We saw three things on our journey today that reminded me of prehistory. The first one is tenuous at best and the last one a bit flimsy but work with me here.
We woke up and had our Holiday Inn breakfast. Headed out to see Carhenge, something that we had intended to see the day before but ran out of time due to the awesome visit to Scotts Bluff. What is Carhenge? It is a replica of Stonehenge (in current state, not as built thousands of years ago) sitting in the prairie just northeast of Alliance, Nebraska. Rather than stone, however, the builder (artist?) chose to use old (mostly from the 50s and 60s) automobiles spray painted gray.
Carhenge, Alliance, Nebraska
Surrounding the the main attraction, Carhenge itself, is a bit of other assorted art like a dinosaur made of metal and a station wagon with a metal frame above it and large wagon wheels attached to it to make it look like a prairie schooner. It kind of reminded me of my family’s old brown Ford station wagon from way back when, duct taped seats and Gordon Lightfoot on the eight-track. Admission was free and in the concession stand on the premises we learned a bit more on the history.
Basically this guy owned land near Alliance and wanted to build a memorial to his dad. The town was vehemently against but in true mid-western spirit the guy decided that nobody could tell him what to do with his land and pressed on, completing it in 1987. In time the town grew to accept and, eventually when he moved away, preserve and administer the site. Heck, were it not for Carhenge we wouldn’t have visited Nebraska (as Scotts Bluff was a late addition to the itenerary) and spent a good chunk of change on hotels and food there.
Genetta didn’t get Carhenge at first. I explained that the beauty of Carhenge is that somebody woke up one morning and thought “I need to build Stonehenge, but with spray painted cars.” That makes me smile, and I think sums up one of the defining characteristics of humanity — doing crazy crap for the heck of it. I asked Genetta if she could feel the mystical energy flowing from Carhenge (totally playing on the belief that some have that Stonehenge has mystical properties) and she said “only the wind.” Can’t win ’em all over, I guess.
Left Carhenge and headed up towards our next destination, Hill City, South Dakota. As we left the bluffs we traveled through our first true taste of real prairie. Wow. Beautiful but very desolate — field upon field of crops stretching to the horizon with nary a tree to break the sky and only the occasional train running parallel to the road to break things up. Ok, maybe there was the occasional tree, but not many…
Prairie, Nebraska
The landscape changed to wooded hills after entering extreme northwestern Nebraska. Stopped in the town of Chadron and, after spying a sweet vintage 60s purple Mustang, ate at this place called Taco Johns. Think Taco Bell but more edible. They had some tasted flauta-like beef and bean sticks. Hit the road again and crossed into South Dakota. The wooded hills gave way to prairie again but in the distance we could see the Black Hills and the coming days of fun.
The first thing we saw in the Black Hills was in the town of Hot Springs. This is another one of those sights that I had no intention of visiting (nor did I know of its existence) a few days ago. The place is called Mammoth Site and it is basically a large paleontological (is that a word? is now) of a watering hole from about 26,000 years ago where many animals became trapped and died. I suppose that if they called it Mammoth Deathtrap of Dooooom they’d have had more people aware of its existence.
Anyhow, so that’s the second of the three prehistoric encounters that I had that day. Walking into a building and getting to tour an actual ongoing dig site where fifty-eight mammoth (Columbian and woolly) skeletons, some nearly intact, have been unearthed so far. They also had a really nifty museum and the tour itself was excellent.
Turns out that 26,000 years ago a cavern several hundred feet down had caved in causing the earth and rock below it to form a cavity. An artesian spring filled this cavity with water that lured these poor mammoths to come drink. Once they got in the watering hole, however, they discovered that they were too bulky to climb out of the steep and very slippery sides and died of exhaustion or starvation. This happened over a period of several hundred years. Kinda creepy to me that the later mammoths were in the watering hole unaware that ancestor mammoths were beneath them dead in the sediment, kind of like when you are swimming in a lake you wonder if there are any corpses below Poltergeist-like? Or maybe that’s just me, but anyhow. Incidentally, the site was discovered in 1974 (Go Wolfpack!) when a subdivision was being built. Work stopped immediately once they realized that there were mammoth bones there and the site was bought from the developer. Speaking of Poltergeist, can you imagine if they had built the subdivision and out of the pool started floating up all of these mammoth carcasses? Creepy!
They had cute nick-names for many of the skeletons like Humpty Dumpty, Napoleon Bone-Apart, Elvis the Pelvis, and my favorite Murray Antoinette. He was originally named Marie Antoinette on account of they haven’t found his skull but once they unearthed the pelvis they had to rename the skeleton. Incidentally all fifty-eight skeletons were male. While some would conclude that it was the stupid males that would get trapped the guide explained that mammoth society was matriarchal (how do they know this? I guess by looking at elephant society?) so it was only the lone male mammoths that were forced to find new mates in other herds that’d come across this watering hole. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time, but hey I’m no paleontologist.
Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, South Dakota
Left the Mammoth Site (of Dooooom!) and went deeper into the Black Hills through Wind Cave National Park. Established in 1903 by Theodore Roosevelt (go Teddy!) to protect an extensive cave system and the prairie above it. We were hoping to spot bison (or buffalo — same thing), especially as I had promised Addison that we’d see bison on this trip. The weather was quickly turning nasty and while I did see a prairie dog (but wasn’t quick enough to snap a picture) no bison were to be found. We ducked into the visitor’s center and saw some neat things like elk skulls with their antler interlocked — they had been sparring, got locked together, and died — as well as learned about prairie flora and the fact that Wind Cave could only support 300 to 350 bison (could’ve fooled me, didn’t think they were supporting any from what we’d seen!).
With rain and lightning setting the dour no-bison-to-be-seen mood we drove further on, out of the park and into Custer State Park. We paid our entrance fee and talked with the friendly ranger (is it me or do all mid-westerners sound friendly with their awesome accent?). She informed us that their bison herd was last seen near their airport (more of a grass landing strip, really, and that’s not too hard to build in the friggin’ prairie). Spirits lifted we drove on the wildlife loop road, rain still coming down steadily.
Saw many mule deer and such but no bison. Wait a minute, cars stopped ahead! Could it be?! … Donkeys? Really? Yup, apparently the park has its own herd (or whatever the heck donkeys form) and they were delighting in backing up traffic. Friendly too — coming in contact with the car several times (gently, much to my relief — visions of having to pay the rental company filled me with dread). It was pretty stressful, but eventually we were able to move past them.
Friendly donkeys, Custer State Park, South Dakota
At least they weren’t bison, right? Yeah, remember that for later… Anyhow, we drove on and once we got just past the airport we saw an actual bison. We were all thrilled, particularly Addison. He said that I had promised more than one, though. Rounded the next hill and, wham, the herd! Probably a hundred or so (Genetta counted at least eighty), off about fifty to one hundred yards. We got out of the car to observe but kept in mind that they are wild animals and did nothing to startle them. Thus we had our last prehistoric encounter of the day — watching the herd made me think back to what it must have been like to have millions of them wandering across the prairie. What a thrilling sight and what beautiful creatures. Addison was over the moon.
Bison herd, Custer State Park, South Dakota
Dusk approaching we drove past several beautiful lakes and out of the park to the town of Custer. There the rain finally broke and we ate some Pizza Hut. Headed from there to the first of three nights in Hill City, South Dakota. On the way there we passed the Crazy Horse Memorial but honestly it didn’t impress much at the time (most likely because it has not been finished).
So, there you have it — three prehistoric experiences: Carhenge, Mammoth Site, and a bison herd.
Route for July 10, 2010