Happy Earth Day...

 

Today was Earth Day and I just could not decide what to do in Art Class. Looked online, on Pinterest and was amazed on how many art projects actually used paper plate...yuh? and new materials....yuh?
Finally decided on the old traditional toilet paper roll, peanut butter and seed birdfeeders, yeah, got peanut butter in my hair,still....

 

We also watched some fun Earth Day cartoon by Animal Planet...

Back to Colorado: Wtih an Elk

 

This is an Elk, a Roosevelt Elk I should say, since there are many species in the world that we use the name "elk" for...

these are Audubon's depictions of Eastern Elk, another subspecies here in the US.

 

Jon hunts big game very successfully here in Colorado, Elk and Deer, but since nothing ruins the taste of meat more then a bunch of "testosterone", I always encourage him to go for the cows(female elk) and does( female deer) instead of the males. Way better eating!

But my brother on the other hand, being a wild and footloose bachelor, is more for the trophy animals, a moose head resides over his coach, you would have to scoot over to get up, and a Kodak grizzly bear hide, is folded up like an afghan on the other side.

So up in Wyoming I went "fishing" to see if he had any elk racks "laying around" he didn't want and matter of fact he said he did,  "tired of "a 6point bull elk rack taking up the floor of a bedroom."

Slight problem.... we had to get it home.

 

This is the skull and rack  in the back of our truck.

 

 

Yes, we tied and locked the elk rack to the bike rack and drove through the rest of Wyoming into South Dakota, with passerbyers giving us strange looks, were we "liberal Obama loving mountain bikers" or "conservative gun loving right-winged patriotic Americans", actually we are a little of both.

The hotels were fun, I leaning towards carrying "Elkie" through the lobby and well, giving him one of the beds, but Jon won out and we locked the elk rack up with the mountains bikes , with cables, it was a debate which was more valuable- a top end mountain bike or a European mount 6 point bull elk.

 

I have to say, everyone thought I was silly, back in Wyoming when I declared we should coil a bike cable around the rack and lock it up, but guess what, that is what we did! The horrible, still slightly bloody tarp my brother gave us, probably from wrapping some game to pack out of the mountains on his mules also discouraged "looky lous"...

That is the actual rack, being packed out, shot in "them there mountains", the Absorka Mountains, where Yellowstone if on the backside...

Sorry if you haven't had your lunch yet, I might not be eating read meat today, either, afte this post!

 

All secure we drove east into South Dakota, south into Nebraska...

 

Back into Wymoning, down to the Eastern Slope of Colorado, over the Continental Divide...

 

 

And where back home the elk was unpacked and hung up in a place of honor between our  east cathedral windows...

 

The second Jon came down off the ladder and had not only drilled the hole for the mounting but several more to anchor the rack with wire for extra security, I realized we had "hung 'em too high", it took a day of pleading to get the whole thing lowered...

 

 

 

 

IF: Train

Nebraska...

 

Over the Mississippi River......

 

And the wonderful farms in Iowa...

From our train trek last Springbreak- from Grand Junction Colorado to Chicago.

Into Nebraska: In Search of a Pretty Spot

 

Jon's grandfather goes on in his remembrance (see previous post) of the route his family would have taken from Deadwood South Dakota,  the summer of 1890 his father worked, grading the path for the railroad tracks with a team of horse.

 

The letter goes on to talk of the trek up and back from and to Nebraska...

"We made the trip in a covered wagon,almost the full length east to west of Nebraska

from Saunders County to Black Hills.camping along the way, living in the wagon and a small tent; continuingthat manner living all of that summer and fall. The trip across Nebraska

had to be at a slow pace, as the Sand Hill Trails, called roads of that time,

were hard for the horses. During the summer of 1890 the men and horses

had worked preparing a level grade for the new railroad, but by early

fall my parents knew that we were returning to Nebraska to resume farming in 1891."

 

 So, leaving Deadwood, we headed south...

in search of the route Frank Kelly would have taken, the letter providing more clues...

