Dakota spanning

From one side of SD to the other today.  From prairie to badlands to the mountaintop all in one day.  We saw horsies, and cowses, and a Swift Fox, and a bighorn sheep and a prairie dog (eeeep).  There was a sculpture of a bull's head with enormous horns on the side of the road that looked so much like the golden calf the israelites made in the Ten Commandments, that I expected Charlton Heston to pop over the hill and start winging tablets all over the place.

 Lily got her first taste of the west in the Badlands National Park.  Climbing the rocks, no fences or railings or people to tell you not to kill yourself.  The Badlands feel like a smaller version of Bryce and a small taste of Canyonlands.

Then Wall Drug, which is South Dakota's answer to South of the Border, though i'm not sure who asked that question.  We got Lil' her crappy souvenir that she will forget she has by tomorrow morning and some really good milkshakes.  There was a T-Rex and one of those old time shooting galleries like at the beach when i was a kid.  The ones where you didn't win anything, but if you hit the target a coffin would open and a skeleton would pop out or the windmill would start spinning.  What i found out is that Clare is apparently a crack shot.  Have to file that info away for a rainy day.

The final stop of the day was Mt. Rushmore.  Several themes emerged.  We're not completely sure why Teddy Roosevelt is on that mountain.  There was a 20 minute film presentation about all 4 guys and their explanation of Teddy was patently unconvincing.  Another theme, for me, is that the other 3 guys are easily the greatest Americans ever.  Washington was repeatedly given choices that would have made him extremely powerful and he turned them aside so that the experiment of a government based on principles had a chance.  Jefferson  announced the arrival of this govt in the Declaration of Independence, then doubled the size of the place in one fell swoop.  Lincoln was simply the nation's martyr and conscience.   Now, it doesn't take much to make a case that these guys were serious assholes too, the whole Sally Jennings thing, suspending habeas corpus, etc., whatever Washington did wrong that i never learned because I went to an American school.., but we're all assholes.  How many of us assholes would take the risks they took and do the things they did and suffer the way Lincoln did?  I'm a very patriotic person, I love the country American can be and sometimes is,  even though I see the fallacy inherent in nationalism.  Every time i see the country  be great, i hear the echoes of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln in whatever it is we're doing.  Humble America, thoughtful America, fair America, forgiving America, the land of opportunity America, that's those guys.  Not some jingoistic claptrap about how at least we know we're free.  We're a shitload more than free when we're on our game.

Ok, you didn't ask for my opinion, but that's never stopped me before.