I have fallen further behind in this blog. The last week of my life has been a whirlwind. We are now back in Missouri and still waiting for the birth of our new grand child. I really want to keep up this blog while we are in Missouri, but first I want to finish writing about our trip.
On September 24, we arrived in Belle Fourche, SD. I have a friend that lives there. Mike and his wife Megan work for one of the distributors that I used to work with when I had a job. Mike is in sales, so we had a fair amount of interaction. He has worked for his company more than 25 years. We got together and had some long talks. I really enjoy talking to him because he is very knowledgeable on many subjects and I love to discuss different viewpoints on often controversial topics. Here is a shot of Mike and Megan and their three kids:
Here is a shot of Mike and I.
Check out the awesome photo bomb by Mikes daughter Braxton.
Megan fixed an awesome dinner and we had a nice evening. They decided to act as tour guides the next day and take us through their favorite places in the northern area of the Black Hills.
We started by going to the small town of Aladdin, Wyoming. This town has a population of 15 and has a very cool general store. The interesting part is the store and the town are for sale.
We then drove out to see some interesting spots including a lake that filled up a sink hole. You can see the edge of the hole in this shot. This lake is over 60 feet deep.
We then headed into the Black Hills. The cool thing is that the Aspens were turning gold and it was a beautiful day.
The Black Hills are full of large rock formations. To the American Indian it is a very spiritual place.
We then stopped at a place called 11th hour. This is a very narrow canyon that only gets direct sunlight during the 11th hour of the day. We decided to climb to the top. It was a bit sketchy, but it was fun and the kids showed us how to do it.
There was a waterfall with very cool colors.
The view from the top was very nice.
We made a couple of more stops and then headed to Deadwood. Mike has sold systems to many of the businesses in Deadwood. It is cool little ex-mining town that has taken on gambling and is very busy.
Here is Caleb checking out the sites from a balcony:
We got back together on Sunday and we went out a did some fossil hunting. We actually found a bunch of them I found some Buffalo teeth that were probably pretty old. I am not sure why, but I did not get any pictures of that day.
We really enjoyed our time together. I really like to visit the people that made a positive impact on me when I was working. Mike was one of those people and I am happy to call him a good friend. I really enjoyed getting to know his wife Megan better and the kids are awesome. This kind of interaction really enhances our travels.
As I shared in a previous post, our visit to the Black Hills was cut short. I will tell the rest of the story in my next entry.
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