AUGUST 2014 - SIOUX FALLS, SD

Ah, more traveling!    This time a quick trip west about 8 hours for a Midwest Shriners Convention.   We arrived on Thursday in time to settle in and be ready for the 6 pm parade in Tea, SD.   Most parades are held in the host city, but it's hard to get people to come back downtown for the parade.   This year the parade was held in a "bedroom community" where people who work in Sioux Falls actually live!   Many units commented on how every street was filled with families watching the parade.

Friday was a day to tour Falls Park where the Big Sioux River flows through red rocks called Sioux quartzite or jasper.   The next hardest stone to this quartzite is diamond.    Unlike Great Falls in MT, there still is a falls here.   It drops about 100 feet over the course of a quarter mile and the portion in the park looks beautiful.

Many of the city's buildings are made of this stone, but today the rock is mostly crushed and used for road beds for highways and railroads.   Here is the 1890 Federal Building in the downtown.

                                                           Isn't the architecture gorgeous?

Phillips Street is the main downtown avenue and it is the home of the Sculpture Walk.   The city displays 100 new sculptures every year and they are judged on several points as well as a Popular Vote.   The city buys the one that wins the Popular Vote and places it somewhere for the public to see.    One of the sculptures was a darling, life-size colt, but......it was placed so that it was "mooning" the street.

                                                       Did anyone else realize that?

Across the street was a T. rex dinosaur - Carrie's favortite - so we had to get a photo of that.   It was made of all kinds of metal things, including a chain for the tail and trailer hitches for the feet.   A friend took the photo, but I didn't understand why Gary was holding on to the tail until I saw this picture!

                                     
                                              I don't think we're supposed to touch this!!