I took a drive northeast of Pierre this weekend. Mostly I was heading to Gettysburg (settled by 200 Civil War veterans) to see Medicine Rock, but I took a wrong turn, and ended up wandering all around the country for the afternoon. :-) Not a problem, though. I stopped at several marshes and enjoyed watching the birds, including a group of beautiful Northern Pintail ducks. They were too far away for me to get any good pictures. :-( And I saw some juvenile cattle egrets for the first time.
Medicine Rock was a disappointment. It's a prehistoric rock that has human footprints in it. It's been sacred to the Lakota forever. Legend has it that the Great Spirit saved a young Indian boy who was being chased by a bear, and their footprints are embedded in this huge rock. It was moved to Gettysburg from its original location near the river, when the water from the dam would have covered it. The problem is that I asked three people in Gettysburg for directions to the rock, and was given bad directions three times. I finally found it - in a museum, that had closed at 5 PM, while I was wandering around town, trying to find the rock! You could see the rock through the front window of the Dakota Sunset Museum, but I couldn't see the footprints real clearly. I will have to go back some time, and make it a point to get there when the museum is open. It looked like there were two dinosaur eggs out front of the museum, which also intrigued me.
I just tried to ignore the pheasant hunters, but they were ubiquitous, as my friend Nancy would say. I saw almost no pheasants; I think they were hiding. :-)
I have so enjoyed all the different kinds of sunflowers. This late in the season, they have all lost their brilliant yellow petals and are all brown and/or green, but the variety! Some have very full, heavy heads, that hang way down.
Others have turned a dark chocolate brown. 
As I drove past the sunflower fields and cornfields, I couldn't help thinking how much my interests have changed. When I was a teenager an afternoon of "sightseeing" would have bored me to death. But now there are few things I enjoy more than wandering around the countryside, stopping at marshes, watching birds, keeping an eye out for deer, muskrats, hawks, and ducks and other water birds. You never know what's going to be around the next corner!!
This is my last week in South Dakota. I am heading to Minnesota this weekend, to be there for my Aunt Leona's 90th birthday party. And Tuesday, the 25th, I will be released from this assignment, and I will be heading south, toward warmer climates - to Texas, specifically. I'm ready to go. Although we've had wonderful fall weather here, the highs are only going to be in the 50s this week, and that's too cool for me. I'm glad it's only for a week.
No comments:
Post a Comment