USA Road Trip, April 2004
day 1: Massachusetts [11] :
day 2: Niagara Falls [6] :
day 3: Ontario-Illinois [13] :
day 4: Chicago [13]
day 5: Wisconsin-Minnesota [6] :
day 6: South Dakota [6] :
day 7: Badlands [20] :
day 8: Wyoming/Montana [20]
day 9: Yellowstone Park [24] :
day 10: Montana/Idaho [8] :
day 11: Roslyn [7] :
day 12: Seattle [7]
Day 7: The Badlands
In the morning we stopped off at Mount Rushmore, which was a great example of how (accidentally) well-timed our trip was. We were getting unseasonably good weather but were also seeing places before the tourist season kicked in. Mount Rushmore has 20,000 people pass through in a day during peak season. When we were there we saw less than a dozen other people.
Steve took a picture of me in front of Mount Rushmore, then I took one of him.
Then, through the joys of PhotoShop, it becomes one picture.
We enjoyed the same good timing when we arrived in the Badlands. We got chatting to one of the few people there at this time of year, who it turns out was a retired archaeologist from Cambridge. He told us all about the area, including what all those holes in the rock are (remnants of plant roots from when the rock was soft) and that all the buffalo in the US are actually bison (buffalo being the variation found in Asia).
Holes in the rock
'keep right'
Steve legging it
Badland view
Hilltop view
Jones of the Wild
Fool on the hill
Fool with a bison
Bison scratching itself on posts
By the bison
We also walked a path to an old wooden ladder that looked like a fallen rope bridge, enabling us to recreate the climax of Temple of Doom for the camera, until some other walkers turned up and looked at us quizzically.
Grab on!
Eek!
Lines in sky and earth line up
Do not feed the prarie dogs
Next set of USA Road Trip pics: Wyoming & Montana
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