June 30, 2013 Black Hills, SD to Big Horn mountains, WY

Enroute to Cody for the 4th of July.

Upton, Wyo. We stopped at the Red Onion Museum. It is supposed to have a two headed calf. But it was closed. Across the street was the Country Corner Laundromat and Lounge. That is the kind of Laundromat I think I could put up with, one with drinks and a pool table.

This structure is in the plains  between Gillette and Buffalo. No idea what it is. This is one house I think, surrounded by junk- on the plains out side of Buffalo.

We headed up hill into the Big Horn Mountains. Steep grade, we had to pull over and cool off. The signs said this route had the least grade and was the safest. Also looked like we were headed into a thunderstorm. But the clouds blew over. Out campsite at Tie Hack campground.  The whole area was carpeted in lupines.

Lupines as far as the eye can see.

Close up lupines and some albino ones.

Wyo rock art. Sunset on Tie Hack reservoir.

 

The dam at Tie Hack. Kind of looks like some kind of Mayan temple.  The wildflowers were kicking.

Wild wildflowers.

And more.

The masterpiece in progress.  The dark coils are wet, the rest is dry. Mostly it needs beads on the edges and I am going to do some embellishment with some narrow coils and metallic thread. Maybe.

June 29, 2013 Comanche campground and Custer, South Dakota

Ahhh, a nice day relaxing around camp.

I have been to the Black Hills twice. Both times they were brilliant green like this. I guess they are not always this green, usually brown they say, but this is just beautiful.

There are tons of wild flowers hidden in this long grass.

Wild flowers

The big rocks here are this granite with really shiny mica. The jewel cave crystals look like this outside the cave(lower right.) John said he was going into downtown Custer to the grocery store, so I went along. 17 of these buffalo are going to be auctioned off in Sept.

I could not drive by a store that has Primative craft supplies, Claws, Antlers and hides.

A South Dakota local making moccasins.  I coveted this leather sewing machine. I restrained myself and got these glass beads, copper beads and rivet buffalo head nickels for the baskets. The shiny stuff is mica that was free at the museum. They had rattle snake heads and tails, claws, beaks, hooves etc. etc.

Downtown Custer, South Dakota, this monument is dedicated to Horace Ross who discovered gold in the Black Hills at Custer. The Lakota Sioux had been given the Black hills, it was their ancestral lands, but when gold was discover first the army was sent out to keep the gold seekers out, but it was a lost cause, so they just took the Black Hills away and gave them some land on the flat prairie to the east.

I went to the Custer museum. Here I am with Custer in the Custer room. They had a portable Sanitary Drinking fountain in the school room display. In the next room was the hood and rope from the only legal hanging in Custer, next to that is a tree that a vigilante hanging was done from. It still has a handcuff bolted to it.

The woman's work room, a couple minerals from their mineral room, Hiddenite(which I have never seen, maybe it was hidden) and petrified moss, a wrench exhibit and a bunch of cases with barb wire in them.  Very interesting museum.

Look Doc Holiday, Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Calamity Jane and Wyatt Earp shopped here. No doubt bought T-shirts. We saw this ad in a store on main, it is for Man Lotion.

While I was in the museum John found Ester Bitters Brew house and microbrewery. He was a happy boy. This is the view from my lawn chair when we got back. Lovely.

June 28, 2013 Jewel Cave

We are camped right next to Jewel Cave. We went down when we first arrived, but their tours were sold out. We went to Crazy horse instead and today John went to Jewel cave at 730 in the morning and got us tour tickets while I slept in.

A photo of the park brochure. I guess they do have crystals that look like this, just not where we went. The cave is huge, the 4th longest in the world.  They measure all the little rooms and add that together for the mileage, in reality they look more like this map. The darker the color the lower the  rooms. About 700 feet down, but they are still exploring and the cave goes much deeper. We toured near the name tags on the map.

Here are some of the calcite crystals in the visitors center. We took an elevator down 230 feet, then had to walk 730 stairs.

The walls looked like this. Most of the crystals are black, covered with a magnesium deposit. They were all formed underwater when the cave was full of water.  The crystal layer here is about 6 inches thick. It gets too 16 inches in the lower portions.

There were some slimey formations where it was still damp. The roof of the caverns were cool, many of the crystals have fallen off and left these kind of formations.

The only thing that impressed John was the 23 foot cave bacon. You can only see 16 feet of it from the trail and they won’t let you climb over the crystals to see the whole thing. Pretty impressive at 16 feet.  The whole cave was covered with the crystals.

The CCC built the first ranger station in 1935. The ranger lived there and had the station all in this cabin.  This rock was outside the cabin. The crystals with out the manganese. The historic cave entrance is near here. They led lantern tours in the the early 1900’s. The cave was discovered by two cowboys riding in the valley. They heard a weird whistling, they investigated and found a small hole, maybe the size of their had, they dynamited it to get in and explore. They saw the crystals with their torches and they thought they were rich. They filed a mining claim, then came back and found out they were worthless calcite crystals. They then led tours to make their living.

This is what I call a campsite. Trees, grass, lots of space. John fixing the rain gutter on the roof.