Sinks Canyon State Park

We had a big variety of tours and sights today. We started at the Eagle Bronze Foundry and Gallery…

We were given an extensive tour of the foundry, with all the steps and processes explained, from the artist’s concept in a small model, which is scanned into a special 6d computer model, to full size mockups, to sectioning the mockups to 30″ x 30″ sections, adding clay and wax, and casting the bronze at 2100 degrees… It is an amazingly complex process…

Examples of foam and latex molds…

The sand castings, with the wax melted out, ready to cast the bronze…

Completed castings being reassembling into the finished monument…

Coloring, adding patina, and finishing…

It was fascinating tour! It is an amazingly complex process…!

And then we moved on. We went to Sinks Canyon State Park. This is the site of the “vanishing river”…

The river flows through these rocks, into a shallow cave, and the water disappears… This is called “The Sink”…

We found that the water falls through cracks and fissures underground, until about two hours later it reappears in a pond about a quarter mile away…

As we walked we marveled at these shear rock canyon walls…

We found the pond (The Rise). It was peaceful and serene…

One other thing that flows underground and comes up in this pond are Rainbow Trout!

These trout are 16-24 inches long!

Since no fishing was allowed we drove back to downtown Lander. It is a typical small downtown, struggling to stay viable…

We had lunch at Middle Fork, a nice little restaurant downtown. It was barely not too hot to sit outside…

After lunch we drove a few miles north to the Sacajawea Cemetery…

Sacagawea (/ˌsækədʒəˈwiːə/ or /səˌkɑːɡəˈweɪə/; also spelled Sakakawea or Sacajawea; May c. 1788 – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884) was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who, at age 16, helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in achieving their chartered mission objectives by exploring the Louisiana Territory. Sacagawea traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American populations and contributing to the expedition’s knowledge of natural history in different regions.

Note that there is uncertainty as to when she died. She was either 24 or 95. Accordingly, there are two burial sites to be found… This one in Wyoming, and another in South Dakota. You pick…

We drove back to the VIlla. Lots of nice countryside here…