Four Guys

After a couple of days in the South Unit we decided to show some love to the North one. I guess a lot of people think if you tick off a visit to the South Unit only, that counts. Not RunningBarb! She refused to just walk on by the cannonball concretions in the north. The what? Concretions are hard mineral masses found in sedimentary rock or soil. Over time the soft material around the hard substance erodes, exposing the hard body. In Theodore Roosevelt National Park many of the exposed concretions are round, leading to the name “cannonball concretions.” They look like giant orbs dropped by some extraterrestrial juggler.  

Another day, another hike through the grassy plains, up a ridge, through the dry hills, around a loop, and back. We thought the South Unit was empty, but we practically had this place to ourselves. Just us, the dirt, the sky. No thought of doing anything else. Serenity.

After our mesmerizing stay in North Dakota, we headed south to its neighbor. One of our first stops was Spearfish, where they have a canyon, waterfalls, ice climbing, skiing, and a hipster downtown. If you didn’t know you were in South Dakota you’d think you were in Colorado. Next off to Custer State Park. Bison a-GAIN! And more hiking and seeing the beautiful wonderland and breathing the clean air and feeling the cool breeze on your face. 

Then there was the mammoth site. There is a spot in Hot Spring, South Dakota, that holds the bones of more than 60 Columbian mammoths. 

It started out as a normal day in June 1974 for George Hanson, what with getting the kids off to school, packing a ham sandwich, and digging up the ground for a new housing development. Things went sideways when his backhoe struck something odd. Was it a cannonball concretion? A Singer sewing machine? An electric can opener? It was none of these. It was the giant tusk of a large animal. George’s son had taken classes with the famous paleontologist Larry Agenbroad, and George met Larry (this was before Harry met Sally), who began digging into things, so to speak. It’s not what you know, it’s who (really, whom – don’t get me started) you know, right? He and others eventually unearthed quite a menagerie. The way those beasts got there was kind of sad, for them. There was a big sinkhole surrounded by grass. The animals would eat the grass, slide into the sinkhole, and be unable to get out. Then they perished.

However, their misfortune became science’s treasure.  

While South Dakota may be famous for the old bones below the earth, it is also well-known for the ones above it, figuratively speaking. I refer to, of course, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, home of the profile carvings of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Also, home to one of the largest parking garages in South Dakota! The thing goes on forever. Which shows you how popular this place is, with 2.4 million visitors per year. Compare that to the 600,000 at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. While the story of how the Memorial came to be is interesting, and the description of how they built the thing are mountain- and mind-blowing, I did not find that looking at the four faces grabbed my attention or drew me in. My big source of curiosity was “Why does Jefferson look like he is at the back of the pack, squirming to get in front?” Turns out he originally was designed to pose on Washington’s right, but the rock there didn’t work out, so they squeezed him in on the big guy’s left. And that’s how he went down in history. Isn’t that just how it works out sometimes?

Thanks for reading!

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