So, with this post we will be all up to date, hooray!

We awoke to a lovely hot sunny day in the Black Hills of Dakota and set off to see the Mount Rushmore National Monument.

Mt. Rushmore

The hordes at Mt. Rushmore

Mt. Rushmore

Us in fron to Mt. Rushmore

Fort Hays (Major Fainborough’s office) from Dances with Wolves

Sandra in the office of Major Fainborough

Major Fainborough’s office

The bullet hole in the window pane where Major Fainborough shot himself!

The Rope Shop at Fort Hays

A coffin at Fort Hays!

Welcome to Deadwood

Bill Hickok’s Bar & Steakhouse

More of those mail boxes I was talking about yesterday!

Mount Rushmore National Monument is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota. Sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum.  Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).^] The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres (5.17 km²) and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.

South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the region.

Robinson wanted it to feature western heroes like Lewis and Clark, Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill Cody but Borglum decided the sculpture should have a more national focus, and chose the four presidents whose likenesses would be carved into the mountain. The memorial began in 1927, and the presidents’ faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. Upon Gutzon Borglum’s death in March 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum became sculptor in charge of the commission and the last drilling was done on  October 31st 1941.

Some of you know that I like my films (movies) so you can imagine how surprised I was today when we were driving down to Mount Rushmore and there on the side of the road was a sign advertising a Dances with Wolves movie site!! Further investigation was required.

On the site there are the buildings that were used in the filming of the Fort Hays scenes in the film. The scenes were actually shot using these buildings sixteen miles away and were supposed to have been torn down after filming was completed but the production company just left them. Someone local bought them and moved them to their current location, had them rebuilt as they were, including the bullet hole in a pane of glass. They have photographs of the shoot, scenes from the movie showing and a behind-the-scenes DVD with Kevin Costner talking about making the film.

There’s a yellow piece of tape on the floor where Kevin Costner stood when shooting the scene where he first went to Fort Hays and spoke to Major Fainborough about a posting and who subsequently shot himself. Of course, I had to stand on that piece of yellow tape!

After that we went to visit Deadwood. The town attained notoriety for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and the local cemetery remains the final resting place of Hickok and Calamity Jane.  Deadwood became known for its wild and almost lawless reputation, during which time murder was common, and punishment for murders not always fair and impartial.

The road to nowhere!

The long and winding road!

The inevitable RV!

Oh dear, an RV wreck on the highway but everyone was okay

Just a nice red barn

On the road scene

Mail Box

A young lady from Ranchester

How did he get up there?

We didn’t see a nodding donkey in Texas but we did in Wyoming!

Old Glory!

Granite Pass

The end of the Rockies

The Devils Tower

The Devils Tower

Prairie Dog

Two cows, two buffalo and one Texas Longhorn passed by the Devils Tower

Bighorn National Forest

Well, today we left Cody after a quick visit and set off for Rapid City.  The drive was scheduled to be about six hours ………… which of course turned into nine!!

Once again the terrain we have crossed has been so varied. From lovely green mountains with fir trees to complete desolation. We drove across the Rocky Mountains and the road was very winding and at one point in Granite Pass, we were at over 9000 feet. On the way there were signs pointing out how old some of the rocks were, in one particular area they were 2.5 billion years old!! How can they possibly know that?

The drive across the mountains took so long because it was mostly single-lane road and there were lots of RV’s out and about too, so we stopped for lunch and had a traditional American meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn followed of course with apple pie! It was all delicious.

We then decided to take a little detour of about 60 miles round trip to see something of particular interest to a movie fan ….. me of course! I’ll give ten points to the first person to write in the ‘Reply’ section which movie Devil’s Tower was in!! Of course, there is a lot more to learn about this tower than just being in a movie but I just want to say that today we saw ‘the dark side of the moon’!!

People were living around the tower more than 10,000 years ago and it is still of great importance to the Native Americans who come here and leave prayer offerings. They believe the ‘claw-like- marks on the tower were created by a bear chasing two young girls to the top but it is actually weather erosion.

The area has hundreds of Prairie Dogs, they are so cute and so tame. People are told not to feed them but going by the size of one or two, I think a lot of people are not adhering to the rules!!

One thing we have found interesting on our trip are American mail boxes and we’ve seen a few. I expect most of you know that mail in the US is usually delivered to a box at the end of the property and not as in the UK, actually put through the door. Last week I saw a line of about thirty all stood together. This was because all the houses were dotted about a mountainside so the mailman leaves the mail in all the boxes and the people collect it themselves. Also, we’ve noticed the variety of boxes, some plain, some decorated and some like the one above!! How sweet is that?

I think it’s official now that the older we get the stupider we get.  For some reason and I don’t know why, but every time I talk about Yellowstone I keep calling it Yosemite!! I need to go back and check all the posts because I think I may have been writing Yosemite instead of Yellowstone too!! I think I’ve been on holiday too long, I need to go home for a rest!

We arrived here in Rapid City in very poor weather and the temperature had dropped from 85ºF to 55ºF. Fingers crossed the weather is a little warmer tomorrow!!

Saying goodbye! Cheryl on the left and Brogans in the middle!

Goodbye to our cabin

Buffalo’s Rear!!

Spot the coyote!

Coyote on the hunt!

Beartooth Mountain

The long and winding road that we travelled along

Another Yellowstone view

A view along the way

Wyoming panorama

The Shoshone National Forest sign or as I like to call it The Shoeshine National Forest!!

Storm clouds over Wyoming

Me outside the Buffalo Bill Historic Centre

Buffalo Bill’s boyhood home

A ‘little friend’ outside BB’s home!

So today we said ‘goodbye’ to Cheryl, her dog George and the Brogan family and we came down from the mountain and our Little House on the Prairie for the last time to travel to Cody, Wyoming. Luckily, ‘Margaret’ our sat-nav (GPS) took us the pretty route out of Yellowstone through the Beartooth Pass on the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway via Cooke City. The highest elevation at the Pass being 10,947 feet or 3,345 metres. The road to say the least was very winding and at times breathtaking  and we were once again treated to some of the most magnificent scenery on Earth!

Yet again we were treated to huge herds of buffalo and even found ourselves in the situation of having to wait to cross a bridge because a buffalo had decided he was going first. Poor thing was quite grumpy, he was having a really bad time with all the flies! Still, it gave us time to really study his rear-end. Mine doesn’t seem half as big after staring at his for 10 minutes!!

Then, we noticed a traffic jam ahead and wondered what it could be and coming out of the tall grass to cross the road was a coyote!! He was very thin and his coat very mangey and I certainly wouldn’t want to feel the sharpness of his teeth.

We passed through the Shoshone National Forest (or as I initially called it, The Shoeshine National Forest), while storm clouds had started to gather over our destination at Cody. Still, we didn’t see any rain at all.

We stopped at the Buffalo Bill Historic Centre before checking into our hotal in Cody. It turned out to be a much larger and more magnificent museum than we had expected by far and we really should have had a full day visiting there.  We would certainly recommend anyone visiting Cody to visit the museum. The strangest sign we saw was one on the door that said “No Firearms”. Not a sign we see everyday back home!!

The museum showed every aspect of William F. Cody’s (aka Buffalo Bill) life and times from a small child to his time with his Wild West Show which he toured the UK with and once, performed in front of Queen Victoria. He was instrumental in the building of the town of Cody but his show never performed there.