 

"I must return to my story of the Black Hills and the early fall of 1890, when we were making our return trip to Nebraska; this time along the Niobrara River. The Niobrara is the Northern most of the three principal rivers that start in the mountain state and flow east to where they empty into the "Wide Missouri". The Niobrara has a special meaning to me because Mother ofton spoke of its valley as so beautiful and peaceful. 'The most peaceful place in the world,' she said."

The modern Highway 27 goes right over the Niobrara River...

 and all though we can no be certain it was the trail Frank Kelly took, it fits the description in his son's letter. I am not surprised that such a place, after a summer in a muddy, dirty, man infested railroad camp would not have been very appealing to his mother. Where the line of trees on the horizon would almost always signal a river, an oasis in the spans of sand the horses were dragging their wagon through...

 

The river is very pretty, very similar to the rivers we have here in Colorado...

and there are many rutted trails coming down to the water, cattle probably, but perhaps remnants of wagon, still etched in the protected hillsides were the wind can not blow...

 Mari Sandov, was an author who wrote about her beloved Nebraska, in the 1930s, in honest and true stories...

She had a hard life, an abusive father who made her stay out in a snow storm to work the livestock and so she suffered with snow blindness the rest of her life, though she eventually returned home and wrote his biography, love of a father is a funny thing.

 

She is honored with a historical marker near the town of Gordon Nebraska ...

 

We started our journey home, now finally turning back West- through more of the flat land of Nebraska and the farming communities, where my love of grain elevators gained some more inspiration...

                        

 

 



But to get back to Colorado, we would have to enter into Wyoming again...

 

 

 

Before Leaving South Dakota: Paying our Respect

Jon's great grandfather, in the Fall of 1890, would have past by very close to what would be, in just a few months, on the morning of December 29, 1890, the sight of Wounded Knee..Battle or Massacre, depended on who is writing the history of the last US Calvary's campaign against the Indians...

106 Warriors, 250 Women and Children camped below 470 cavalry with a battery of Hotchkiss guns, a early type of machine gun.
146 Sioux were killed including many women and children. 36 soldier were killed, many from the "friendly fire" of the machine guns.
Googling "Wounded Knee" you will get many a website highlighting the events of that cold winter morning...
Stopping at the sign, the descendants of those buried up on the hill had erected, we were greeted by Dakota Highhawk, whose mother and brother were waiting in a minivan near by, he greeted us and told us of his families connections, great something grandfathers being in the fight, while we read the large sign that told of the events leading up to the massacre, Highhawk brought his young son from the minvan, who entertained himself on a hotwheel in the parking lot...

We wanted to buy some of their buffalo bone jewelery, though we only had a hundred dollar bill, to large for them to break, but they finally decided to take our check, though it was a inconvenience to get somewhere that would cash it, perhaps the nearest Walmart to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, I don't know...

Being invited to drive up to the cemetery, now surrounding the mass grave the victims of Wounded Knee had been placed in, we quietly walked around the chain link fence and granite marker next to the long rectangled shaped grave...

 

More now rest up on the hill of Wounded Knee, many with the four colors marking the four directions, sacred to the Sioux....

Looking out on the Pine Ridge Reservation, it had much in common with the Ute or Navajo reservations here in the Southwest, some of it a sad reminder of the great nations we, as in the US Government wanted to take livelihood from and as a old general said back in the 1800s , "Make Wards of the State."

 

It also made me think of the New York times article I mentioned in my previous post, see here, that if a child's connection to their family heritage, to the point the article declares telling family history to our kids, is one of the strongest indicator of their well being, well, then are we surprised by a People such as the Native Americans being lost. When fighting them out right didn't work, we started taking children out of their mother's arms to Indian Schools and took their stories away from them, beat them if they spoke their tongue, cut their hair and tried to civilize them. Now, may they be encourage to tell the history that is not lost yet to their children. As a teacher of Native American children, I cam tell you the ones that do have that connection to their past are the once I don't lay in bed at night worrying about!

Into South Dakota: In Search of Family

 

To head back home we traveled East, choosing to make a wide circle into the Black Hills of South Dakota, a place Jon and Daughter #2 had never seen. Our first stop was Deadwood...

infamous for the gold rush in the late 1800's and for the gunning down Wild Bill Hickok...

who is buried up in Mount Moriah Cemetery with Calamity Jane...

who never stopped loving him, though he preferred ladies of ill-repute. Her dying words, some twenty years later were that she be buried next to him. You can go see the graves, for $1.00 a person.

