Road Trip '07 - Day 7

On the Train
I love trains! I have since I was a kid and I remember the New York Central (pre-Conrail, pre-Penn Central) freights heading up the tracks behind my grandfather's house. He had a great view from his backyard. As a retired railroader with the NYC he would often be found standing watching the trains, perhaps counting the cars, perhaps watching for whatever conductors and trainmen watch for when the trains go by. I picked up the habit from him- and my uncle- who worked in the Hornell, NY shops of the Erie Lackawanna.

At least I come by it honestly!
So when I find out that Hill City is the home of the Black Hills Central Railroad which has a steam engine run to Keystone and back- well, you don't even need one guess. We took the 10:00 a.m. train. It is about nine miles to Keystone. It takes about an hour with this restored Baldwin-built engine leading the way.

Built, as the plaque says, in 1929 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, this is a true work horse. It makes daily runs that have a grade as steep as any in the United States- up to 7%! It works and crawls, never really picking up speed anywhere, for safety as much as anything.

It crosses back and forth over the road between Hill City and Keystone and after a while you get used to the specific whistle pattern- and the unique signature of the trainman doing it. I am told that in the old days people who lived along major mainlines could tell which engineer was running which train by the style of the whistle. When approaching a grade crossing the standard code is two longs, one short, one long. (This is known as Rule 14L in almost all train regulations, according to Wikipedia.) Our engineer that day had a unique way of letting the sound out at the end, trailing off as he got to the crossing.

Something I learned new on the trip was the supposed background of that grade crossing code. It is the Morse Code for the letter "Q" (dah-dah-dit-dah). According to the explanation on the train, this came from British nautical times (obviously in Queen Victoria's time). The ship/boat/yacht that the Queen was in would signal to other boats in the area that the Queen's boat had the right of way. The Queen was on board so they used the Morse Code for "Q" - or Queen.

Yes, Morse Code is that old. It has been in use, again according to Wikipedia, for over 160 years. Always something new to learn.

It was a cloudy and cool day for the first time this week. In fact it never got above 70 degrees F. all day. That did cut down on some of the sharpness of the light of the day for pictures. Even though we were not far from Harney Peak we never got a good look at it for haze, fog, and clouds at the top of the range. But we did see a lot of rocks, fields, farms, and houses.

And a few deer. Managed to get this one of a fawn. They never seemed to be afraid of the train, kind of just looking up, seeing it chug by, and then going back to whatever they were doing. Saw a number of adult deer but was unable to get a clear shot at any of them.

Sometimes you wonder about some of the signs you see. I am not sure this was on the main road or not, but I have a hunch that someone, sometime, thought that these old tracks weren't used much anymore and caused some problem. The train is moving slow enough that they don't even have to blow the whistle until they are almost at the crossing. I would guess that they could stop rather abruptly with little forward momentum should they see a car parked on the tracks. But, hey, don't do it!

Later in the day when my wife and I were doing some shopping, we just happened to be driving that Hill City-Keystone Road from the glassblowers, and we just happened to be there when the train went by, so we just had to play follow the train for a ways so I could get some pictures from outside the train. For those who may not be aware of the logistics of trains, there was no wye and run-around track at Keystone that would allow the engine to be moving forward on its return trip to Hill City. So it runs around the train without being able to turn around and goes backward. Not a problem for the train.

And along the tracks at one of the farms was this wonderful sight:

For those non-farmers like me who need to be told, this is,

yes, you guessed it,

a manure spreader.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Geology Museum
In Hill City is a wonderful little geology museum- the Black Hills Museum of Natural History, part of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. According to their website:

the BHIGR has been the leader in paleontological excavations and preparation since 1974, helping supply museums and collectors the finest in professionally prepared fossils and cast replicas. From dinosaurs to mammals, reptiles to pteranodons, ammonites to fish, and crinoids to trilobites, BHI has done it all, and done it all well.

Much of our staff is actively engaged in the ongoing research of fossil vertebrates, invertebrates, and Black Hills minerals. To help accomplish this, we have an extensive reference library that covers a large portion of the vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology from the North American Western Interior, along with the geology and mineralogy of this region.

They have been "involved with the excavation of eight Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons since 1990, ...five [of which] are among the top 10 most complete T. rex skeletons yet discovered."

And here is one of them. T.rex.

Along with lots of other neat and photogenic items.
Shark's teeth. BIG shark's teeth.
Long gone sea creatures who left fossils
or who we can re-create.


We're talking a lot of beauty here! It was a neat museum. It reinforced what I had said earlier in the week about the amazingness of God's creation- far more amazing than if God did it in 6 literal days - 144 hours of "simple" work. Millions and billions of years of development led by a whole bunch of natural laws established at creation by a wise and loving creator. My mind cannot even begin to imagine that.

Which may be why we have been so tempted to want to make it in something we can understand. A week makes sense to us- if only because it is something we can relate to. We have one- well, every week. To think back only(!) 6000 years is at least a little bit more comprehensible than to think back 60 million years!

I actually have this neat image of God putting all the pieces together, however that happened and then sitting around watching it evolve, develop, turn into what he had envisioned. I hope that God is entranced by it all as we are. (Yes, I am doing the same anthropomorphing of God. I know it!) The true AWE-someness of all this- the millennia of millennia that all this has been moving along. The many forces at work molding, shaping, changing. There are big cataclysms and little shakings. Always, always, God is at the center. Why would God do it in 6 days (remember He rested on the 7th) and then throw all these red herrings and wrong clues that would make us think it's longer than that? It is far, far, far more intriguing, interesting, and in praise of the Creator the way it is.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
And Shopping
What's vacation without shopping? You have to get the T-shirts - and I bought three and a denim shirt. What a great idea it was when whoever it was decided to put logos and place names on shirts! (Sturgis Bike Week shirt.)

We also discovered some neat artist shops in Hill City. One was a Native American named Sandy Swallow . My wife fell in love with a print of hers that shows stallions across a starry sky. She also had some nice native-made earrings that my wife like.

Marinka Ziolkowsi, daughter of the Crazy Horse sculptor and dreamer, also has a shop there. She had a set of coffee mugs with wonderful horse pictures on them. Couldn't resist getting a couple.

We were actually quite conservative in what we bought this time around. Over the past year we have become aware (again!) of how much pack-rat-junk we tend to accumulate. We did stop and ask ourselves a number of times, "Do we really need this?" or "Where are we going to put it?" A Christmas ornament, a wall-hanging, neat things like that, had a ready answer. If there were no ready answer, it didn't get bought.

I was proud of us!

Overall it was an easy day with very little travel. We are well past the home stretch. Tomorrow is our last day in Hill City. A little more to see to bring is all together.

Miles today: 29 (Total: 1170)