Before leaving the Mountains behind us for good we did one more cave tour. We tried "Beautiful Suck Cave" the closest cave to Mt. Rushmore. It wasn't really that bad of a cave. Compared to Jewell it was pretty weak though. Especially when explained by a really tired and annoying tour guide. She reminded me of my college roomate's ex girlfriend. The kind of person you don't want to be around any more than you have to. Thus we renamed it suck cave.

Blindly heading westward we entered the Oglala Sioux reservation. We didn't want to stay on the major highways. Plus we wanted to meet people and learn along the way. Entering the reservation we were amazed at the badlands. It had been pleasant grassland most of the day. Then, all at once we could see off the edge of the hill we were on into the badlands. Amazing erosional terrain features.

Scenic but I wouldn't want to live in them. Which is exactly what these people were forced into. Within sight of their holy black hills, they were assigned one mile square plots of no mans land. Eventually the War Department wanted to buy the land back to use as a bombing range. The Sioux, owning nothing else but this worthless land, refused. So the government condemmed the land as unsafe, and bombed it anyways. Once the war was over geologists realized the importance of the fossils in the badlands. The government then designated the land as a national park and forbid fossil hunting within. These people can't get a break.

We learned all this from a woman selling trinkets on the road. Everyone we met here was kind. The roads however were not. We labored on a loose dirt road heading for the Cuny Table diner/camp for fifteen miles or so. We passed a couple of dead rattlesnakes. It got dark before we got to the diner, so we camped on a church lawn. We didn't know how much further it would be. We had to sneak by a loose cow to get to the lawn. The night was unsettling with yet another lightning storm.