26th Anniversary
October 18, 2020
State of South Dakota
Black Hills National Forest
West of Custer, SD
Day One
2020 was another quick anniversary trip where we tried not to travel too far while maximizing our time away. After a full Thursday of work for Eric and after Julie celebrated and cleaned up after a fantastic gold rush day with the 6th grade at Providence, we drove to the airport with all our boys. Jackson, our college man, was designated overseer of the house and brothers in our absence. The anniversary destination was a surprise to Julie, and we traveled first class (on a regional jet), due to Eric's travel status on Alaska Airlines, to Billings, Montana. However, our 8th anniversary had been celebrated in Montana, so we grabbed our Jeep Compass, a snack, and some sleep at the Northern Hotel in downtown Billings before setting off for our ultimate destination.
Day Two
Bright and early, under a stunning Big Sky Montana sunrise, we drove to our official 26th anniversary celebration state of South Dakota! As is our tradition we listened to an Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot mystery as we drove. This year it was “Elephants Can Remember.” Entering South Dakota from the West, we were immediately immersed in the forested Black Hills which seemed to us a place we would like to revisit to hike and explore. We drove past the Crazy Horse Memorial which is massive and still under construction. Mount Rushmore was our first stop where former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were carved into a mountain by sculptor Gutzon Borglum. Even after viewing the massive presidential heads from several vantage points, it was extremely difficult to comprehend the scale of the sculpture. The hike along the Presidential Trail provided more perspective of both the monument and the South Dakota terrain. Looking out to the east we were struck by the abrupt end of the Black Hills leading to a vast flat grassland.
Leaving Mount Rushmore, we stopped in Keystone, a tourist town outside the park. It was Buffalo Old Time Photo we were looking for so we could take an old timey photo. Our theme of choice matched the town - Gold Rush - and we dressed the part of gold miners from the late 1870s. After purchasing picture poses, we enjoyed a slow drive on windy mountain roads through Custer State Park deftly avoiding massive buffalo, bighorn sheep, wild turkeys and many deer. We arrived at the State Game Lodge and checked into the same room President Eisenhower stayed in when he spent an extended time in the Black Hills during the summer of 1953. The room had a cozy lodge feel to it, although the rustic lodge insects were a little too much for Julie. After getting settled, we went for a walk, encountering bighorn sheep and a grazing buffalo that was over half as tall as a cabin. Due to our recent mole battles at home, Julie thought she saw large molehills scattered on the grasslands but no, buffalo pies. Returning to the lodge we chatted by a large fireplace made from rose and milk quartz, petrified wood, various crystals as well as other local rocks and minerals. It was fun to discuss upcoming life while watching bighorn sheep create traffic jams out front of the lodge. We adjourned to dine at the lodge restaurant where we both chose buffalo for dinner, Eric buffalo tenderloin and Julie buffalo meatloaf. Over dinner we enjoyed reflecting on the past year together and looking forward to the year ahead. After retiring to our room and while planning for the next day we came across a show called Gold Rush on the Discovery Channel. It was compelling to see modern day gold miners and how they search for and attempt to mine gold in 21st century Alaska.
Day Three
We awoke to a revised forecast for the day with reports of a cold front moving through and a threat of a winter storm as the day went on. We started with breakfast at the lodge and then set off to our first destination of the day, Badlands National Park. On the way there we first passed a random dinosaur which it seems has a name, the Creston Dinosaur. We continued on South Dakota Route 44 through Buffalo Gap National Grassland which was a strikingly interesting landscape. Aside from just flat grasslands, there were what looked to be sand plateaus 4-40 feet tall with flat grass areas on top. We also passed another couple herd of buffalo before arriving at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center. We read what we could at the visitor center and bought Zachary a stuffed buffalo for his birthday before heading out on our drive through the Badlands. The temperature was dropping, and it wasn’t long before the snow started. The Badlands look otherworldly on a sunny day and with snow and low clouds it really did seem like something out of science fiction. The colors of some of the formations were not as vibrant as they would have looked in the bright sun but the yellow and cranberry and green was still quite prominent. As Julie said, it looked like someone spilled their spice cabinet on top some of the mounds. We stopped at a lot of the overlooks with some affording us a view and others completely socked in with clouds and snow. The wind was blowing, and the snow made the paths slippery, but we still got to see a lot of what makes the Badlands so unique. We were left wondering what the first people crossing the continent in covered wagons must have thought when encountering the Badlands for the first time. We exited Badland National Park just south of Wall and so of course had to visit Wall Drug. Sure, it’s a tourist trap but it’s one you have to visit when you are in South Dakota. After browsing the Wall Drug shops and taking a picture to prove to friends we had been there we went in search of some lunch. After a couple trips through the Dairy Queen drive thru (one for lunch and one for dessert) we headed northwest to Deadwood.
