Monday, July 06, 2009

That dinosaur's eating my son!

We have a winner!

I guess the contest was harder than I thought. Since I knew that I was going to South Dakota (and a bit of Wyoming), I thought my clues were pretty easy. But I suppose it helps to know what's in South Dakota and I forgot that I didn't know much about it myself until I started planning this trip a little over a week ago.

Chris La Tray figured it all out though and nailed five out of my nine clues. Congratulations, Chris! Email me with your shipping address and I'll get your prizes in the mail right away.

Here are the answers:

Day 1

Wall Drug (Wall, South Dakota)



Where - yes - they have a gorilla playing a piano. And a jackalope you can sort of ride. And all other sorts of tacky, Western, touristy stuff. And the coolest dinosaur gift shop I've ever been in.

Devils Tower, Wyoming



Where Richard Dreyfuss got on a spaceship.

Day 2

Deadwood, South Dakota



Where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and Ian McShane became famous.

Crazy Horse Memorial (Black Hills, South Dakota)



Probably the biggest, most pleasant surprise of the trip for me. I sort of fell in love with the place.

Day 3

The Mammoth Site (Hot Springs, South Dakota)



Where you can dig for mammoth fossils and stick your hand up a mammoth (puppet's) butt.

Custer State Park, South Dakota



Home of wild bison herds and the most amazing scenery I've ever witnessed.

Mount Rushmore (Black Hills, South Dakota)



Where you learn how cool Teddy Roosevelt really was.

Day 4

The Badlands, South Dakota



Unfortunately, I didn't get to lasso any werewolves while crossing a swinging bridge on my motorcycle. Did have an awesome Fourth of July though.

The Corn Palace (Mitchell, South Dakota)



We didn't even get out of the car for this one, but it's one of those things that you're supposed to see when you go through South Dakota, so we saw it. It's a community center with corn-covered walls.

That's the trip in a nutshell. I've got tons more pictures up at Flickr, so if you've got some time to kill, you can check that out. I've narrated the whole thing in the photos' comments, so it'll be like if I invited you over for dinner and forced you to watch my vacation slides. Only without the benefit of your getting dinner. Still, it was an excellent, pretty much flawless trip and I'm happy to share it with you if you've got the time.

That's it for today. It took me forever to set up that Flickr set. Tomorrow I'll start getting caught up on news and other stuff.

5 comments:

Siskoid said...

Just the right amount of pictures of kids being eaten by fossils. Not enough pictures of the jackalope!

(Or the buckdjève, as it is called here.)

Michael May said...

Because YOU demanded it, effendi!

Me riding a jackalope.

Christian Zamora said...

Real nice pictures!

Oh, Mount Rushmore is quite impressive as well!

Anonymous said...

Hi, this is Kayleen with the SD Office of Tourism. I enjoyed reading your blog and looking at your pictures; I checked some of them out at Flickr too. I'm happy to hear you had a good time in South Dakota! I hope you get a chance to come back and visit us again!

Kayleen
South Dakota Office of Tourism
www.travelsd.com

Michael May said...

Oh, wow! Thanks, Kayleen!

We'll definitely be back. South Dakota is my son's new favorite state and I have to get back to Custer State Park for a longer visit.

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