Day 19 - History Trip in the Dakotas

After a Ranger talk when it had cooled down a bit, I had hoped for a night of star gazing, but no - cloud socked in the campground.

Gator Sunset

Decided to go check out some Cold War history by a visit to the Minuteman Missile National Monument. The Government agreed to destroy many silos and control centers when the missile down scaling happened with Russia. The National Parks were able to take over one control center and a silo site.

Blast Door

Under ground Control Room

There I was looking at the photos of the kids with their heads down under the desks at school - that was me.

Very interesting to see how the US would handle the missile attack from Russia. Well there are still a few left up here in the great mid-west.

So traveling back through Badlands as I headed to see another historic spot in South Dakota - Wounded Knee.

It was a long trip down to Wounded Knee, but once I got there I could only bring myself to take a reference photo of the marker that was at the side of the road. There were a few local tribe people there to sell dream catchers and a couple of kids hustling money. Not like the kids of Mexico that some know about, but a couple of very polite kids who started conversations with visitors. There is little to see, but the lack of 'touristy' things for me made it an even more poignant 'exhibit'. A proud people who have suffered too much.