The snow continued to intensify as we drove through Rapid City and Sturgis on our way to Deadwood. Before exploring Deadwood, we wanted to visit the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center in Lead (pronounced lēd). Side note: On one of the brochures advertising Lead, it said the town was “a mile high, a mile wide, and a mile deep, with a heart of gold.” Accurate description. The visitor center is perched on the edge of the Open Cut, a surface gold mining pit 1,200 feet deep and a half mile wide. But that is only what you can see. What you cannot see is that the mines below ground go 8,000 feet deep. The underground Homestake Mine, the largest and deepest gold mine in North America, contained 331 miles of linked railways and 370 miles of excavated drifts. From 1876 to 2002 the mine produced 41 million ounces of refined gold and 9 million ounces of silver which makes it the second largest gold producer in the United States. Since 1965 Sanford Lab has been operating the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector in the old mines far underground. They are searching for neutrinos and must do that far away from interference at the surface. Dr. Ray Davis supervised the construction of a 100,000-gallon tank of perchloroethylene nearly a mile below the surface and found the solar neutrinos that won him the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2007 the mine was selected by the National Science Foundation as the location for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. The visitor center was very well done, and we learned so much both about gold mining and physics. On our way back down to Deadwood we headed back up one of the steepest residential streets we had ever driven at the end of which was the Mount Moriah Cemetery, final resting place of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Wild Bill was killed in Deadwood and legend has it that Calamity Jane asked to be buried next to Wild Bill. We headed down from the cemetery into Deadwood and walked around the old main street in the snow. We popped our heads in the saloon which occupies the location where Wild Bill was shot. Back in the 1870s Deadwood was just gambling and saloons (and brothels). Today it is...just gambling and saloons (but no brothels). It was starting to get dark and the mountain roads were starting to accumulate more snow, so we headed back down to Rapid City for dinner. Steak sounded good so we ended up at Texas Roadhouse which filled us up at the end of a busy day. After the snowy drive back to the State Game Lodge we were hoping for a nightcap at the bar but it was the last night the lodge was going to be open for the year (we think we were the only ones staying at the lodge this final night) and all the employees were having a final get together. The general manager however was kind enough to buy us a drink and wish us a good night.
Day Four
Eric awoke early, nervous about the snow and sure enough, everything was covered in a few inches of the white stuff. Knowing we had to travel a few hundred miles, with the first half on mountainous two-lane roads, we headed out a little earlier than planned. The driving was indeed slow, but our Jeep Compass did a nice job handling the snow/ice covered untreated roads. We also had to watch carefully for wildlife and only had two close calls, one with deer and one with a duck who seemed to have gotten frozen to the middle of the road. After the sky brightened, we pulled off the road at the top of a hill in the Black Hills National Forest and said our vows to each other. The silence and the snow were perfect.
We finished our Poirot mystery of the year and this time Julie figured it out before the final reveal. She is either getting better at this or “Elephants Can Remember” was not as complex of an Agatha Christie mystery. After stopping for breakfast at Perkins and realizing we were still behind schedule we were able to livestream church while driving. That was a huge blessing being able to her the sermon as well as sing while driving. It snowed all the way back to the airport in Billings as we wrapped up 1031 miles of driving. After a delay for de-icing, we were off on our flight back home. The boys all came to pick us up at the airport and we drove home sharing stories of the previous few days.
