that was originally ash. Where it is on the surface, it is quarter inch granules. It takes little water to wash them down a slope.After leaving the Bad Lands we saw a sign for a prairie dugout. So we decided to check it out. Part of the house was dugout with the front part sod. There was also an addition that was added later. The original part had a sod floor and just a curtain to separate the living quarters from the bedroom area.
The room was about twelve feet across and about eighteen feet deep. There were two windows, one on each side towards the front. The soil had been dug out in a trough so that the light could come in. You can see what looks like bricks on the wall. It is actually sod.
This place also has whit prairie dogs. There was an area that had a few white ones that they captured and brought here. Their old town was killed off.
I had to put this picture in. It grows along side the roads across South Dakota and Minnesota. It was also in the Bad Lands. Of course, not all of them had the bug on them that this one has.
We dropped down into the north eastern corner of Iowa to go to the Effigy Mounds Nation Monuments. Some of them have been excavated and found to be burial grounds. The Indians, who were in the area when the white man came, didn't know who built them. There were many of them throughout a large area. Most were plowed up as they were thought to be natural land formations.
Some are cone shaped as above, some are oblong, some are circular nobs joined by lower areas between them and some are shaped like birds or bears, as the one below.
This is the Mississippi taken from an area at the mounds. We were going to follow along its western bank but the road was too narrow and twisty so we went further inland.
As we drove we say many fields of corn and soy beans, on the left of the picture. This was taken not too far out of Lafayette, IN. B always complains that all he can see on his bike rides is corn fields.
No comments:
Post a Comment