Photos: Hill City, South Dakota

On the way to Hill City, SD

Pactola Reservoir

Alcatraz Island

Visitor's Center

They aren't all mansions, but it is a roof overhead, and there is a beautiful view out any window.

In the parking lot of the school where the quilts are.

See pictures from the Hill City Quilt Show here.

While we waited for the time to pick up my quilts and things, we went to the Railroad Museum and then walked down Main Street.

School where the Quilt Show was held.

You can just see the peak of the gym where all the quilts are.

Little White Church, where I entered my quilts a couple of days earlier.

Gate to the Railroad Museum

Gift Shop where we got Eva the little wooden and magnetic train for her birthday,

Whataya bet this lady is a quilter?

Inside the caboose.

The best part of the Railroad Museum was when we were in the caboose, darkened so visitors could watch a playing video featuring the elderly lady who had once received that very caboose as a gift from her father, who worked on the railroad.  We sat down on one of the cushioned benches and were watching the video, when a towheaded little boy clambered up the metal steps, peered in, decided he didn’t particularly want to come in (probably on account of the darkness), and turned around to examine the handbrake wheel on the rear platform.

The boy’s father mounted the steps, peered in, and asked his son if he didn’t want to look inside the old caboose.  The child said, “Okay,” and peeked in again.  He turned back to the handbrake.

“Come look around inside here,” coaxed his young father.  “This is the way old cabooses used to look!”

The boy actually set foot on the doorsill before about-facing this time.  “Yep,” he said congenially.  His father glanced at us, chuckled.

The boy turned toward his father, gave us a quick look, then said in a no-nonsense tone, “Hang on!!!” – and with that, he grabbed that handbrake and proceeded to turn it madly to and fro, with all his young might and main.

Larry and I burst out laughing, but the father, who’d paused to read one of the plaques on the wall, just smiled and went his way.  I don’t think it registered what his boy had said, or what he then did.  Ah, parents miss so much, because they don’t tune in to their children!

However, we later saw the man lifting the boy so he could see things better, and heard him explaining things about the old train paraphernalia.  The child was cute and funny, and better behaved than many kids these days.  Children need attention and teaching and playing-with and discipline and love from their parents, and many get all too little.

Several of the model trains were running.

There had been a contest wherein school children were given ledger pages from the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad Co., and they were to draw whatever they liked on their page. 

Velocipede 

I made that shirt for Larry for one of our Fourth of July picnics.

Sarah Lynn

One of the old steam trains arrived back at the station, and a whole lot of passengers disembarked.

Once an old motel, now small apartments.

Inside the Turtle Town Coffee and Fudge Shop.  A wee hunger pang had hit both of us simultaneously, so, partly to escape the chilly mist outside, and partly to assuage the hunger pangs, we got ourselves a mocha (Larry) and a hazelnut latte (me), and shared a big caramel roll.

Just look, the misty clouds that came rolling over the Black Hills totally obliterated them.

We were trying on hats in one of the clothing shops.  We were trying to be sorta quiet and sneaky, back behind the display racks.  I took Larry's picture, then he was going to take mine – when all of a sudden, there was the owner of the store, a pretty lady with long, thick, shiny black hair, offering to take a picture of both of us wearing hats.  (That T-shirt behind me reads, “Do Not Pet the Fluffy Cows” [buffalo].)

We felt we had to buy something, after that, haha.  So Larry found a zippered fleece vest – and then the lady told us that if we bought any other item, that item would be half price, so we chose another vest in a different color for Caleb, who will soon be having a birthday.

The Black Hills have vanished, no matter which direction you look.

After leaving this yummy-smelling shop full of all sorts of handmade soaps, lotions, lip balms, and suchlike, it was time to go pick up my quilts.

We then headed back to Whispering Pines Campground.

See all the birds carved into that tree trunk?

Pactola Reservoir

Here's the little train we got for Eva.