October 18, 2020
State of South Dakota
Black Hills National Forest
West of Custer, SD
Day One
2020 was another quick anniversary trip where we tried not to travel too far while maximizing our time away. After a full Thursday of work for Eric and after Julie celebrated and cleaned up after a fantastic gold rush day with the 6th grade at Providence, we drove to the airport with all our boys. Jackson, our college man, was designated overseer of the house and brothers in our absence. The anniversary destination was a surprise to Julie, and we traveled first class (on a regional jet), due to Eric's travel status on Alaska Airlines, to Billings, Montana. However, our 8th anniversary had been celebrated in Montana, so we grabbed our Jeep Compass, a snack, and some sleep at the Northern Hotel in downtown Billings before setting off for our ultimate destination.
Day Two
Bright and early, under a stunning Big Sky Montana sunrise, we drove to our official 26th anniversary celebration state of South Dakota! As is our tradition we listened to an Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot mystery as we drove. This year it was “Elephants Can Remember.” Entering South Dakota from the West, we were immediately immersed in the forested Black Hills which seemed to us a place we would like to revisit to hike and explore. We drove past the Crazy Horse Memorial which is massive and still under construction. Mount Rushmore was our first stop where former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were carved into a mountain by sculptor Gutzon Borglum. Even after viewing the massive presidential heads from several vantage points, it was extremely difficult to comprehend the scale of the sculpture. The hike along the Presidential Trail provided more perspective of both the monument and the South Dakota terrain. Looking out to the east we were struck by the abrupt end of the Black Hills leading to a vast flat grassland.
Leaving Mount Rushmore, we stopped in Keystone, a tourist town outside the park. It was Buffalo Old Time Photo we were looking for so we could take an old timey photo. Our theme of choice matched the town - Gold Rush - and we dressed the part of gold miners from the late 1870s. After purchasing picture poses, we enjoyed a slow drive on windy mountain roads through Custer State Park deftly avoiding massive buffalo, bighorn sheep, wild turkeys and many deer. We arrived at the State Game Lodge and checked into the same room President Eisenhower stayed in when he spent an extended time in the Black Hills during the summer of 1953. The room had a cozy lodge feel to it, although the rustic lodge insects were a little too much for Julie. After getting settled, we went for a walk, encountering bighorn sheep and a grazing buffalo that was over half as tall as a cabin. Due to our recent mole battles at home, Julie thought she saw large molehills scattered on the grasslands but no, buffalo pies. Returning to the lodge we chatted by a large fireplace made from rose and milk quartz, petrified wood, various crystals as well as other local rocks and minerals. It was fun to discuss upcoming life while watching bighorn sheep create traffic jams out front of the lodge. We adjourned to dine at the lodge restaurant where we both chose buffalo for dinner, Eric buffalo tenderloin and Julie buffalo meatloaf. Over dinner we enjoyed reflecting on the past year together and looking forward to the year ahead. After retiring to our room and while planning for the next day we came across a show called Gold Rush on the Discovery Channel. It was compelling to see modern day gold miners and how they search for and attempt to mine gold in 21st century Alaska.
Day Three
We awoke to a revised forecast for the day with reports of a cold front moving through and a threat of a winter storm as the day went on. We started with breakfast at the lodge and then set off to our first destination of the day, Badlands National Park. On the way there we first passed a random dinosaur which it seems has a name, the Creston Dinosaur. We continued on South Dakota Route 44 through Buffalo Gap National Grassland which was a strikingly interesting landscape. Aside from just flat grasslands, there were what looked to be sand plateaus 4-40 feet tall with flat grass areas on top. We also passed another couple herd of buffalo before arriving at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center. We read what we could at the visitor center and bought Zachary a stuffed buffalo for his birthday before heading out on our drive through the Badlands. The temperature was dropping, and it wasn’t long before the snow started. The Badlands look otherworldly on a sunny day and with snow and low clouds it really did seem like something out of science fiction. The colors of some of the formations were not as vibrant as they would have looked in the bright sun but the yellow and cranberry and green was still quite prominent. As Julie said, it looked like someone spilled their spice cabinet on top some of the mounds. We stopped at a lot of the overlooks with some affording us a view and others completely socked in with clouds and snow. The wind was blowing, and the snow made the paths slippery, but we still got to see a lot of what makes the Badlands so unique. We were left wondering what the first people crossing the continent in covered wagons must have thought when encountering the Badlands for the first time. We exited Badland National Park just south of Wall and so of course had to visit Wall Drug. Sure, it’s a tourist trap but it’s one you have to visit when you are in South Dakota. After browsing the Wall Drug shops and taking a picture to prove to friends we had been there we went in search of some lunch. After a couple trips through the Dairy Queen drive thru (one for lunch and one for dessert) we headed northwest to Deadwood.
