Wounded Knee & the Badlands

Ok, so we've left Rosebud and are on the way west across South Dakota (of course, I'm writing this two weeks after the fact). We're headed to Wounded Knee, the burial site of hundreds of Lakota women, children and elderly massacred at the hand of the U.S. Calvary. (And people wonder why I have a distrust of the government?)
We left our little cabin that provided an abode for us during the pow wow and was the source of a good clean hot shower for the entire Good Shield clan. And I mean the entire clan!

And only Indians do this. See a dead porcupine on the side of the road? Well, stop and get some quills. Alex's grandma used to just throw a blanket over a live porcupine to get the quills and we have a coffee can full of the ones she got.

Look at those claws for digging.

Alex directed us down this gravel road. I was astounded that there were no tourist markers for Wounded Knee and yet we reached the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation before finding the gravesite.

People had left sage, tobacco ties and lollipops.

Having come from South Carolina where people are always making up "Indian names," I was seriously thinking of changing my last name to this official Lakota name:

We saw this hawk by the road. Seriously, it took us a lot longer than normal to get to Wounded Knee.

Once we were ready to leave Wounded Knee, look at what we found: One thing I just loved was seeing all the prairie dog towns all over South Dakota. I really wanted to grab one until I saw this: Yeah, if my family had been forced to live on a reservation, I'd probably shoot at the sign too.
Entering the Badlands! Wow. Aunt Bubbles told us it costs $15 a carload to enter the Badlands and we were a bit annoyed about this, seeing how the Badlands are in the heart of Lakota territory. So we found this off road to Sheep Butte. Alex said this was the best visit to the Badlands he'd ever had. It was pretty amazing.Really, really amazing.
We had to get out and look at everything up close. I was on high alert fot rattlesnakes since the kids were running all over crevices in this desert.
A geologist's paradise! I should've been a geologist. That C I struggled to make in Geology 101 though really hampered my aspirations.

And THEN Alex found bones! Oooooo. Ok, so here was my favorite part of our trip - seeing my best friend from grammar and high school, Lise. It's been 26 years.