South Dakota trip

Last week I took my three youngest with me on a trip through South Dakota along I-90 from east to west. Of course, the weather was still the long HOT stretch and we had 92 to 96 degree days every day and slept in our tent along the way. They had chosen Mount Rushmore as their "must-see" site and so that is where we started! Then on to the continuing Crazy Horse Monument, 17 miles away, with its Native American Museum, and over to Jewel Cave, which was cool relief from the heat! We finished off that day with the laser/light show at Crazy Horse, whose finale is a rendition of "I'm Proud to be an American".

We also took in Reptile Gardens with its prairie dog village and alligator wrestling show, the Black Hills, the driving/hiking loop in the Badlands, a sod house display, and the Corn Palace over in Mitchell. We ate our share of ice cream cones to beat the heat and I think we drank enough water to float a battleship.

My other two hour excursion was to find the 94 year old, four foot tall tombstone of my Great-uncle and Great Aunts who drowned together near Winner, Tripp County, South Dakota in 1911. Unfortunatley, we were unable to find the tombstone, which means I'll be looking into whether or not the farmer whose land it is on removed it, since it was a single stone on the old Koenig homestead at the turn of the last century. This is disturbing to me as a family historian and a genealogist, especially because I had the same experience with a Dupuy ancestor and his two daughters buried in Hopkinsville, Christian County, Kentucky a few years ago. The farmer had taken the stones out, plowed over the burial site and it is now gone from view and history!