Onward into South Dakota

Miss Doozie collected another state today, and Dwayne and I visited the "Center of the Nation".

As we were driving on US 85 south toward Belle Fourche,

The view that we saw much of the route on US 85 south from North Dakota into South Dakota.

we saw a roadside sign indicating "Center of the Nation," 7.8 miles west of US 85. I looked it up on Google as we were driving:
http://www.bellefourchechamber.org/gcon/
This was too unique to ignore!

After we got set up at our campsite at Rocky Point Recreation Area outside of Belle Fourche....

We headed into town to see the marker for the Geographical center of the U.S.

There was a monument there....

The information in the center of the monument recognized Belle Fouche as the Geographic Center of the Nation.

There were US flags around the monument - in this one, I was almost able to get both the Virginia (just right of center) and Texas (left of center) flags blowing out in the breeze.

My sweetie at the monument

There were beautiful Russian Lavender plants at the monument (so the lady in the museum told us was the name of this plant).

Monument from the patio above - you can also see the lavender plants along with blue spruce and rose bushes around the monument.

 There was also a Tri-State (the Dakota Territory or South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming) Museum there - unfortunately, we only had about 15 minutes to look through it - it looked like it could take a while to really see all of it - a couple of interesting items...

There was a display about different cattle operations in this Tri-State area - I found this information about the XIT ranch interesting - I did not know that XIT stood for "Ten In Texas".

A bicycle from the late 1800s - the handlebars and rims are made of wood!

A newspaper article about ladies' permanents (hair style)...

And an example of the device - it looks like a torture device to me!

After visiting the monument that recognizes Belle Fourche as the city nearest the Center of the Nation, we decided that we should visit the actual site. If you followed the link I posted above, you may have read:

To drive to the actual geographic center of the nation, one needs to drive 13 miles on HWY 85 north from the intersection of HWY 85 and 212. Turn left onto Old HWY 85 (look for a small blue sign with white lettering) and drive 7.8 miles until you see a barn on your left hand side. One the right hand side of the road you will see a small sign in red white and blue telling you that you have reached the Center of the Nation. Looking into the pasture, you will see a US Flag flying freely. Feel free to park and climb through the barb wire fence and make the short walk out to the location…make sure to watch for cow pies and snakes! At the location you will see the survey marker highlighting the “Center of the Nation”.

We got to the location - the flag is out there in the field. There actually is a nice gate so no climbing through barbed wire was required!

On the other side of the fence - we're heading down the path through the field.

There's the flag!

And there's the surveyor's mark

Here we are at the flag!

A picture of me at the flag.

A picture of Dwayne at the flag

There were some round bales out at the road outside the gate - Dwayne was looking at the wrapping on them.

It was a fun visit - something we didn't have plans to do but were able to see along the way! We also like the campground - it is very quiet since we are here on Sunday evening and the weekend visitors have left. We have a nice site facing the reservoir out our front window. We are only here overnight and heading further west tomorrow.