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.