The Black Hills

Mema had a workshop in a little town called Upton in eastern Wyoming. As it was close to the Black Hills, Mema and Papa did a little touristy stuff. For example, we visited the Mammoth Place in Hot Springs, SD. Here they have excavated lots of Columbian Mammoth bones that were deposited over 25,000 years ago. Columbian Mammoths, as you surely recall from school, were much larger than the Wooly Mammoths made famous by Ray Romano in "Ice Age."

This is the "dig" where the bones are excavated. Apparently a lot of these not-too-bright critters fell into this ancient watering hole.

Here, a couple of kids we don't know and will never see again, heft a replica of a mammoth femur.
Mema carefully circles her prey.
Mema listens attentively to the guide.

If you were to get gored by this animal, you by golly stayed gored!

While Mema worked in Upton, Papa took a drive into the Black Hills. Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickcock was shot, is a tourist trap featuring casinos, saloons, etc. This saloon had maniquins dressed as ladies of the evening in the second floor windows.

On the way to the Bad Lands, driving on I-90 (doing the limit, of course) we were suddenly hit by a large flying piece of tire. Fortunately for us, the tire hit the bumper and not the windshield or we would have been toast. And, fortunately for us, Mema insisted that we buy the rental insurance or we would still be in Wyoming filling out paper work.

If you ever go the Bad Lands National Park you will find it hard to avoid Wall Drugs. Its kind of like South Carolina's South of the Border but with more class.

Oh yes, then there are the Bad Lands. The brochure reveals that they are so called because, well, they were just very bad lands to cross. They are very beautiful and worth the drive.