Killdeer Mountain and the Tornado Warning

Howdy
On Saturday I got up ridiculously early again for a Saturday- somewhere around 6. I was going to go on a hike up Killdeer mountain for a historical talk given by someone at the Historical society and the bus left at 7:15. We drove out and saw a sculpture of flying geese along HWY 94 and met up with a bunch of people at the base of Killdeer Mountain. Killdeer Mountain isn't really a mountain, it's actually a butte (a smaller mesa), but it is the tallest thing around. Anyway, it was the site of a battle.

In 1860 something, after the US Dakota War of 1862, Sully's troops headed out to attack a village at the base of the mountain. Part of it was retaliation for the war, regardless of whether or not those villagers had actually participated in it. They shelled the village which had about 1400 lodges and eventually the villagers fled, some say through a hole in the top of the mountain you can still see today. Throughout the tour different people piped in adding to the story which was fun and interesting. One of the guys was a descendent of someone in the battle and he said that the hole in the top of the mountain was sacred and should be respected and that it used to whistle and people would leave offerings. It doesn't whistle anymore though. There was also discussion of a possible negotiation before the battle and how many warriors the village had and other things that it seems that only history knows.

For lunch we stopped at a grill and as the food was coming out, mine fell, so I had to wait which was horrible. The waitress brought me pickle spears though.

That was the excitement for the weekend. On Sunday I ran some errands and I will need to give up my computer for a few weeks to have it fixed before my warranty runs out (if my warranty covers the repair anyways). Basically my computer doesn't realize when it's being plugged in. So not horribly exciting.

Yesterday we had a tornado drill at the museum. It reminded me of school drills, everyone shuffling out to the hallway, including heritage center visitors. I was in the museum looking at objects for a theme week I'm going to do. Though we were probably safer in the storage area than out in the hallway, we eventually joined the crowds. Someone handed out coloring pages and crayons. It can be hard to color in thin lines with a big crayon- my picture wasn't a masterpiece shall we say.

Today, there was a talk from one of the interns at the former Governor's Mansion. She'd worked on an oral history project from the time when the place served as a mental care outpatient facility- one of the first in the country. Anyway, it's always good to get cookies at 9 o'clock in the morning.

And that's all folks.