Saturday, November 10, 2007

I firmly believe that my mom decorated the entire state of South Dakota

Seriously, it's all wallpaper borders, fake flowers and Indian* blankets.**

But it's really... nice here. It's cold-esque***, it's beautiful and the people are all ridiculously nice. The downtown almost completely shuts down at 5PM Monday - Saturday (closed on the day o' the lord, of course), it's got this stuck-in-time charm. And then, in the middle of the city, there's this beautiful technicolor alley called "Art Alley" full of graffiti and all kinds of paintings.

And the carved mountain? Gorgeous. Seriously, it's impossible to take a bad picture of it. Also impossible to not be a little overwhelmed by it - the size of it, the history of it, the semantics of it all. It's truly amazing. We got there right when it opened and we were the only ones there - there were deers and chipmunks scampering around, the sky was a shade of blue that I've never seen before and then the mountain just staring down - I could have stared at it all day. We hiked up a couple of the trails to see the mountain from different angles - I probably took 50 pictures. When we were getting ready to leave, we walked past this gaggle of camo-clad hunters standing on the main viewing deck. They stared at the mountain for a minute then one turned to the others and said:

"Seen enough?"

One of the others turns away form the view and says "Yep, I seen the big ol' rock, let's go get breakfast."

Nice.


* I know, I know, the correct term is "Native American", but that phrase is nowhere here - it's all "Indian" - It took me a full day to realize this, but now the "Indian Tacos" on the menu of the dive diner make more sense.

** I'd post pictures, but I neglected to bring the cord to transfer pictures from my camera to my computer - sure, I remembered my battery charger, but not the stupid cord - I could take pictures all day long... except that my memory card will be full soon and then I don't plan on doing anything else memorable.

*** sweater-y weather, but not so cold that it freezes your nipples off

Labels: I take pictures