We rose very early and drove to the Black Hills Wild Horse
Sanctuary in Hot Springs. It is a non-profit group that maintains 11,000 acres
as a preserve for wild horses that would often otherwise be slaughtered. We watched a documentary called Running Free: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde
about the amazing founder of the organization, and it spurred our interest
in seeing the sanctuary. We signed up for the two-hour bus tour as it is a main source of revenue for the sanctuary. Although the tour was clearly
adult-focused, the girls didn’t complain (much) and were excited to see all
the wild horses! We also stopped to see 2,000 year old rock carvings, movie
settings, swallow nests, and white peacocks.
Afterwards, we visited the Mammoth Site. About 60 mammoths
are in the process of being excavated at this site. It was a sinkhole and
claimed the lives of these mammoths about 26,000 years ago. They were all male
mammoths; three are Woolly and the rest are the huge Columbian mammoths (an
African elephant could walk underneath one of them)! We toured the site and
then the girls took a Junior Paleontologist class where they learned how to properly excavate using replicas. They found a rib bone and a tooth!
Willa is pretending to be scared of the short-faced bear (they found a skull of one at the dig site as well). They were huge!
For dinner, we roasted veggies and chicken dogs over the
fire, and made s’mores for dessert. Then we played hide and seek and limbo with
glow sticks.
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