I've decided to go a little off topic and make the next few posts more of a travel blog experience, which will obviously include the unique places we decided to stop and eat.
The girls and I started our Great American Road Trip across the country on Monday, June 15th, only we chose the south to north route. Honestly most of the food to get to the sightseeing part of our trip came from chain restaurants and was not worthy of a blog post. Thanks for being dependable Subway, Cracker Barrel, and McDonald's, and most importantly, attached to or near gas stations so we didn't have to veer too far off the beaten path to join Kyla's family in the Black Hills of South Dakota on Tuesday night. We gave ourselves two days to drive 1,200 miles.
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| An important stop since this was a new state visited for the three of us ladies. My bucket list is to visit all 50 states by the time I turn 50 years old. I only need to visit 7 more states in 13 years and 3 months. |
On Wednesday, June 17th, we saw the
Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD. This is a very cool, museum and excavation site of a prehistoric sinkhole that trapped at least 58 Columbian mammoths, 3 Woolly mammoths, and a few other species of animals. They even have a junior paleontologist program where kids can learn to excavate the very fragile bones. We didn't allow time to do the program, but would make the time on our next trip.
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| An overview of about half of the Mammoth Site. |
The tour starts with a movie describing how the sinkhole formed and why the mammoths were attracted to the site (warm water grew plants around the water year round), and how the slippery limestone trapped the animals in the water. There they died and their bones were preserved. Because the bones were trapped in water, they are very fragile now and not hard like most fossils. Then we got headsets that allowed us all to hear our tour guide as she took us into the dig site.
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| My dad, niece, and Eight with their headphones ready for the tour after the educational movie. |
She pointed out things we'd learned in the movie and lots of interesting features, such as all the mammoths found have been male. Some say it's because females are too smart to get trapped! But mostly likely it's because like elephants, juvenile males are kicked out of the herd and have to set off to find a mate and a herd of their own. At the end of the guided tour, we were allowed to wander the paths of the dig site to take pictures and make our way into the attached museum and even take elevators down to see scientists working in the labs.
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| Arrows pointing to crosscut mammoth footprints preserved in the mud of the sinkhole. |
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| Beauty, a nearly perfect Columbian mammoth skull. |
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Murray Antoinette, a nearly perfect Columbian mammoth, without a head.
Beauty and Murray are across the site from each other and about 20 feet difference in elevation, so not presumed to be the same mammoth. |
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| A mural depicting sizes of mammoths and elephants with kids for size reference. Tallest to shortest: Columbian mammoth, African elephant, Woolly mammoth, Asian elephant, Pygmy mammoth, Eight and Six. |
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| Six and my dad trying to reach out and touch a life size Columbian mammoth exhibit. |
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| The girls really enjoyed the "do touch" exhibits and learned how to tell the mammoth's age by teeth ridges. |
We spent about 90 minutes at the Mammoth Site. We attended the first tour of the day at 8 am and the first junior paleontologist program started at 10 am. Next time we will allow for that program because the girls were having a great time with the hands on learning. This stop is a must-see for kids of all ages interested in science.
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