Reflections

Our tour group, Sim and I are front and center

The Road Scholar trip was well worth it.  Since I have been home I have added more content to the older posts - fyi. There really is something special about the Black Hills and Badlands.  I couldn't always take a picture from the bus of the soaring scenery.  The granite and schist rocks stand up way above the road as you wind around.  The lighting ceremony at Mt Rushmore is very moving especially at the end when all the veterans in the audience go up on stage and take down the flag.  There were about 40 on the stage (but many more in the audience I suspect who did not go up). Each person said his name and branch of service.  One of our members was very moved as he stood up there.  He felt this was his parade and welcome home as he was in Vietnam in the '60s and got no celebration when he came home.

You can see from the drawn map below that we were in a small area of South Dakota.  The Black Hills are not part of the Rockies.  They are much older. Deadwood is in the northern area and Custer State Park is in the southern area.  The scenery is very different between the two.  My favorite moment was standing there next to Wild Bill and Calamity Jane in their cemetery home.  I found out from my brother, John, that Wild Bill and I are 12th cousins 5 times removed.  The common ancestor is Margaret Beauchamp 1409-1482.  Incidentally, Margaret Beauchamp was the grandmother of the person I am reading about in my book about Elizabeth of York.  Her name was Margaret Plantagenet and she was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence and cousin to Elizabeth of York (Henry VIII's mother).  My mother was descended from Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury.

 

 

Some of the wildlife we saw included big-horn sheep, prairie dogs, mule deer, elk, huge wild turkeys, pronghorn buck, and of course bison.  I do not need to do another bison roundup but it was really nice to do once.  I did see a lot of bison when I was in Yellowstone.  I was surprised to learn that most bison in the U.S. are actually beefalo.  You can't tell by looking because they appear like buffalo only smaller, but they are half bovine.  Evidently, only the ones in Yellowstone are pure bison.  Ted Turner has the largest supply of bison for his restaurants.

The Indians believed that the Black Hills were sacred ground and very spiritual.  There were no Indian battles there.  One of our speakers, John Esposti, who told us about the geology of the Hills and Badlands kept reciting poems by Badger Clark who used to live in Custer State park.  Below is one of his cowboy poems. A life-long resident of South Dakota, mostly in the Black Hills, Badger Clark was named Poet Laureate of that state in 1936, a title he retained for the remainder of his life.