October 23, 2015, Friday
We went to Mount Rushmore
this morning-an awesome sight! The cost
was $11 per car for admission, and the Golden Eagle yearly Park Pass
does not apply to that fee. It was much more developed than Anne remembered, to
her great disappointment. I didn't remember being there at all, until we took
the pathway to the old viewing platform. I remember the stones of the old
walkway, so this must be one of the places that I visited when I was five years
old.
We accidentally went to the Crazy Horse Memorial, just down
the road. The cost was $11 per person, or $28 per car. It was well worth the
price! This site has a Museum of the American Indian, the great restaurant,
information on the stone carving project (the 30 foot face of crazy horses
complete, and his hand is almost complete), and much historical information.
The museum even has some of the actual beads that were used to trade for Manhattan Island,
back when the Dutch were driving a hard bargain for New York real estate. We picked up a piece
of the crazy horse Memorial rubble, and took it with us in our car.
We drove to Sheridan,
Wyoming, and stayed at the best
Western, 612 N. Main St.,
Sheridan, WY.
307 – 674 – 7421. Sheridan
is my dad's hometown. We called dad and mom, and dad asked us to call his old
high school classmate, John J McWilliams, who was married to Mary Ellen McWilliams.
I was able to speak to Mary Ellen on the phone. Sadly, her husband John died in
July 2015 after a long illness. She will send a note to my dad and mom.
There were pictures of rodeo parades from the mid-1930’s on
the walls of the hotel. At least one of
them had a couple of tow-headed boys that could be Dad, his brother or cousin,
or maybe someone that he would recognize.
I took pix of the pictures just in case.
Dad also told us about going out to the 'Wagon Box Fights' with his boyhood friends and finding bits of brightly colored wood and rusty metal from the conflict 70 years earlier. This historical marker fills out the details a bit;
I remember about 15 years ago that he had some sagebrush on the
dashboard of his old station wagon. He
let me smell the spicy aroma of it, and told me it was the smell of his
childhood home. So I got some sagebrush
from the side of the road, and mailed it to Dad in Florida.
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