MT. RUSHMORE

Hello all:  We are on our annual motorhome vacation, and have arrived at Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.  I've posted some pictures of the stunning country but oh, the winding roads.  And beyond tackling the switchbacks we were also dodging pile after pile of buffalo pies.   Our doggies fared quite well, though, no yacks from the front or the back seat!  Below was our first look at Mt. Rushmore from afar, thirteen miles away.  Aren't the statues impressive?     

We came through New Mexico, then up through Colorado, paralleling I-25, the main highway that runs North and South through Denver.  We were on Hwy. 71 about 50/60 miles east of Highway 25, and it was mainly a two lane road, sometimes down to one lane with no divider markings.  That got a little nerve wracking.  Thank goodness for our Garmin or we would have been completely lost the way these roads zig and zag. 

But I wanted to share with you our observations along these country back roads.  It was very sad to see one after another tiny farming town along the way reduced to a ghost town.  Not a ghost town from the frontier gold rush days, but a town that, maybe as little as ten to twenty years ago was a viable little community.  Now buildings are crumbling, roofs are caving in, windows are missing and doors are boarded up. It was almost spooky to see how many ghost towns there were . . . and hubby and I were asking ourselves, 'Where did everybody go?' Obviously they're not farming anymore . . . we passed hundreds of miles of drought-ridden or completely dead crops.  Abandoned.  And the few corn crops we saw which had corn ripe for the picking, the cobs couldn't have been bigger than three inches at best.

No more so than on the rural  back roads will you find yourself asking, 'What's happening to our country?'  I'm sure farming hasn't been hit harder than many other industries, but it is real easy to see the end result here.  God bless our great country and may she live to see a new era in productivity with an upcoming generation that will be given the same opportunities as the generations before them, and like their predecessors won't be afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty in her soil.  To put in an honest days work for an honest days pay.

For now her amber waves of grain are brown and withered, but her soil is resting . . . she's waiting for the days to come; the time of rejuvenation.  America has seen tribulations before.  Her great Founding Fathers still look over the land as a reminder that she can be great once again.  Let us hope her people choose to continue the tradition of being so themselves.