This is not so much a journal entry as it is a summary of what I did on my vacation and the things and places I saw, done for the people who know me and are interested. I am not much a journal-er because I am a poor writer, but I am going to give it a go.

My vacation officially started last Friday, the 10th - my sister and I kicked it off with friends and I really had an awesome weekend. Lots of partying and preparation to leave for South Dakota. Good stuff.

Tuesday night, the 14th, we had 5th row seats to the Women of Substance tour, headlined by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin and Dar Williams. I was not sure what to expect, I thought they may all do their own set, but I could not have been more wrong. They all got on stage together and stayed there. 4 chairs, 4 guitars and 4 microphones. As soon as I saw the stage set up, I got so excited!
Anyway, they all came out together, looking amazing and got right to business. It was so awesome because they sang each others songs and talked to the audience and amongst themselves for the full 3 hour show! They sang in a round starting with MCC, then Dar, then Patty, then Shawn. OUTSTANDING!!!
Highlights for me were MCC singing "This Shirt" and "The Moon and St Christopher". I am a HUGE MCC fan, so it is always a treat to see her - I believe this was my 12th time.
Patty Griffin BLEW MY MIND. I am not kidding - just BLEW MY MIND. She is super tiny, then she opens her mouth and the voice of an angel just comes out!!!!!! AMAZING!!! She sang "Change", "Sweet Lorraine" and two new, unreleased tunes, which were great.
Shawn Colvin is always a treat and seems to be the joker of the group - she laughed and joked the whole night - sang some awesome songs, including the Greg Brown cover of "One Cool Remove" with MCC. I love this song, so to hear those women sing it made me very emotional. It was great.
Dar Williams was fun, but I am not a huge fan. I loved the harmony work she did with the other ladies, but I am not completely in love with her solo stuff.
The encore was INCREDIBLE. JUST INCREDIBLE.
They came back out, and of all things, sang a cover of the Backstreet Boys song "I Want it that Way", totally acoustic and harmonied. They took a pretty lame pop song and elevated it to something from above! It was so pretty, I can't even say!!!
But the best was the 4 of them singing Patty's song "Mary" - my favorite PG song. By the end, I could have thrown myself on the ground and wept for hours. I was bawling at this point, so was my sister and the girl next to her. It was so breath-taking and wondeful. I have to say, this was probably my favorite concert of 2003. I cannot express strongly enough - do whatever you need to do to get a ticket to this show, if they are coming to your town. Sell your first born, sell your house - do whatever because it will be worth it. An amazing evening with 4 outstanding women in music.

Now, the plan was that my sister and I were going to leave for South Dakota the next morning (Wed) at 5 AM. Well, after the show, we were on such a high, my sister got a bright idea; she wanted to leave right then. Well, after 15 min of debate and a trip to McDonalds, we decided we would leave that night and by 1 AM, we were on the road.
I love night driving so I started us out. Unfortunately, the majority of the ride from MN to SD is beyond boring - flat fields, not much to look at. But we cranked the tunes and I drank about 3 diet cokes and before I knew it, it was 7 AM and we were almost to the Badlands. My sister had slept for a few hours at this point, so she took over driving.
We hit Kadoka at 9 AM and had breakfast. By 10:30, we were in Keystone and by 11 AM, we were looking at Mount Rushmore.

We brought a video camera on this trip, so we were just obsessed with taping EVERYTHING. We spent some time at Mount Rushmore and walked around a bit. We were pretty tired so we got a hotel room in Keystone.
After a 4 hour nap, we got up and drove back down to Rapid City for dinner. We decided to see the "Heads" at night because they light them up for about an hour or so every evening. It was so cool. Pure pitch blackness everywhere, and then this mountain just lit up.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a stream to watch a deer family having a drink. Pretty cool.

We got up the next morning refreshed and ready to go.

