Flowers and Fur

We saw beautiful flowers all the way. These are a couple of them. The sunflowers are in Nebraska, I don't know where the purple ones are.




The burros are in the Badlands. They frequent the middle of the road, stopping traffic and begging for food. I would have laid on the horn and driven through. Cindy had to stop. Of course, they had to swarm her. One of them stuck his head through the window and tried to take a bite out of our potato chip bag.

I snapped the antelope and the bull bison in the Badlands from about 30 feet out of my truck. I really like this picture (antelope drinking) and intend to paint it someday. The bison are part of a managed herd. All the animals inside the fence are cows and calves. The handlers don't confine bulls because they get nasty and create trouble.

Along the Road

From flat land to Paradise

I've never liked flat land. I will always be a mountain man.

From Hay to Eternity

Devil's Tower, Wyoming

This is the core of an ancient volcano that has weathered away. It stands more than 800 feet above the surrounding plain. The Indians who lived here explained it this way. One day seven girls were playing when a bear chased them onto a rock. They prayed to the rock to save them and the rock began to grow. As it grew higher, the bear tried to claw it's way to the top, but couldn't. The claw marks are still visible on the sides. Eventually, the rock grew up to heaven and the girls are there, known as the Seven Sisters. We call them the Pleiades.

We were about eight or ten miles away when we took these pictures. Pretty large even at that distance.

Farm, ranch structures

These were taken somewhere west of the Mississippi. No idea which state.

Lukie loves it. He's so much happier here. He's told me numerous times.


This ranch is about seven or eight miles away from our place. Love the entranceway.


This was our "home away from home" for three days until we found the cabin.

Milestones along the Way

The Clampetts head west--a new breed of pioneers. Looks dangerous, doesn't it. The only trouble we had was in Rapid City, SD. We had been thru the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore, and had just pulled into a hotel parking lot. I checked in and when I went back to the truck, Cindy said I needed to look at a trailer tire. When I touched the valve stem, it exploded and blew the inside right out--15 minutes off the interstate. Next morning I changed the tire, drove two blocks to a Wal-Mart tire center, had a new stem put in, and back on the road. To top it off, their computer wouldn't read my debit card, so they waved it off.

Beautiful! Clear sailing the rest of the way.

Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse--Black Hills, SD

Awesome, awesome country! If you haven't been there, you should make plans to visit.

Crazy Horse is located about 30 miles away from Mt. Rushmore and is unfinished. This was as close as we could get. When it's completed, it will be the largest single sculpture in the world.