Our trip to Roy, Utah

Today was a long day of travel; nearly 10 hours from the time we left West Yellowstone, Montana until we reached our motel in Deadwood, South Dakota. Our drive began early this morning with the temperatures outdoors hovering around the freezing mark. I heard one person say that she had to scrape frost off her windows so she could see to get to work. We didn’t hear the actual temperature, but we used the car heater as we headed north out of West Yellowstone on State Highway 191. We had not driven more than three miles when we could see the fog across the road. The picture below shows this ground fog that we found was caused by Madison River.

This highway enters a canyon that is actually within the boundaries of Yellowstone Park and the deep shadows of the mountains surrounding us made it feel much earlier than it was. The next picture is the view of a river running along side the highway, note the deep shadows from the surrounding mountains.

Since our goal was to cover a lot of territory today as we begin our final push home we did not take any other pictures along the way. This does not mean that we did not enjoy the ever changing landscape around us, but getting home seemed more important than taking repeat pictures of the sights that we have enjoyed in the past. We did have on activity planned at the end of the day, primarily at my insistance. This was to visit the Presidents Park near Deadwood and Lead, South Dakota. Sandy found information about this attraction on the Deadwood, SD website, had we thought to check out their website (link above) we would probably have saved the price of admission.

As we have stated in the past, our goal with our travel log is not to be entertainment critics, but when we fell like we did not get value for our money we do not want anyone reading this site thinking we are endorsing the attraction. When I read the information Sandy printed from the Deadwood, SD Site I made the leap that a sculpture was made of stone, not a fiberglass model of the original sculpture. So further research on my part was needed. Having said all this I will describe the park without further critical comment. The facility itself is beautifully landscaped in a mountain type setting of aspen and spruce trees. The paths that lead to the sculptures are wide smooth concrete making the walk very easy. Each bust includes a poster with information about the president.

The sculptures are arranged in a chronological order by the years of office (except Bill Clinton, who seems to be out of order with the two Bush presidents). We found most of the busts to be very well done (we thought President Eisenhower needed some work) and think this would be a great school bus trip. Our attention was diverted when we spotted the deer in the picture below. Now if you think we are thrilled about the site of a white tail deer we will correct that thought, but will add that what attracted us was the twin fawns she sheltered and hid from our view whenever possible. This fawns still had their white spots which helped blend them into the surrounding foliage.

As we left the park I spotted the trailer below and took this picture to show how these sculptures were created. Since they are so large, about 10 to 12 foot high, I knew they had to come to the site in pieces. As you can see the trailer holds a damaged section of what is Lincoln’s head. I suspect this was part of the front gate sculpture. Once assembled the pieces are patched together to hide the seams, making them look like a solid object.

It was getting late as we finished up at Presidents Park so we drove to downtown Deadwood for dinner at our favorite outside café. Being in Deadwood made us feel like we were home, we have visited here so many times that the sights and sounds are very familiar. Our last visit was in 2001 so there have been some changes, but most of the old hot spots (think gift shops and ice cream stores) are still there. This week is the time for a local celebration of the areas history, known as Days of 76, so the streets were very crowded. A gunfight show was getting started and the Stockade (a local watering hole) was coming to life with live entertainment as we headed for the car to call it a night.

Tomorrow we depart for home, another long day of driving.