RIDE ON THE CANON CITY & ROYAL GORGE RAILROAD

On September 16 we parked at the side of the railroad’s office building in Canon City CO where we met the Ashbys the next morning for a 12:30 luncheon ride on  the line.  We very much enjoyed our hours with them. (Pictures were taken by a Canon A1100 IS  12.1 mp camera)

The motor home parking place was level and even had 20 amp electricity!

 

The old Santa Fe depot is used by the line,  also called Royal Gorge Route. The locomotive no. 8 is a narrow gauge Shay and was used on the Georgetown Loop.  Now it is retired to display. Narrow gauge was the first gauge used in the gorge.

Our hosts, Lindsey and Rosa Ashby, in the Visa Dome diner from the Alaska Railroad.

Jo and me after drinks were served. The blue bottle contained Riesling from The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey at Canon City.

 

The Oktoberfest menu was in effect, so we all had brats for the main course.

Shown are parts of 10 of the 16 cars in the consist as we headed up the Royal Gorge carved by the Arkansas River. The ride is about 20 miles round trip and takes two hours.

 

 

This is the famous Hanging Bridge built by the Santa Fe before the conclusion of the Royal Gorge War. It is shown in many old photographs of celebrities riding the line. The steel beams cross the river and supported rails which had water running beneath them. That space now has been filled in with fill.

The river through the gorge is rated as class 5 rapids for white water rafters.

And some were rafting this cool day.

 

 

In this calm water the rafters could take the time to wave to passengers. We were watching another raft when the guide was thrown out in a rough patch. The last we saw of him he was floating down the river in front of the raft.

This was our lead locomotive on the return trip. For you rail fans, it is a F7A. The lead loco on the way up also was a F7A.

SOUTH DAKOTA SCHOOL OF MINES MUSEUM

This museum on the campus in Rapid City is remarkable for the fossils on display. All of those pictured were found in South Dakota!

 

What a beautiful set of tusks on this mammoth! It also was found in South Dakota.

 

 

This fearsome looking mosasaurus was an amphibian which fed on fish and other aquatic prey.

 

Edmontosauras was a vegetarian. Its duck bill was well suited to grabbing a bush and pulling it up by the roots to devour the whole thing!

This fossil was found in the South Dakota badlands. Several other fossils found in the same area were shown in the nearby diorama.

 

 

These are casts of the larger gold nuggets ever found. Most were found in Australia.  The one on the far left is the largest .

The museum also had nice collections of meteorites, agates, gemstones and minerals. Admission is free and a docent usually is on duty to answer questions.

On the way back to the RV park I spied this car in an old car sales lot. How long has it been since you have seen one?

 

 

It is a 1951 Nash Ambassador.

FORT HAYES CHUCKWAGON SUPPER SHOW

Chuckwagon suppers are popular in the Black Hills and other western vacation spots. Often there is some activity at the place of business before the dinner and show. The cafeteria style dinner, served on an aluminum pie plate,  usually consists of bbq beef or fried chicken, baked potato, beans, applesauce, a biscuit and spice cake for dessert, with a beverage. After dinner on picnic type tables in an auditorium, a western band follows for the entertainment, performing country western songs with some songs in arrangements used by the Sons Of The Pioneers. The Fort Hayes chuckwagon supper show was typical.

Next to the large auditorium for the dinner and show, two of the buildings in the row of old style buildings representing an old western town were built for the filming of Dances With Wolves and moved to the current site. In one of the buildings an employee was using a lathe to make aluminum pie plates for use in the dinner and for sale. The crowd was such that I could not get any pictures.

 

 

This craftsman was making a rope from binder twine. Here one piece of twine was wrapped four times through three hooks at the end of a long plank and back to the black mechanism near his right arm. When the mechanism is turned, it creates twists, first in the strands of twine, and next between the twisted strands to form a  rope. The three strands of twine pass through holes in a piece of wood to control the twisting. I had never seen rope being hand-made.

 

  

Here a bystander guides the control board up the new rope (at right) as the craftsman kept turning the twisting device.

 

The process continued until the rope met the twisting device. Then the craftsman completed it by splicing the ends of the twisted twine into the end of the rope and made a small loop in the other end to complete it. The helper here bought the rope.

The leader of the western band in the white hat is the band director at the local high school. The young lady with the violin at the right is a sophomore at the same school.

And the lead guitar player at the left just graduated from the high school! There also was a drummer and another guitar player in the band.

