Rock Formations and a Rock Star Fossil

Thought for the day: Contrary to what you may have heard, people who live in South Dakota don't have Southern accents.

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Remember the old Roger Miller song, You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd? I reckon folks who live on the Standing Butte Ranch near Pierre, South Dakota, don't do much skating then, because there's TONS (literally!) of buffalo roaming around there. Matter of fact, it's home to the largest buffalo herd in the United States. I'm sure they're, um, quite friendly, but frankly, I'd roll up my car window when riding in the area.

Okay, no surprise here. We're gonna be taking a virtual tour of the fine state of South Dakota today. Don't let 'em fool ya, either... just because one if its nicknames is The Sunshine State doesn't mean it's a tropical paradise. (Another of its nicknames is The Blizzard State.) But there's a good chance someone who lives there may try to convince you that they're the warmer Dakota. So fine. Take your sunblock, but don't forget your sweater and snowshoes.

In the truth is funnier than fiction category: Once upon a time, a Black Hills gold miner named his new, and very promising, claim after a neighbor's daughter, and called it Little Allie. His wife wasn't impressed. In fact, she was furious, because he'd never named a claim after her.  So she put her foot down, by golly, and insisted that he change the name, and rectify the situation at once. He did. He changed the name to... The Holy Terror. Guess what? It's still known by that name today. (Ya think it satisfied the wife?)

                                                 Okay, ready to do some looking around?

Mount Rushmore is one of the most famous and readily recognized sites in South Dakota. This impressive carving of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln was started in 1927, and took fourteen years to complete, at a total cost of one million dollars. (Fast and cheap by today's standards.)

Nearby is another ambitious work in progress that isn't progressing nearly as fast, because unlike Mount Rushmore, it's being funded by donations alone. When completed, the mountain carving of Crazy Horse will be the world's largest sculpture. His head alone is nine stories tall, and took fifty years to complete. (1948-98)  This carving of the iconic Lakota warrior and tribal leader is the focal point of an educational and cultural museum to and for Native Americans, many of whom call South Dakota home.

The Badlands National Park covers 244,000 square acres, and encompasses buttes, pinnacles, spires, and the country's largest protected mixed grass prairie. In other words, lots of natural wonders of nature to enjoy. Although the terrain is rather inhospitable looking, it contains a unique kind of beauty. Care to take a look-see?

Can you imagine what a cave lined with calcite crystals like these would look like when the light shines on them? Then you can understand how Jewel Cave got its name. It's the second largest cave in the world, with more than 157 miles of surveyed passages. (So far.)

 This unusual mineral formation, in which thin strips of calcite intersect kinda like a honeycomb, is called boxwork. Wind Cave, with 82 miles of mapped passages, contains the world's largest known display of these rare formations.

And here we have a formation of an entirely different type. Not so much minerals as it is iron, lots of shiny iron and deep-voiced throbbing Harley engines. This, of course, is Sturgis, home of the annual Black Hills Motorcycle Rally. Held the first week in August, this gathering of upwards of 650,000 motorcycle enthusiasts may include hill climbs and other racing events, but it's essentially a 15-day party, and THE place to be for freedom of the road celebrants from all over the world.

South Dakota isn't just a mammoth gathering place for bikers. It was once a massive gathering place for... mammoths... as well as other prehistoric behemoths. The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, a museum and paleontology site, contains the only in situ display of mammoth fossils, both Columbian and woolly,  in America.

Another famous paleontology site can be found in Faith, where this tyrannosaurus rex... dubbed Sue...  was discovered by paleontologist Sue Henderson in 1990.  Measuring forty-two feet long, and fourteen feet to the hip, this is one of the largest, and most complete and well-preserved T. rex  specimens ever found. In 1997, Sue was sold at auction to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for 7.7 million dollars.

In addition to all the caves, geological formations, and fossils, South Dakota has something else rather unique. (Sounds pretty darned unique to me, anyway!)  You've heard of artesian wells, and you've heard of natural gas, but have you ever heard of a fountain fed by an artesian well that contains so much natural gas, it can be ignited? The Flaming Fountain, located on State Capitol Lake, is a memorial to all veterans. Some sources called the flame perpetual, but evidently, it must go out upon occasion, as you can see in this video, where someone is re-lighting the watery flame:

Ooh, look! A museum full of petrified wood! My kinda entry price, too.

