The Three Breasts

Greetings from Wyoming, land of equality, who knew!?

Last I wrote to you we were at the Super 8 in Deadwood, SD.  We had just finished riding the 109-mile George Mickelson Trail.

In the morning we discovered the motel had a bike washing area set up in the parking lot.  It was set up for all the motorcycles that would be traveling to the area for the big annual Sturgeous, SD Bike Week.  We were told that about 500,000 motorcyclists will converge on Sturgeous the weekend after we depart the area.

We took advantage of the bike wash station, before putting the bikes on the rack on the back of the truck.

Then we walked into the old downtown Deadwood.   We saw a bronze statue of Calamity Jane on a park bench holding a bottle of booze high.  Next to her was a small fountain for kids to cool off next to a model of a gold mining sluice.

We didn't get far in our walk when we came across a trolley boarding.  We bought tickets and got on board.  The driver and guide was over-the-top dramatic.  Both Steve and I had to tune him out.  But we did learn that Calamity Jane is buried next to Wild Bill Hickock...  And Wild Bill was killed, not in a gun fight, but while he was sitting gambling.  Someone came into the bar and shot him.

Steve was itching to tour a gold mine.  So we found one advertised and drove to it.  Only, gold was never mined there.  Instead they mined some stuff that was used in the gold extraction process.  

Our guide on this tour was much less dramatic.  He did show that when the mine was first created the miners had to crawl in and out each day through a small opening.  

He told us the miners were only allowed one candle a day.  During their lunch break, he said, they all spent their time in one room of the mine, in the dark to save their candles.  And they used that same room for their toilet during the day.  They didn't go out of the mine because it would take too long for their eyes to adjust to the light and then adjust back to the dark.

We were glad we did the bike ride and went to see Deadwood.  And we were glad to get back to the camper where we spent a day unpacking and taking care of ourselves and our stuff.

I rode my ebike to the YMCA in Custer.  I was happy to see that the pizza and ice cream we ate on the bike trip did not translate into pounds on the scale.  I did a little happy dance. 

It felt good to get back to lifting weights and doing my Physical Therapy exercises and stretches.  

Then I spent a good couple hours doing laundry at the Lost Sock again.  I enjoyed that too.  Studying Spanish... hey, I made it to 1000 consecutive days of studying Spanish on Duolingo! And cleaning out my emails.

I got a notice from Jasper National Park in Canada that our reservation there was canceled due to the fire that damaged the campground and burned down half the town.   Steve and I studied the map and decided to just enjoy wherever we landed as we make our way back to the states after visiting Banff.

That evening Steve drove us along the Wildlife Drive again.  We saw antelope and prairie dogs.  

And we saw a couple of solo  buffalo grazing on their own.  Nothing like our last experience when the buffalo where all around the truck, some males fighting and other males chasing females.  

Our last day in Custer we were going to hike up to Harney Peak.  I think it is the tallest spot in South Dakota.  But with the smoke from the Canadian and Western US fires obstructing our views, we decided to drive 30 miles to Hot Springs  We had seen a billboard advertising a "mammoth site".

Boy oh boy, we both were very glad we made that choice!  Wow.

The Mammoth Museum in Hot Springs, SD is amazing.  About 200,000 years ago the land was mostly sandstone and water had created eroded away underground in places.  Then in this place, it collapsed  (a sink hole was formed).

A hot spring filled the hole with warm water.  This was the end of the glacial time.  So mammoths and other animals came to the steaming spring to eat the vegetation around the spring and maybe enter a sloped shallow area to warm themselves.  But the gentle slope dropped off instantly, they fell in or went in to warm up.  And then the surrounding stone had created a very slippery slope.  They could not get back out!  

Now, fast forward to now days and a developer was cutting through a hill with a front loader and scraped what looked like a tusk.  He did the right thing and contacted a college to come investigate.  Three of the colleges turned him down.  But luckily some young guy on the crew (or was it the developer's son) was taking or had taken a class from this Archeologist.  They contacted him, he came out to look at it.  The developer said, he had other work to do, so he could take his time and figure out what they had found.

They found more tusks, skulls, from mammoths, bones from short nosed bears, and camels, and more.  They have dug down about 20 feet so far.  They have core drilled and the sink hole is 65 feet deep with more bones below.  

Somewhere in the process the developer and the archeologist decided to keep the site intact instead of sending the bones to museums elsewhere.  They built a museum around the site, covered it to protect the bones from exposure to the weather.   We could walk all the way around the sink hole and see their progress.  

In some places they made models of bones and teeth so that visitors can touch the objects.  Below is a picture of Steve holding a model of a Columbian Mammoth tooth or a Wooley Mammoth tooth.  They had to grind 300 lbs of vegetation a day to consume enough nutrients and calories to maintain themselves.

