SoDak Part I

I've been remiss.  I know that.  I can see that it's already the beginning of July.  I feel like a lot has been going on.  But I guess it's not anything all that interesting.  Just a lot of little things.

Still waiting for Santa Fe to get called in.  Two more weeks, supposedly.  Can't wait to have that project over with so that I can move on to more interesting projects.  Like paving the driveway.  Sense the sarcasm.

We went to South Dakota for a week last month.  What's in South Dakota, you ask?  Space.  Lots and lots of space.  Area.  Land.  The city that we flew into has 70,000 and it was the largest town by far that we saw while we were there.  The airport has one baggage claim area.  One.  It has one restaurant.  One terminal.

It sort of made me feel good about the earth.  If South Dakota has all this room, surely the planet can't be over populated yet, right?  I mean, NY state is pretty populated and the open land area is dwindling.  Sometimes you feel like all the free space in the U.S. must be used up by housing tracks and empty strip malls.  If you feel suffocated you can just jump over a few states to South Dakota and have a billion or so acres to yourself.

I'm not the greatest of fliers and the plane to and from So Dak was tiny.  One row of seats on one side and two seats on the other.  Coffin tiny.  It took a lot of booze to get me there.  And even more to get me home since I had to climb back into the tiny metal box of death.  The one airport restaurant didn't open until 11:00 am.  Our flight left at 11:00.  So I brought my "medicine" with me.  There I was in the ladies loo, guzzling a bottle of red table wine fighting back visions of that tiny plane and it's fiery interior as it plummeted to the ground in a spectacular blaze of heavy metal and screaming Sarahs.  It's pretty much the classiest thing I've ever done.

Anyway, while we were in that middle state we saw all of the sights.  The thing about the sights in So Dak is, they are big.  Very large sights.  Monuments carved from the living rock, (Can I just say, I have no idea what the difference is between living rock and non-living rock?  But, I do know that particular turn of phrase always sends goosebumps down my spine.  "The living rock...") giant rock formations, huge expanses of weird geolithic deposits.

The bad part is that the sights are not all in one area.  They were all about an hour or two one way from where we were staying, in adorable Spearfish, SD.  So, lots of time was spent in the car.

First up was Mount Rushmore.  Did you know that Mount Rushmore was the country's first National Monument?  Did you also know that the artist intended it to be the bodies of Native American Chiefs, but had to swap them out for Presidents (including Roosevelt, who was in office at the time) to get funding?  Just another slight on my people by the white man.  Because the Natives are my heritage.

Everyone said that it would be unimpressive in real life.  It would seem smaller than you thought it was.  It did not seem smaller.  The thing is huge and it's at the tippy top of a freaking mountain, people!  The original design, which incorporated nearly full bodies would have been even more impressive, but the rock wouldn't allow for that.  I love how they didn't even clean up after themselves.  Just left the load of rubble at the bottom.

While we were in the gift shop there was a man signing autographs who had worked on the giant sculpture.  Doesn't that blow your mind?  Someone who worked on Mt. Rushmore is still alive! 

One thing that really killed me about this monument was that everyone was wearing their United States team colors.  Shirts, pants, hats, even purses with the flag on it.  The husband and I call this "shirt to show".  If you go to a concert, you don't wear a shirt of that band to the show.  You are already at the show, we know you are a fan.  You don't have to wear that band's shirt to the concert of that band.  It's overkill.  At Mt. Rushmore, every second person was wearing shirt to show.

This thing I can't understand.  Why wouldn't you make it so that...I mean, his face is right in the middle of the...you could have added another...I mean!!

Another fun fact.  Did you know that TJ created the first ice cream recipe in the U.S.?  Yeah.  Because he's pretty much the best guy, ever.  Oh, I'm sorry.  I'm using his nickname, we're totally close.  I guess you probably know him as Thomas Jefferson.  You can call him TJ though, he's cool with it.

After we looked at the big rock heads we went by Crazy Horse, which is infinitely more awesome in my book.  It was also infinitely more expensive at $27 per car as opposed to the old white guys $11 per car.  So, we just looked at ol' Crazy from the road.

Wow, I'm only like a third of the way through this story or less.  I better do this in installments.  So, until next week (...or tomorrow, since I have it off.  Godblessmerika.) 

In Summary:

SoDak, An Exercise In Space

Classy Bathroom Boozin'

Don't Mess With Me Pale Face

Dead White Guys

TJ Invented Joy

Crazy Expensive