Lest you think South Dakota is long on fossils and short on fun, check out this place. It's the Corn Palace, and yes, it's built with 3500 bushels of ear corn. It was first built in 1892, and later rebuilt in 1905 and 1921. The minarets were added in 1937. Actually the whole thing isn't made out of corn, but the murals on the outside walls, which are changed a couple times a year, are.


Hey, with all that corn, you've gotta have some potatoes, right? How about a visit to Clark, where they celebrate Potato Days every year,  complete with... mashed potato wrestling:

                                                                 What? No gravy?

Okay, let's wipe off the potatoes and take a look at some of the crazy laws still on the books in the fine state of South Dakota. Guess what? There aren't very many of them...

• If there are more than five Native Americans on your property, you may shoot them.
• Horses are only permitted in Fountain Inn if they are wearing pants.
• It's illegal to lie down and fall asleep in a cheese factory.
• It's against the law to show movies in which police officers are struck, beaten, or treated in an offensive manner.
• In Spearfish, if three or more Indians are walking down the street together, they can be considered a war party, and fired upon. 

I told ya! South Dakota has the fewest loony laws of all the states we've visited so far. (But don't worry; Tennessee— the next state we'll be exploring— more than makes up for it.)

                                           Okay, it's now time for (ta-DA!)

The Weirdest News Stories of the Week

It's been a while, but after spending several hours browsing through online newspapers, I didn't find a whole lot of weirdest news stories, but I definitely found some strange. 

• While one cat was detained in Russia for being used to smuggle contraband into a prison, designer Karl Lagerfeld announced that he wants to marry his cat.
• A hot and thirsty burglar helped himself to a few beers from the fridge while he was robbing a house in New York this week. Nice of him to leave his DNA behind on the empty cans. Needless to say, he's gonna have plenty of time to chill... in the cooler.
• An Idaho woman celebrated her 103rd birthday by base jumping off a bridge this week. A 105-year-old New Zealand man still drives a car, and says he doesn't feel old at all, but this oldster takes the cake. Literally. In Australia, centenarian Cassius celebrated his 110th birthday with a cake made out of... chicken necks. Ate it faster than a speeding bullet, too. Yeah, you got me. That's a big croc. (According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest saltwater crocodile in captivity.)
• In Colorado, a poor hapless moose has evidently fallen in love. He visits the object of his affections every morning, and spends most of the day, um, enjoying it. Yeah, it. It seems the poor moose is enamored with a bronze statue of a nearly life-sized moose. Guess you could say he gives a whole new meaning to statutory rape.
• How appropriate that this story popped up this week. It seems that officials in South Dakota are finally considering renaming a dozen or so of the places around their state. Yeah, they've had those names a long time... since the 19th century... but lawmakers are thinking they may have run their course. The names? Places like Negro Gulch and Squaw Humper Dam.

Okay, two stories worthy of a pic and a little more ink:

***  Getting a publishing contract can't be all that hard. After all, a real pig recently rated a 3-book contract. No, I'm not making a slur. Really. I'm talking about an honest-to-goodness snorting, grunting, curly-tailed pig! Technically, his owner Len Lucero will be penning those books, but without a doubt, Chris P. Bacon, a paralyzed piglet, is the star attraction. Wanta see the cutie? 

***  All this fossil needs is a microphone and a guitar, and he'd look like a skinny rock star with bad teeth, wouldn't he? As it turns out, paleontologists at the University of Nebraska, who've been studying the 40-million-year-old fossil of a giant lizard discovered in Myanmar, (Burma) actually named that fossil after a rock star. Yep, they dubbed the new species Babaturex Morrisoni. Now I'm a Doors fan, but this struck me as a little... strange. Could be that paleontology team leader Jason Head is a big Doors fan, too. The paleontologists admitted to listening to their music while they worked. However, they claimed they named the critter after Jim Morrison because of the fascination he had with reptiles.Uh-huh. Makes sense. But I think I know the real reason it was named after Morrison. The giant lizard was a vegetarian. Get it? It ate... weed(s).

                                                    [Enough of a Yammy Friday for ya, Laura?]

Wait! One last thing... for those of you who have never heard of that Roger Miller song mentioned at the top of this post... or for those of you who remember it, but haven't heard it in a long time. Always nice to end with a smile.

                                          Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

                                         [Images from the fine folks at Wikipedia and Morguefile]