So, a lot has happened this week. So much, in fact, that I feel it should be divided into 3 posts. So be warned. I'm going to start with Sunday. Not only was I not working (we all take turns, and I worked the last 5. That's probably an exaggeration, but still), but it was my first Sunday leading worship with The Rolling Stone, one of Trinity UMC's worship teams. This was fun, I enjoy using my voice to honor God and it was nice to be able to sing (my singing lately has been in the shower or in my car. True story). All in all, a lovely time at worship. And yet again, I felt myself convicted during the sermon (this one was about Jesus being our Shepherd-and dealt with the Parables of the Lost Sheep and Coin. Basically, we all are the lost sheep. And God gives us so much, we need to be willing to step out in faith. Being a wuss who is fond of her comfort zone, I got the message :) )
Side note, I tried to Google "the Lord is my Shepherd," so I would be sure of the correct spelling. Because who wants to misspell Shepherd? After typing in "the lord" the top three results were: "the lord of the rings,""the lord is my shepherd," and "the lord of the flies." One of these things is not like the other...moving on.
After church, a friend from work and I had decided to drive to Custer State Park. She's the new curator at the house, and one of the few people close to my age. Our adventure was uneventful; we were driving down the highway when Hayley said, "Is that a Ferris Wheel?" Yes, it was. Huh. We were intrigued, even more so when we noticed the giant dinosaurs nearby said ride. Naturally, we pulled over to investigate. We were in Boondocks, SD, a 50's themed tourist trap with dinosaurs and a digging pit (and a sign that said 'Do not enter without Archaeologist present." Being the snob that I am, I muttered under my breath, "They mean Paleontologist," but that's not the point). So we explored, checked out the shops, lots of cool vintage-y things, then discovered a boardwalk. It wasn't roped off, so we investigated. At this point, we reached what appeared to be a fully stocked carnival lane, games fully stocked, prizes there, and beyond the barbed-wire fence, the amusement park ride graveyard. Now, at this point I began to feel like I had read this book before (Stephen King anyone?) or watched this movie (so, thanks to Spirited Away, I knew not to eat anything I might find). I mean, it was kind of creepy. So we went back to 50's land. Naturally, we took pictures, and those will be on Fb someday.
We headed back down the road. Eventually we passed a lovely reservoir, and had to take pictures of it. That was fun, and pictures pending.
Next stop, Hill City. We missed the Black Hills Natural History Museum, but I'll hit that up later. We ate in a 50's style diner (there's a theme here), and did the walk. As historians, we stopped and took pictures of all the historic buildings. Hill City reminded me of Leavenworth, only it's a legit Wild West tourist-trap town (I do love Leavenworth, don't get me wrong. I just think it's funny to find so many of them around). The oldest wood building in the Black Hills is today a cheesy cowboy restaurant. This was sad. The shops were fun, there was a New Age-y one with cute clothes, and a book store (which was fun to look at) and a Hallmark like store with funny greeting cards.
Now, we were on to Custer. The road we took was called the Needles Highway. If you are familiar with North Idaho, it was like the Schweitzer Mountain Road, only narrower and with more curves. The trucks behind me wanted to speed, but my little Subaru didn't want to go that fast up the hill. It was making funny smells (I knew that all the fluids were all right, I checked before leaving, but still). It was nerve-racking. Needless to say, I handed my camera to Hayley, since I wasn't looking at the scenery. I just wanted to get off of the Highway from Hell. I think if I hadn't been driving, it would have been nicer.
After getting to the wildlife loop, things were calmer. I not only could drive on two-lane roads (with enough room for two lanes), but I saw a whole lot of buffalo. I was afraid I was going to get charged once, but they were beautiful in a weird way. I stubbornly refused to stop to take pictures of deer or turkeys (and Hayley didn't want to either, so it worked out). After seeing a lot of buffalo, some antelope, and turkeys, we found the "wild" burros, or donkeys. They are friendly little guys. They come up and stick their heads in your car to be feed (I didn't feed them. I feel like that is frowned upon). Again, great pictures pending.
And that was the end of the adventure. We went back to the Northern Hills and got ready for the coming week. During the ride, we had great conversations, about everything from grad schools to work to history to guys to books to the MPMA Conference. So the topics were varied.
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