We spent this morning in Pierre SD which is the capital.  Those pictures will soon appear on the www.CelebratingMainstreets.orgsite along with some of the other state capitals.  After the capital we went to the South Dakota Cultural Center. They had a very balanced presentation of the State’s history. Since I am 1/8 native American I focused mainly on the Lakota Sioux history. They told several stories about how the buffalo were so essential to their way of life and when the white man came and destroyed them in a matter of a few years it also destroyed their way of life.  What a shame for us! 

After the cultural center we hit the road again and made our obligitory stop at Wall Drugs. They still have sign after sign along the highway for 100 miles before the store.  It seems that the store and the whole town of Wall has gone much more commercial since we last visited in the late 80’s.  There is now room after room of Chinese made trinkets and whatever and the dining from that offers the “free ice water” has shrunk as a result.  To think about it, it is kind of ironic that we are being flooded with trinkets from China as that is way we used to rob the initial inhabits of our country of their land.  I wonder when the Chinese will be coming over and demanding treaties with us to take over our land 🙂

We will continue to head west and sprobably stop in the Black Hills tosee Mount Rushmore tomorrow before starting out dash across Wyoming and Montana on our way to Oregon.