We drove to Deadwood, Lead, Strurgis and over to Bear Butte (this whole time driving through the Black Hills and some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere in the country) - it was foggy and cold that morning so the butte was shrouded in fog. It was eerie and very neat looking. Bear Butte is a sacred site to the Lakota Native Americans, so this was one of the first highlights of the trip for us.
After driving back down the butte, we drove ourselves to the Crazy Horse monument. It's right about here that I start having a loss for words. All I can say is Oh My God. It is beyond fantastic. Only Crazy Horse's face is complete, but his face alone is the size of the 4 heads on Mount Rushmore. When completed, Crazy Horse will be the largest stone sculpture in the world. It is so amazing!!!!!!!!!!
The visitor center is very helpful and totally informative. It makes me sad that I will never see the completion of this wonderful sculpture in my lifetime, but I know in my heart I will go back every 1-2 years to track it's progress. As soon as I saw Crazy Horse's face, I felt a peace come over me that I cannot explain. It was so spiritual and beautiful.
The Korzcak family, well, Mr. Korzcak (the sculpter) recently died but his wife and 7 of his 10 kids still live and work up on this mountain and refuse any corporate funding for the monument. I admire their commitment to seeing this beautiful project to completion in harmony with the Native American community. It was spectacular.
After spending hours at CH, we drove over to Custer State Park. We decided to drive the "wildlife" loop! WHOO HOO!!
We saw hundreds of deer, antelope, prairie dogs, rabbits and, of course, BUFFALO! MANY BUFFALO!
At one point, we had to stop on the road and let about 50 (including babies) cross! One came pretty close to the car as my sister was taping (from inside the car of course, there are tons of signs asking you not to approach the buffalo), but he let her be. She got pretty nervous though. I found that hilarious.
The park road winds up and down hills with some pretty scary turns along the way. It was exhilarating. We got out and walked down a few trails and into the woods. Really great.

From Custer we drove into Hot Springs for the night. We went out to dinner and were back in the hotel pretty early. I got up the next morning at 5 AM (my sister slept in) and went to a place called Evan Plunge - it's an indoor natural pool, heated from the ground up, by the hot springs. It was very fun and relaxing - the water gets to about 87 degrees, so it was pretty nice. I swam for about an hour and cruised back to wake up my sister.

When we headed out this morning, our first stop was going to be Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
I had called ahead and made some arrangements to make a donation to the Helping Hands of Wounded Knee program on the rez. It's a free store for the impoverished people on the reservation, as well as the 29% of folks who are homeless there.
We brought towels, personal products, cooking supplies, soap, cleaning products - just tons of household items.
I went into the gas station in Pine Ridge and I was the only non-Native American person. It was awesome.
We got our donation dropped off and made our way to Wounded Knee and the Wounded Knee burial site and memorial.
Its so small, we almost drove past it. When we drove up the rocky, unpaved, pot hole filled road to the grave, we were welcomed by 2 little girls and one little boy who proclaimed to us "Welcome to Wounded Knee!!". They had some bead work bracelets and earrings that they were selling. I bought a beautiful pair of earings.
The kids walked us through the graveyard and then left us alone to take in the magnitude, but smallness of this place. Of course, in my head I kept hearing the Indigo Girls version of Buffy St Maries song, " Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee". I was overcome with emotion by my surroundings and the events that had taken place on this land. At this point, the kids' older sister had come to check on them and I introduced meself to Jolona. She and I and my sister talked for a long while. She is my age and shed some light on life on a reservation and the Lakota culture. I would not trade these hours of my life for anything.

After Wounded Knee, we drove into Rosebud and the Rosebud reservation and then on into the Badlands, where we stopped at the A and M Cafe where I had the best Indian taco of my life! Mmmmmmm. Fry Bread! It was as big as my head!
The tempurature had started to climb and it was 85 degrees and being amongst these HUGE rock formations in that heat was stifling! But, we made the best of it, still video taping EVERYTHING, and walked all over this huge park. It was stunning. By the time the sun was setting, I could of sworn I was in New Mexico caught in a Thelma and Louise movie with my siter. We were filthy dirty and covered in dust, but neither of us cared and could not pull ourselves away from the natural beauty surrounding us (and of course, the soundtrack in my mind played the IG tune "World Falls").
We spent that night in Wall, SD and of course went to the imfamous (and junky) Wall Drug! It was fun and we each bought some cute, silly items for ourselves and loved ones.

We got up the next morning and drove our asses the 9 hour drive home, stopping in Chamberlain, almost hitting deer that ran across 4 lanes of traffic, and playing leap frog with three cute boys in a pick up truck for about 200 miles - having my sister moon them, but still video taping everything.