So far they have only found the skeletons of two wooley mammoths, but about 60 Columbian Mammoths.

The model below is an "arm" bone (front leg).  They put a model of a human hand on it to give us an idea of the size of the animal.

Sometimes they do remove bones from the site.  They put them in a cast like we would use to set a broken arm.  Then carefully lift it out of the pit.

The picture below is looking over the slippery slope side of the pit where animals probably entered the pool and then some of them died trying to get back out.  There is a whole skeleton of a mammoth minus the head laying on that slippery slope.

We got to chat with an archeologist on the site.  He told us that it will take more than one lifetime to find and identify all the bones.  He said that about one mammoth fell in every 1000 years.  He figures they have already uncovered 62 mammoths.  There could be as many as 200 if the rate of every 1000 years holds true as they dig deeper.

Each layer of sediment represents a year in time... I think.   They had the wall marked with 190,000 years ago and 140,000 years ago.  

After we left the dig pit area, there was more educational displays.

And a gift shop.  We found a book for Erin's students.  And when I showed Steve the box of sharks' teeth and a box with a Mosasaur tooth, he had to buy those too.

That evening was our last one in Custer.  I took a walk down to the water to say "goodbye" to our time at this interesting and lovely place.

I discovered a trail we didn't walk and a lake we didn't know about.  Wow, we could always stay a few days longer in each place we go it seems.

"Except Casper, Wyoming," Steve tells me.  

And I thought, ya, but the evening we spent in Casper was enjoyable and educational.  

We learned on our drive to Casper that Wyoming has a very very big coal mine.  We passed it.  There were huge open pits on both sides of the highway.   And four long trains getting filled with coal.

We stopped at a roadside kiosk about oil.  

We were fortunate.  I had thought we might stay at a Harvest Host for the one night while we make our way to Teton's National Park, but there weren't any Hosts near our route.  So I found a spot in a campground in Casper, Wy.  Fort Casper Campground is right next to the Fort Casper Museum.  After we set up, we walked over to the Museum.

The different cabins of the Fort were really well done.  Soldiers uniforms, bunks made with old style nails, tin plates and cups.

Inside the building was information about Wyoming.  And that is when I learned that Wyoming is the equality state.  It gave women the right to vote about 50 years before the 19th Amendment.

The covered wagon below was a sample of how sheep herders lived year round.  This sample was insulated.

After going to the museum we walked down to the Platte River.  It was really flowing fast.  No wonder pioneers paid a high price to take the ferry ($1 to $6 depending on the height of the river) and later the bridge to get across.

Soon after leaving Casper, WY, we began to see hills and erosion that reminded us on the Badlands.

We stopped at a monument on a hill beside the highway.  The monument was to the people who worked hard to cut the railroad ties when they were building the cross continental railroad,   They used axes to get them the right size.  In the beginning they were paid by the tie, and not much!

I was driving when we got close to the Teton's.  

The GPS took us up 22, Moose-Wilson Road.  It was narrow and winding.  I almost missed seeing this sign.

Then I saw a pull off that was big enough to turn around.

At Fireside Resort in Jackson Hole, WY, we have magpies all around us in the morning.

Our full day we decided to Kayak.   We had to get the boats inspected.   They are trying to keep invasives out of the beautiful lakes and rivers here.  I told them we had planned on kayaking Jenny Lake but if there is a less-busy place without motorized boats...

They recommended String Lake with a short portage over on Leigh Lake.  Wow, how lucky we were for their recommendation!

The weather was perfect, and hardly any wind.

Here is a video of fish eating bugs by our lunch spot.

Here is a video of our lunch spot.

I walked across the creek to get a closer look at the flowers on the far side of the creek.

We kayaked almost 10 miles.

The next day... the day I am writing this, we went for a float on the Snake River.  Driving there we went on the Moose-Wilson Road, the road that we weren't allowed to pull our trailer.   It is very narrow and winding, and the vegetation is trimmed right at the pavement end.  The passenger would be sorry if they stuck their elbow out the window.

We saw a grizzly bear and three elk on the drive to the meetup place.  And on the kayak day we saw two moose!

On the 10-mile float, we saw two young grizzly bear hanging out together.  Our guide said they looked like yearlings.

We learned that the mountains here were created by plate tectonics.  The valley is dropping and the mountains are growing.  There is a huge earthquake every thousand years.  Our guide said we were past due for one.

The glaciers that passed over the area left a lot of rounded rocks.  There was a huge wall we floated by.

Ok, so what are the three breasts about?   The French traders called the mountains "Les trois tetons"  which means "The Three Breasts".  

Tomorrow we bike around on the trails and roads in a loop.  That will be it for this area.  We never fit in a hike!   Off now we go to Idaho.