The rest of the narrative from the previous post.

Sorry, the computer dropped the connection and I did not realize it until after I pushed “publish”, so the last of the pictures have no narrative.

Where I left off: For the next 2 days, everywhere we went, Ryan looked for old cars.

At Mt. Rushmore, we took the next pictures. Melissa stayed in Washington, but Erinn, Austin’s girlfriend came. The 1^st picture is Stephanie, Erinn, Austin, Robert, Cody and Vonda. The next one is Paul holding Ryan and me holding Jackson. Our timing was perfect for taking the pictures. By the time we had done our souvenirs shopping, the clouds had rolled in and hid the mountain.

From Mt Rushmore, we went to Custer, where there is a monument to Crazy Horse in progress. When we arrived, the mountain was in full view, but after we saw a 20 minute video of the story, the clouds had rolled in and covered it also. We should have taken the pictures first. This monument was created by one of the men who worked on the carvings of Mt Rushmore. The Lakota Indians commissioned him to make a similar monument for this chief. The man is now dead, but his wife and children are carrying on the project. The next picture is Ryan and Jackson beside a teepee, but the one below it is the carving of what the mountain will someday look like. This carving is 1/300^th the size of the mountain. Currently only the face is complete. There is a plateau that will someday be the outstretched arm of the Chief. More than 50 years have gone into the project, and many more will pass before it is complete.

When we left Custer, the rain was coming down pretty hard. The Emergency Broadcast System announced the sighting of a tornado in one of the towns we had to pass through. We were under tornado warning for 45 minutes. I have never seen a storm as strong as this one. With the wind, rain, thunder and lightning, we had to drive pretty slowly. Then we hit hail. It looked like snow on the road, and felt like we were driving through gravel. When we got to where the tornado had been seen, the only evidence we saw was tree branches and overturned garbage cans. Cody spotted this rainbow and we took a picture of it through the window of the truck.

When we got back to Gillette, they had stopped the rodeo because of the lightning. The water from the rain had made the arenas pretty soupy. Our portable shade was blown over and the frame bent. We don’t have awning on the motor home, because it wore out and we lost it in a wind storm on our last trip. We have a replacement, but have not mounted it yet.

Thursday morning Austin’s friends participated and then we did laundry and went to the grocery store.

Friday we drove out to Devil’s Tower. The pictures don’t show the rocks very well, but this big rock has a couple of legends from the different Indian tribes. The most popular is one of 8 Indian children playing one day, 1 boy and 7 girls. The boy was chasing the girls when he turned into a bear. The girls climbed up on a big tree stump to get away from him, but he clawed his way up closer. The stump turned to rock and rose up toward the heavens. The “scratches” from his claws are left in the sides of the rock. Because Austin was riding Friday night, he did not want to go with us, so he and Erinn stayed back in camp.

Austin did not cover the bull that night. He stayed on about 6 seconds. He finished 60^th place. One other boy had a lower score than he did, so 61 of about 150 covered. The #1 bull rider was Joe Frost, from Randlett, Utah.

Our camera shy cowboy came to tell us goodbye before they left to go back to Washington. A 16½ hour drive. Good thing they had 4 drivers.

We drove to Lander that day, and then on home on Sunday. Near Martin’s Cove, we stopped at Independence Rock. Here was a landmark for the pioneers headed west. It was part of the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Pioneer trail. It is called Independence Rock, because one company moving west got there on July 4^th and decided that was a good name for it. We walked around it and as we got close there were some kids up on top, so Jackson and Ryan started up too. Stephanie went up to help them down.

We had a wonderful time, saw places we have talked about visiting, but never got around to it. Thanks, Austin, for giving us an excuse to visit the area. 1700 + miles on the truck, but a wonderful time.