I feel like I just had some of the best experiances of my life and being back has just reaffirmed my love for the outdoors and the majesty of nature. I think everyone should take a trip to this area if possible. We ended up with 6 hours of video tape and about 90 pictures taken. I can't wait to view everything! Hopefully I will be able to post some picture by the end of the week.

I am also going to include words to the two songs I mentioned, "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" and "World Falls".

BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE
indian legislation's on the desk of the do right congressman
now he don't know much about the issues so he picks up the phone
and asks the advice of the senator out in indian country
a darling of the energy companies their ripping off
what's left of the reservation

i learned the safety rule
i don't know who to thank
don't stand between the reservation
and the corporate bank
they're sending federal tanks
it isn't nice but it's reality

bury my heart at wounded knee
deep in the earth
i said cover me with pretty lies
bury my heart at wounded knee

they got these energy companies
who want to take the land
and they got churches by the dozens
trying to guide our hands
and turn our mother earth
over to pollution war and greed
well

bury my heart at wounded knee
bury my heart at wounded knee
i said deep in the earth
bury my heart at wounded knee
won't you cover me with your pretty lies
bury my heart at wounded knee
bury my heart at wounded knee

they got the federal marshalls
we get the covert spies
we get the liars by fire
we get the fbi
they lie in court and get nailed
and still leonard peltier goes off to jail
(the bullets don't match the gun)

bury my heart at wounded knee
an eighth of the reservation
bury my heart at wounded knee
it was transferred in secret
bury my heart at wounded knee
we got your murder and intimidation
bury my heart at wounded knee

my girlfriend anna may
talked about uranium
her head was full of bullets
and her body dumped
the fbi cut off her hands
and told us she died of exposure
yeah right

bury my heart at wounded knee
bury my heart at wounded knee
oh deep in the earth
bury my heart at wounded knee
won't you cover me with pretty lies
bury my heart at wounded knee
bury my heart at wounded knee
bury my heart at wounded knee
talk about a revolution

we had the gold rush wars
why didn't we learn to crawl?
and now our history gets written in a liar's scrawl
they tell me " honey you can still be an indian
down at the y on saturday night''

bury my heart at wounded knee
bury my heart at wounded knee
i said deep in the earth
bury my heart at wounded knee
and cover me with your pretty lies
bury my heart at wounded knee
bury my heart at wounded knee

bury my heart
it was an eighth of the reservation
bury my heart
it was transferred in secret
bury my heart
got your murder, murder, murder and intimidation
bury me
bury me
bury me
bury my heart
bury my heart
bury my heart
bury my heart

WORLD FALLS

i'm coming home with a stone
strapped onto my back
i'm coming home with a burning hope
turning all my blues to black
i'm looking for a sacred hand
to carve into my stone
a ghost of comfort
angels breath
to keep this life inside my chest

this world falls on me
hopes of immortality
everywhere i turn
all the beauty just keeps shaking me

now i woke up in the middle of a dream
scared the world was too much for me
sejarez said, "don't let go
just plant the seeds and watch them grow"
i've slept in rainy canyon lands
cold drenched to my skin
i always wake to find a face
to calm these troubled lands

ah this world falls on me
with dreams of immortality
everywhere i turn
all the beauty just keeps shaking me

now i'm running
to the end of the earth
and i'm swimming
to the edge of the sea
and i'm laughing
i'm under a starry sky
this world was meant for me
don't bury me
carry me

i wish i was a nomad
an indian or a saint
the edge of death would disappear
leave me nothing left to taint
i wish i was a nomad
an indian or a saint
give me walking shoes
feathered arms
and a key to heaven's gate

ah this world falls on me
dreams of immortality
everywhere i turn
all the beauty just keeps shaking me

i'm running
(this world falls on me)
to the end of the earth
(with hopes of immortality)
i'm swimming
(everywhere i turn)
to the edge of the sea
(the beauty keeps on shaking me)
and i'm laughing
(this world falls on me)
cause i'm under a starry sky
(hopes of immortality)
this world was meant for me
(everywhere i turn)
i've got hopes of immortality