Page 4 - AAA Shelby County – AAA Now! – November/December 2018

TRAVE
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AAA SHELBY COUNTY MOTOR COACH TOUR Yellowstone, the Badlands & the Cody Rodeo
South Dakota’s landscapes are both diverse and beautiful. With transitional scenes of rolling hills, grasslands and buttes, glittering lakes and the thickly forested Black Hills, there’s much to admire in this seemingly timeless state, which possesses one of the largest concentrations of national parks and historic monuments in the Midwest.
AAA Shelby County invites you to hop aboard a deluxe motor coach and join us on a regional tour that takes us from old Western towns to grand national and state parks.
After spending a night in La Cross, Wisconsin, we will arrive in Mitchell, South Dakota, where we will visit the World’s Only Corn Palace. Some 500,000 tourists come from around the nation each year
to see the palace’s uniquely designed corn murals. The palace was originally conceived as a gathering place where city residents and their rural neighbors could enjoy a fall festival to celebrate a crop-growing season and harvest. The original Corn Palace, called “The Corn Belt Exposition,” was established in 1892. Early settlers displayed the fruits of their harvest and on the building exterior in order to prove the fertility of South Dakota soil.
On the following day we will drive through Badlands National Park and make a stop at Wall Drug, a small- town drug store that became a popular roadside attraction in the mid-1930s for its promise of free ice water. Today, more than two million visitors a year stop at the attraction for a meal or activity, 5-cent coffee, and ice water – which is still free.
Traveling through colorful Badlands National
Park, take in some of South Dakota’s most beautiful geological formations – pinnacles, buttes, gorges
and spires. Wildlife inhabiting the parks include buffalo, deer, golden eagles, bighorn sheep, coyotes and prairie dogs. Custer State Park, which comprises 71,000 acres of the South Dakota Black Hills, is habitat for approximately 1,500 free-roaming bison and more than 180 species of birds. In the park, we will have
the opportunity to view wildlife such as prairie dogs, buffalos and antelope on an exciting jeep tour.
On this day we will
also visit the still-in-
progress Crazy Horse
Memorial, started in
1948 as a memorial
to Native Americans.
Upon completion,
the figure of Crazy
Horse astride his
horse will be 563
feet high and 641
feet long, the largest
statue in the world.
Scale models of the statue, exhibits and an audiovisual program explain the work on the mountain. The visitor complex also includes the Indian Museum of North America and its Native American Educational and Cultural Center.
Then it is on to magnificent Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, America’s “Shrine of Democracy,” which features a 60-foot sculpture of the heads of former U.S. Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt carved into the granite face of Mt. Rushmore. This memorial is visited by
nearly three million people each year that come to marvel at the majestic beauty of the Black Hills and learn about the birth, growth, development and preservation
of the country. As a highlight of the visit to this memorial, tour participants will be able to view the sculpture during a special lighting ceremony.
Continuing our way through
the Black Hills, we will visit the
Black Hills Gold Factory and take
a brief tour of the old town of
Deadwood. Along Deadwood’s
historic 1876 Main Street stands
Saloon No. 10 where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed. Calamity Jane is also known to have frequented the dusty street of this gold rush town. Today, the entire city is on the National Historic Register. What you’ll see now in Deadwood is a careful, accurate restoration of a historically significant city with extensive Victorian architecture that is unique to the
West. The day also includes a stop at Devil’s Tower, which rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. This is a sacred place to more than 20 Native American tribes. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt made Devil’s Tower America’s First
National Monument.
The following day we travel
through the Bighorn Mountains and tour Little Bighorn National Monument, the site of Custer’s Last Stand.
The next leg of the journey takes us to Yellowstone National Park, the oldest national park in the world. The park, which touches three Western states, is famous
for its geysers, hot springs and incredible wildlife, including free- ranging herds of buffalo. Sights on our trip include Canyon Village, Tower Roosevelt, Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Geyser.
We will then venture to Cody, Wyoming, and pay a visit to Buffalo Bill Historical Center, which celebrates the Spirit of the American West by sharing the stories, past and present, of the Western experience. This evening, celebrate the rodeo, as Cody is the
“Rodeo Capital of the World.”The rodeo’s history in Cody started over 100 years ago with Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show.
As a final farewell on our tour, we will enjoy dinner together at Terry’s Bison Ranch or Bit-O-Wyo Horse Barn Dinner Show. We hope you will join us. This tour promises to be a lot of fun!
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
Now!