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Trip over - page 3
Here are a couple of pensive looking horses by a huge stack of hay. This was over by the town of Dayton.
After a few hours of 80 mph freeway driving, I hit the cutoff for Devils Tower. On the way is a prairie dog town. You can walk out amidst them, and you will notice that there is a fluid wave of cyclical activities going on. The prairie dogs within 5 yards in front of you are chirping loudly and diving into their holes. The ones 5 to 10 yards in front of you are standing and chirping loudly. The ones 10 to 20 yards away are maybe looking around at you, but mainly going about their business. Past that, they are oblivious to you. Meanwhile, 5 yards behind you, they are peeking out of their holes. And so on in reverse. I really enjoyed browsing amongst them. Here are four prairie dogs, demonstrating popular activities. 1 - Peeking out of their hole, looking for danger 2 - Standing up by their hole, looking for danger
3 - Scurrying around about their hole 4 - Grubbing for food away from their hole
They blend so well into their environment, which makes it hard to separate them from the background. The trick is to just take a whole lot of pictures, knowing that for every five or six that you throw away, you might get one good one.
Devils Tower is a massive column visible for several miles in every direction. It stands all alone, 1267 feet above the surrounding terrain. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed this the first National Monument.
I took about an hour walk around the trail that circles the base of it. It was late afternoon, so the harsh light of the day had already passed. Devils Tower is a big fat juicy target to take pictures of, with a myriad of different vantage points. This was a very fun encounter.
Now if we zoom in on it, we can see that there were people climbing it. A surprising number of people climb this monolith. According to the National Park website, about 4000 people visit every year to climb it … which is about 11 people a day. I believe it, since I saw for sure about 6 or 8 people climbing it in just the hour that I was there.
I like this view of Devils Tower rising out between the trees. Devils Tower might be most well known for its roll in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” Here we see the Richard Dreyfuss character obsessing over a model of it. This was after his initial vision with his mashed potatoes.
On the way from Devils Tower to Sundance, the last few rays of the sun light up the grass with a glowing golden tint. The last half-hour of sunlight is the best light of the day. Dull washed out scenes in the midday sun can change dramatically when it gets close to sunset, or right after sunrise. Lighting is literally everything.
Dusk and dawn are when deer are most active. The landscape seems to come alive with them. I probably saw 100 deer in a 15 minute period. This gang of deer allowed me the time to set up my tripod to take this low light shot.
One thing I have noticed about sunsets and sunrises … when a great colorful sky is spotted, if you are not already set up, it is too late. Unless --- you slam on the brakes, and grab your tripod and take shots of whatever happens to be in front of you at the time, with the sky as the background. This tin shed just happened to be what was in front of the sky at the time. An old wooden barn would have been better, but you just got to go with what you have.
On the picture to the right, I waited until a car was passing by to get that red streak in this multi-second shot.
I settle in to the Arrowhead Motel in the small town of Sundance, at the edge of the Black Hills in eastern Wyoming. Back in 1887, a certain Harry Longabaugh was serving an 18 month sentence here for stealing a horse. This earned him the nickname -- “Sundance Kid” A little later, Harry rode on to greater fame when he teamed up with a certain Robert LeRoy Parker, also known as Butch Cassidy.
Day 6 – Sundance WY to Rapid City SD
I depart Sundance heading to the South Dakota border and the Black Hills, and ultimately on to Mt. Rushmore. The Black Hills are an oval shaped outpost of hills amidst the open prairie. That is real clear in this color enhanced picture. Notice also to the west, the Bighorn Mountains, which I spoke of earlier. I enter these fabled Black Hills at the town of Spearfish, and proceed through Spearfish Canyon. The Black Hills were pretty much showing their full fall colors.
And of course, where there are canyons and creeks, there are usually waterfalls. This is Roughlock Falls. With waterfalls, I like to set the shutter speed slow, so as to give the water that silky look. You see that a lot with waterfall pictures. If the lighting is too bright to accommodate a slow shutter speed, a neutral density filter can help. It simply cuts the light entering the lens, and therefore the camera sets a slower shutter speed to make up for it. A half-second shutter is all you need to get that silky look.
I decided to bypass the casino laced town of Deadwood, where legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock was shot dead in 1876, and continue on to the Crazy Horse memorial. Apparently, the fad of carving faces out of stone in the Black Hills was so popular, that the Crazy Horse memorial was started in 1948. This would be a nice complement to Mt. Rushmore. As we see with the close in shot to the right, the face is quite impressive.
I did not take the bus ride right up to the statue, but here is what the face looks like up close.
Here is a scale model of what the finished sculpture will look like. The person who started this, Korczak Ziolkowski, died in 1982. The progress on this has been going painfully slow, but judging from what they have already done in the last 60 years, I would guess it will take them only another 200 years or so to finish it.
On the south-east perimeter of the Black Hills, is Wind Cave National Park. I drove in just a few miles to take a look around, and only saw a couple of things worth mentioning. A prairie dog town, and a lone buffalo under a big sky. I like big sky pictures.
Custer State Park has a large, and well maintained buffalo herd. They seem to take on the appearance of a herd of cattle though. The Yellowstone bison seem to have a wilder feel about them.
Every year they hold the “Buffalo Roundup”, where they round them all together for counting, and checking for diseases, and vaccinations etc. The roundup was scheduled for the following Monday after my visit. This apparently, is a big big deal around here, where many people attend this festival like event. For the three days that I was in earshot of Rapid City radio stations, it seemed that was all they could talk about.
The winding road heading up to Mt. Rushmore has several very narrow tunnels. I took a shot through one of them, which shows the faces of Rushmore when looking through it.
And here is Mt. Rushmore. The jewel of the Black Hills. This is arguably the most recognized sight in the USA. This is the biggest thing in S. Dakota. Mt. Rushmore is South Dakota. South Dakota is Mt. Rushmore. It is omnipresent. It is everywhere you look. On billboards, storefront signs and windows, in newspapers and advertising magazines, on TV, and even on license plates.
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