Day 20 - 25: Tetons to South Dakota via sunflour fields

Dear Friends,
I will not bore you with too many details this time - I am just writing to inform you of some of the highlights of our trip to date. After leaving Yellowstone National Park, we traveled South to Jackson Hole Wyoming, a town marketed on the idea that cowboys still exist and that you can be one too by buying this superb leather hat for only $59.99. Despite this we met some very nice people there: one the owner of a music shop/bistro/internet cafe who said that even though tourism has been dying off the past few years, landlords are maintaining an artificially high rent which many stores cannot afford, and are thus moving out of town. She also informed us that Jackson Hole used to be a small hippie ski town until about 5-7 years ago when the mayor and chamber of commerce decided to give the town a face-lift. Another friendly face was the owner of a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop who was born and raised in Jackson Hole. He didn't complain about the rent, but did say that multimillionaires use Wyoming as a local Swiss bank, buying property locally and claiming it as their primary residence enabling them to take advantage of the state not collecting income tax. We made it into the Tetons for 2 days, both of us hiking up Indian Paintbrush Canyon where we set up camp. The next day Aleisha went back down that canyon while I continued on over Indian Paintbrush divide, and down the adjacent Cascade Canyon. No pictures from the return trip, but Aleisha saw a baby black bear, and I saw a moose, and a ground hog. Returning to civilization, we decided we were tired of WY, and needed to folow the Easternly winds to our next destination, Mt. Rushmore. The pictures unfortunately don't speak for themselves; this is a monument that truely needs to be seen in person to appreciate its scope. Along our route we collected some miscellaneous facts that you may find of interest: Mt. Rushmore is not completed (at least as far as the origional designer was concerned) as congress diverted its funding in 1941 due to an historical event, the designer Gutzon Borglum wanted in addition to Mt. Rushmore to sculpt a hidden cavern behind Lincolns head where all the important historical documents of the US could be stored but he failed to notify Congress of this secret plan and it was halted as soon as they got wind of it. There is still a drillbit stuck in George Washington's left eyeball. After feeling sufficiently patriotic, we continued South into the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, site of controversial shooting of F.B.I agents and arrest of Leonard Peltier. From there we went North to Badlands National Park. Pictures included. We are now safe and sound in Pierre, SD, and 2 hours in the furture compared with most of you. Don't worry, I think all of you are still alive.
All of our best,
Pickles

Current mileage: 4137.2
Times locked out: 0.00