Where Did We Go Wednesday? Mammoth Dig Site in Hot Springs, SD

This is the man of the dig site in Hot Springs South Dakota. It is an active archaeological dig site. There was no digging going on when we were there because it was a weekend and the digging is done by professionals who volunteer their time to do that.

Of course because this is the mammoth dig site most of the bones that have been found here are of different mammoths but they have found other Bones from other animals as well.

We had never been to any type of archaeological dig site before so this was our first experience. Someday I hope that we can go to an archaeological dig site for some type of dinosaur.

This top picture is of a tooth of a mammoth. Their teeth are Mashers.

They have but this dig site is only partially been excavated and they anticipate in finding many many more.

Here is one skeleton that is relatively complete that they are still working on digging out.

Here you can see one of the most complete Mammoth skulls that they have found at this dig site.

Here is a picture of my son who is about 54 in and if you look at the top of the pole there are so scratch marks those are the scratch marks that the bear that lived during that time would have made. The skeleton of that bear is and the picture below.

Where Did We Go Wednesday? Devil's Tower in Wyoming

At the end of our road trip this fall we did individual surveys to see what two places each one of us like the best. Devil's Tower in Wyoming was the number one place for all four of us which wasn't too much of a surprise because we had a lot of fun hiking around and exploring there.

The top picture is of Devil's Tower before we reached it. I thought that this image I was seen from the side of the road look like a postcard.

This next picture is of a picture of the legend, or one of many different Legends, of how Devil's Tower was formed.

Next we have a couple of pictures closer, when we were at the National Monument site. Devils Tower is a national monument and your national parks pass Works to get you in here as well.

We had the most incredible looking Sky while we were there to take pictures. I felt lucky that we had such blue skies with wisps of clouds. It really helped add to the contrast between the rocks and the sky.

Trying to take our own family photo at Devil's Tower. Again we had asked someone to take a picture and they took two, one of had all of us in it but didn't have all of Devils Tower which defeated the purpose and the other picture was out of focus.

A zoomed-in picture to see what the crevices look like in Devils Tower.

A couple of pictures of the kids hiking among the rocks and between the rocks at Devil's Tower. At one point we had to hurry them along because we needed to get going before it got too dark so that we could see some other things on the way home in Spearfish Canyon. If I would have known they would wanted to spend so much time hiking on the Rocks I would have budgeted even more time there.

There were so many places to climb and rocks to go underneath to explore.

We were mesmerised by the prairie dogs that lived in their own village outside of Devil's Tower National Monument. They are quite fascinating to watch. We got our fill of watching them here and then when we made our way to Custer State Park we spend more time looking for other animals rather than the prairie dogs that were everywhere there too.

Where Did We Go Wednesday? Mount Rushmore

From our house to Mount Rushmore it is probably about A 7 hour drive straight through. Although we didn't drive straight through, we stayed over in Sioux Falls South Dakota on the first night and then made our way to Rapid City South Dakota.

Being one state over you would think we may have visited this prior to this but there is a lot of nothing to look at during that 7 hour drive the really interesting part of South Dakota doesn't happen until you are in the 60 miles on the western side of the state.

It seems that thanks to Facebook a lot of people are visiting Mount Rushmore. I am not sure if there is that many more visitors or I am just made more aware of it because people are posting their vacations on that social media outlet.

My kids had 3 days off from school before the weekend for a fall vacation and we were going to take advantage of five days in a row when it was pretty nice weather to make this road trip.

Usually the one complaint I have heard from people who make this road trip in the summer is that it is really hot and really busy, I guess that's two complaints. My Hope Was That by going in the fall we would be past the hot weather and it would not be very busy. Both of my assumptions were correct and we were very happy that we went during the fall. Although going during the fall there are some things that are not open that are only open during the summer but everything we wanted to see including Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, Devil's Tower, and Custer State Park were all open. Plus there were several other things we saw as well.

Trying our best to get a family picture at Mount Rushmore. Someone did offer to take our picture but it seems every time someone does they can't seem to figure to get all of us in the picture and keep it in focus.

Below are some pictures that I zoomed in so that we could see greater detail on each of the president's faces.