RAPID CITY STATUES

Rapid City SD downtown has bronze (or brass?) statuary on lots of street corners. Some intersections have statues on all four corners!  Most are of U. S. Presidents. There are similar statues in the downtown areas of Grand Junction CO and Golden CO (home of the big Coors brewery). One I did not photograph  was of Harry Truman holding up the front page of the Chicago Tribune with the headline in giant type “DEWEY WINS”.

 

Native American woman and child

 

 

John Adams

 

       

   George H W Bush

   

 

Ronald Reagan

 

   

        George Washington

  

Jimmy Carter 

 

  

       Bill Clinton

 

  

Gerald Ford

 

 

    James Madison

 

Thomas Jefferson

VISIT TO MOUNT RUSHMORE AND CUSTER STATE PARK

Our first day trip in this visit to the Black Hills was to Mt Rushmore and Custer State Park to its south. We visited both in our first Black Hills trip in 2006.

This was our first view of Mt. Rushmore form the highway as we approached it.  This view gives a more realistic view of the enormity of the statues and the ridge into which they were carved than the traditional views taken from the visitors center.

 

Jo in the traditional view as visitors enter the National Memorial from the parking garage (parking fee $11).

The traditional closeup view.

 

This is the most popular place for visitors having their pictures taken.  

 

 

There are several small tunnels on the Needles highway. This tour bus had just a few inches of clearance  coming through this one!

 

And here are the Cathedral Spires. The highest part of the Black Hills, Harney Peak (el 7242), is just a few miles from here.

 

 

These formations are beside the highway.

 

This group of pronghorn antelope were not the least bit disturbed by our presence.

 

 

I expected that any bison we might see would be far from the road, so I brought along a digital camera with a 12 x zoom and a bipod to hold it still at the extreme magnification. (The camera is a Canon Power Shot S2 IS.)The first bison we saw were too far away for getting a picture, but the second one, below, was worthwhile to try.

 

Then about a mile down the road a herd was within 200 yards of the road, so the telephoto lens produced much better results in the next three.

 

 

 

 

Then about another two miles down the road here was another herd  next to the road, with some even crossing the road!

I did not need to use any telephoto setting to get these! (Taken on a Samsung Digimax D 53 5 mp with 3x optical zoom)

 

The big bull in the center was not co-operative in pausing in eating to raise his head.

 

 

Finally, the road ran next to a prairie dog colony. This one must have been looking for a handout!

RUNESTONE MUSEUM – KENSINGTON RUNESTONE

The Runestone Museum in Alexandria MN contains a 200 lb stone with runes (letters in the Runic alphabet). The stone was unearthed in nearby Kensington MN in 1898 when a farmer toppled a beech or aspen tree and found the stone held by its roots. The stone is of a kind found in the area and the lettering has been translated. It tells the story of Vikings exploring the area in 1362! The Wikipedia site about the Kensington Runestone says that Swedish scientists are positive that the stone is a fake and its language is consistent with the 1800s, not the 1300s. A video in the museum makes a strong case that the runestone is genuine and was written in the year 1362.

 

The museum is housed in a building serving as the Alexandria  visitors center and the office of the Chamber of Commerce. The displays inside are also devoted to local Indian tribes, living conditions in the area a century ago, and wildlife of the area. Across the street is the large statue of a Viking.

 

Here is the stone itself. More lettering is on the left side.

 

And here is the lettering on the left side.

 

This brief history of the stone appears on the bronze plaque at its foot.

This display case shows Nordic artifacts found in the area in the last century. They resemble similar implements used in Scandinavia hundreds of years ago.  A metallurgical  analyses indicates that the iron was a type used over 200 years ago and was formed by simple methods. The wooden handle in the axe on the right has not been carbon dated.

 

This display shows the most recent line by line translation of the stone  into various languages, with the last being English.

 

This is the translation of the runestone made by the first man to study it extensively, Hjalmer Holland (Holand?).

This image was shown in a 45 minute video about the stone showing the imaging done on it about 2010.  The point made from the imaging is that the Rs in the runestone had a dot (depressed area) in the center of the upper part  of the R and that style was used in the rune for the letter R in the 1300s.

 

Is the runestone genuine? If so, the Vikings were in Minnesota long before Columbus’ voyage of 1492!

The video at the museum also made the point that several indications of Viking early presence have been found on America’s east coast.