Colorado Trip Day 2 - The Black Hills

Well a brief trip summary after that night.

We started our Friday off by going to get old-time photos done of ourselves (a place in Keystone just puts them on a CD for you so you can get some or all printed as you want). It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. The guy doing the shooting was pretty cool, and Brandi and I kinda got into the fun of posing for silly old west pictures.

We then headed out of Keystone towards Cosmos, which is an interesting optical illusion made by a cabin being built on the side of a fairly steep hill, but angled out from the side as if it were level ground. This meant that to keep balance we needed to stand straight up, which meant according to our perceptions we were seriously leaning to the side. I knew the illusion before I even walked into the place and I still got major vertigo when I walked in. Fortunately closing my eyes for a few seconds reoriented my balance, but the interesting part is that even though I know how things were supposed to be, my brain just couldn't wrap itself around the fact that the cabin was build leaning out, not straight up. All in all, Cosmos is an interesting place because of that illusion, but if that isn't the kind of thing you're into, don't waste your money on it. Cosmos is not the Bermuda Triangle of the Black Hills (that is Rapid City).

We then went to see Mt. Rushmore and eat some lunch, then took a serious wrong turn trying to go south to Jewel Cave and ended up driving through Black Hills National Forest (which was good and all except for the being lost part) and finally made our way down to the cave, only a half hour or so late.

Jewel Cave had actually had a power failure due to a storm that came through the night before, and tours were running late already, but Brandi gave her big-sad-eyes look to the person handing out tickets and got us on a tour that was only an hour or so after we got there. We did go on the tour, it was awesome (for me anyways...I love caves), and we left the Black Hills headed for Cheyenne about two hours late.

At 10PM we finally pulled into Greeley, CO and found my grandmother's house. She was still awake waiting for us (thanks Grandma), and we talked a bit and hit the hay.