Badlands Residency Day 6

Got up early and was out the door by sunrise to drive the two hours' journey to Pine Ridge for a visit to Red Cloud Indian School.  Met with the teacher who will be coming with five students to the youth camp next week.  A few of the students are kids I got to paint with during my residency here in November.  We had a nice, long chat about the camp, the park, the south unit.  Also spent a couple hours talking to a school representative and was given a wonderfully long version of the school's origins and history.  Red Cloud is an amazing school, the brainchild of Chief Red Cloud who was something of a visionary in terms of what school needed to provide for the Lakota youth of the late 1800s.  I've written quite a lot about RCIS in this blog previously, so I won't go on and on here.  But I will suggest that you take some time to peruse their website:  http://www.redcloudschool.org/

Got back to the park mid-afternoon, spent time in the visitor's center meeting with park staff, discussing the camp and pulling together ideas and materials.  I'm really looking forward to next week.

After dinner my friend Ed, a park paleontologist, stopped by to inquire about taking a hike.  We drove up cedar pass to hike and look around for fossils.

Took a lot of photos on the way to Pine Ridge this morning.  Just after sunrise is a beautiful time of day for this trip.  To make it even better, it was a gorgeous 73 degrees here with the vivid blue midwest sky I love.

Headed west along BIA 2

Site of the Wounded Knee Massacre, along BIA Hwy 27

The high school at Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, SD

The heritage center at Red Cloud

Holy Rosary Church at Red Cloud

Badlands Residency Day 5

I spent today preparing for next week's youth camp.  Some meetings in the morning, then a trip to Rapid City to buy supplies for myself and for the park.   The Inter Tribal Buffalo Council kindly donated 25 pounds of ground bison to the park for the purpose of serving a South Dakota meal to the kids, teachers, and park staff involved in the camp.  Last year a lovely woman from the Badlands Natural History Association cooked up a vast quantity of bison chili for a fun introductory gathering of everyone the first night of the camp.  Unfortunately she is out of town this year, so as things worked out, I get to cook the chili.  I fancy myself a pretty decent chef, but I have little experience with chili (that's my husband's specialty) or cooking bison.  Trusting a recipe that I found online which has great reviews, I am multiplying the recipe by 12 or so, and will be cooking all this in two huge vats tomorrow.  Photos will happen.