The snow continued to intensify as we drove through Rapid City and Sturgis on our way to Deadwood. Before exploring Deadwood, we wanted to visit the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center in Lead (pronounced lēd). Side note: On one of the brochures advertising Lead, it said the town was “a mile high, a mile wide, and a mile deep, with a heart of gold.” Accurate description. The visitor center is perched on the edge of the Open Cut, a surface gold mining pit 1,200 feet deep and a half mile wide. But that is only what you can see. What you cannot see is that the mines below ground go 8,000 feet deep. The underground Homestake Mine, the largest and deepest gold mine in North America, contained 331 miles of linked railways and 370 miles of excavated drifts. From 1876 to 2002 the mine produced 41 million ounces of refined gold and 9 million ounces of silver which makes it the second largest gold producer in the United States. Since 1965 Sanford Lab has been operating the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector in the old mines far underground. They are searching for neutrinos and must do that far away from interference at the surface. Dr. Ray Davis supervised the construction of a 100,000-gallon tank of perchloroethylene nearly a mile below the surface and found the solar neutrinos that won him the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2007 the mine was selected by the National Science Foundation as the location for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. The visitor center was very well done, and we learned so much both about gold mining and physics. On our way back down to Deadwood we headed back up one of the steepest residential streets we had ever driven at the end of which was the Mount Moriah Cemetery, final resting place of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Wild Bill was killed in Deadwood and legend has it that Calamity Jane asked to be buried next to Wild Bill. We headed down from the cemetery into Deadwood and walked around the old main street in the snow. We popped our heads in the saloon which occupies the location where Wild Bill was shot. Back in the 1870s Deadwood was just gambling and saloons (and brothels). Today it is...just gambling and saloons (but no brothels). It was starting to get dark and the mountain roads were starting to accumulate more snow, so we headed back down to Rapid City for dinner. Steak sounded good so we ended up at Texas Roadhouse which filled us up at the end of a busy day. After the snowy drive back to the State Game Lodge we were hoping for a nightcap at the bar but it was the last night the lodge was going to be open for the year (we think we were the only ones staying at the lodge this final night) and all the employees were having a final get together. The general manager however was kind enough to buy us a drink and wish us a good night.
Day Four
Eric awoke early, nervous about the snow and sure enough, everything was covered in a few inches of the white stuff. Knowing we had to travel a few hundred miles, with the first half on mountainous two-lane roads, we headed out a little earlier than planned. The driving was indeed slow, but our Jeep Compass did a nice job handling the snow/ice covered untreated roads. We also had to watch carefully for wildlife and only had two close calls, one with deer and one with a duck who seemed to have gotten frozen to the middle of the road. After the sky brightened, we pulled off the road at the top of a hill in the Black Hills National Forest and said our vows to each other. The silence and the snow were perfect.
We finished our Poirot mystery of the year and this time Julie figured it out before the final reveal. She is either getting better at this or “Elephants Can Remember” was not as complex of an Agatha Christie mystery. After stopping for breakfast at Perkins and realizing we were still behind schedule we were able to livestream church while driving. That was a huge blessing being able to her the sermon as well as sing while driving. It snowed all the way back to the airport in Billings as we wrapped up 1031 miles of driving. After a delay for de-icing, we were off on our flight back home. The boys all came to pick us up at the airport and we drove home sharing stories of the previous few days.