But we were in Deadwood for a different reason, in search of family. In 1890 Jon's great grandfather, Frank Kelly, bringing a team of horses from Nebraska, was contracted to help grade the railroad being built between Deadwood and the next mining town, Lead ( pronounced like "lead a horse)...

Don't know if these are pictures of Jon's Great Grandfather, I did some microfish newspaper searching at the Deadwood Library and Wikipedia Commons later on, there was quite a collection from a Deadwood photographer, John C.H. Grabill, more of his amazing snapshots of the West from a over a hundred years ago are featured here in a Denver Post blog.

Jon's grandfather was a toddler when the family came up for the summer, a drought and bad crops back in Nebraska necessitating them finding summer employment elsewhere.

 

 From a letter...





"I was three years old; it was in the Spring of 1890. I was standing in a covered wagon,

looking over the rear-end gate. I recognized the horses, wagon and driver immediately behind.

I knew that my little sister was with me and was sleeping on the bedding

 on the wagon box floor,and I was content because, I realized that Mother and the baby

 were with Dad on the wagon seat up front, although I couldn't see them

because of the canvas curtain between us.I remember all of that as my first memory

 but nothing from before. We were on our way to the Black Hills

where there was work for men and horses building a railroad between the towns of Leads and Deadwood, three miles apart..."

 

 

According to the newspapers, the summer of 1890 was quite a boom of activities where a man with a team of horse could make quite a bit of money, though there was a forest fire that threatened one of the railroad camps and there were some labor disputes, the newspaper hailed men like Frank Kelly, who came with their families and stayed the whole summer, compared to the wild transient single men who caused trouble for the growing town.

 

Of course my thought went to his Great Grandmother, stuck in the railroad camp, up the canyon from Deadwood, keeping house, or rather a wagon for the summer, with three children under the age of three. His grandfather's letter goes on to tell how returning to Deadwood in his eighties, he and his sister figured out where the camp was now a motel, with a restaurant  on the sight, which gave us two locations as to where the camp was, driving up the highway to Lead.

 

 I wouldn't be surprised, with Deadwood reputation as such a rough place with railroad works, miners, gambling houses with a few ladies of ill repute, it is possible Frank never brought his family into the town.

 

Augh-  just think what it took, preparing food on a wagon tailgate, cooking over an open fire, doing laundry when at least one, if not two children were still in diapers, hauling water from the creek. Something to remember when we think we have it so rough!

 

 I would not not recommend Deadwood today to anyone who didn't have a reason to be there. That part of the Black Hills had Casino laws past a few years ago and the historic town is well really a western Las Vegas and a little rundown at that. Leads on the other hand is frozen in time, still a mining town, surrounding a huge surface mine and with a lovely cemetery of history, didn't think to take pictures and no on will charge you a $1.00 to walk around the grave markers, the saddest, three brother, buried all together, with loving dedications from their mother and father, a mining cave in perhaps.

 

The railroad between the two towns is now gone, only the groomed path Frank Kelly help grade with a team of horses is left, the timbers and steel taken away.

Jon and Daughter #2 spent the morning riding it from Deadwood to Leads on their mountain bikes... 

 

 

 



 Back from vacation, in my blog reading this morning, I came across a great link to an article, thank you Design Mom. The article in the the New York Time, "The Family Ties That Bind Us.", is worth a read- and the jest is that a child's knowledge of family history, both the good and the bad, down to 20 questions of family knowledge- is a huge indicator on their well being.

 

Though the article does not really get to it- I have to put in- a kid who is raised by their actual biological or adoptive parents with consistency- are the ones who will hear the family stories and feel anchored by their family- okay- I am done with my rant on protecting our families....for now.

 

But, going on a family vacation through South Dakota is pretty cheap jaunt....

                   

 

Looking in the rear view mirror to see your daughter, reading on a laptop the letter that her Great Grandfather wrote about his remembrances looking out of a covered wagon on the trail in South Dakota that you are now driving on....priceless!!