South Dakota Vacation I - the Stupid Stuff

Pooteewheet, Eryn and I spent a full week traveling to Montana to visit my grandmother for her 90th birthday, and then moseying back across South Dakota to see the sites. Before we left we must have mentioned to a dozen people that we were going to miss the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally by a week and not one of them bothered to inform us we were woefully wrong and would be in South Dakota for the opening week - I prefer to think that I don't regularly hang with motorcyclists rather than that my friends thought it was funny I'd end up in South Dakota during a week when every hotel within over one-hundred miles of Sturgis (literally) was either booked or going at the low low rate of $250 for a rather sub-to-standard room, gas prices were elevated by 10-20 cents, and the roar of bikes was everywhere (particularly at 6:00 a.m.). But lack of available hotel rooms aside, we did manage to have a very good time - hopping from Jamestown, to New Salem, to Sidney, to Devil's ("Debil's" according to Eryn) Tower, to Rapid City and Mount Rushmore ("the four faces"), to the Bad Lands, to Sioux Falls (um...yeah), and home, and the motorcycles actually added a bit of local color that we probably won't experience again. I'm pretty sure Pooteewheet will blog the happy family pictures, so I'm going to stick to the stupid pictures my friends (Mr. Mustard, Elise from After School Snack, Klund, Ming, TallBrad, ChristyTwoFist, TheHairySwede) and others might find amusing.

Item one - Mr. Hairy Swede, I have been to Fergus Falls, and it's not that exciting. However, I expect that this is where at least one member of Plissken learned his trade, or at least bought his first guitar and I must say, it's not really all that hip.


Item two - while preparing for Grandma's birthday party, we were required to load up the remnants of her old house into my father's pickup so that he could haul it to Minnesota and then to Arizona. We ended up doing it twice because an old oil lamp was packed with the oil intact, which pretty much meant it was inevitable that it would be spilled all over the back of the pickup, meaning we had to unpack, wipe down, and repack the truck. In the course of our packing, we packed this lovely painting that has hung in my grandmother's living room forever. Someday, I had hoped it might be mine, but my sister has beaten me to the punch, boldly writing her name on the back when she was just a kid so that we'd all know it would eventually be passed on to her.

Item three - Jamestown, South Dakota - where Eryn and I dealt up a few hands in honor of Tall Brad.

and then I did a few other things in honor of Tall Brad, like trying to prove I'm almost as tall as him (yeah, that's a really big ball on a really big buffalo).

We also toured the Jamestown historic village while checking out the giant buffalo. Football fans will be excited to know that Jim K. is from Jamestown and recently auctioned off a signed football to benefit the town - going price, $150. Angie Dickinson is also from Jamestown, and this is more interesting to me, because she went to school at Beach and was related to my aunt's first husband, meaning that within my extended family structure you can point at someone who slept with JFK. I've never seen her at a family reunion, but I'm sure it's because she was busy. Anyway, I did not realize that M. Night S. actually based his movie "The Village" on the Jamestown historic village, a fact Ming might be interested in - I captured this proof just for him.

While I was in Jamestown, I figured I might as well play cowboy.

There were more cows/buffalo to be seen, and in keeping with my habit of touching them in inappropriate places, I present the giant cow of New Salem.