From The Black Hills of South Dakota

The following was written about 2 weeks ago…I just have not had the internet time to get it posted until today, 8-9-10.  Sorry, vm.

We continue to enjoy mostly great weather in The Black Hills…we have had thunderstorms the last few days and nights and even some hail yesterday but nothing bad.  We have had a few days in the 90s but then we get some rain and it cools things off.  Where we are near Hill City the temps are about 10 degrees cooler than in Rapid City…Rapid, as the locals refer to it, is about 30 miles north of us.

We took yesterday to do some sightseeing with our friends Betty and Dave.  We took a short drive to Keystone before going on to Mount Rushmore.  In Keystone there is a museum dedicated to Gutzon Borglum…the man that began the Mount Rushmore project.  As we entered, there was a man working that was giving information to the people in front of us.  I really was not looking at him but when I heard his voice I looked up and told Betty that I knew him and I knew she did too.  It was Bob Griffiths and he recognized us also.  After watching the movie about Borglum we went into the gift shop where Bob’s wife, Eddy, was working.  I had asked Bob not to tell her that we were there.  What a surprise for all of us.  My Bob, Betty and I worked with Bob and Eddy at Adventureland in Iowa in 2005 in the retail department.  We are running into so many people that we know! Here we are, Bob and Eddy, Dave and Betty and Bob and I.  We have made plans to get together in a couple of weeks for dinner in Keystone.

Then we went on to Mount Rushmore.  Bob and I had been there once before several years ago but having been to the Borglum museum we got so much more out of it this time.

And you know, you just can’t get away from those Texans…these guys are from Austin…could you guess?  We had talked to an Aggie while lunching in Keystone.

Talk about a small world, while in Keystone we got a phone call…yes, my phone actually rang…from Chuck and Lorraine North.  Chuck and Lorraine were one of the couples that were part of the Alaska group last summer and we had not seen them since.  They are in Rapid City for a few days so we were able to have dinner together last night.  We always seem to work food into whatever we do. 

It was so good to seem them…wish we had more time to visit with them but we are hampered by that darn work thing.

Today we just hung around the park until it was time to come into Rapid City for Bob’s appointment with the oral surgeon to have 2 teeth removed.  He is having that done as I write.