Today’s Snapshot of Blogging Laziness is Gov. Stevens Mason, Michigan’s first. He stands in a park in Detroit and birds poop on his head.
And for those of you who don’t follow the comments, but who did follow our brief chat a few months back about Ben Stein’s weird column in the American Spectator, this story, about some fairly run-of-the-mill skeeviness on Stein’s part, is for you. You know the sick making passage? This one, from Stein’s own version of what happened when he met a pregnant escort and tried to get her to let him “touch and kiss” her for money. They’re talking about her now-estranged baby daddy:
“I really didn’t like him that much,” she texted me. “I just wasn’t into him that much.”
“Well, you must have been into him pretty much and he must have been very much into you because you’re carrying his baby.”
“I know,” she said, “but I’ll just be a single mom. Will you help me out?”
I am so pro-life that I can never say no in these cases but I am worried about it.
He gives her money because he is so pro-life. I can’t stand it.
Anyone else? Tony Dungy takes the easy way out on welcoming Michael Sam to the NFL. Which is to say, he doesn’t.
No blog tomorrow, but! I think you might enjoy Thursday’s — a friend and I are going to see a Mitch Albom play today. JUST BECAUSE.
Happy hump day, all. Over and out.
MichaelG said on July 23, 2014 at 1:13 am
Why stop with mealy mouthed Tony Dungy? Let’s find out what Joe Gibbs has to say.
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Sherri said on July 23, 2014 at 2:35 am
Joe Gibbs isn’t part of the highest rated football broadcast on television. Tony Dungy is, in addition to his status as the moral arbiter of professional football.
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Dexter said on July 23, 2014 at 4:06 am
Americans are so starved for American football news that days before San Francisco Giants’ new Santa Clara stadium opens for fanfare and oohs and ahhhs, a man was arrested wandering around inside, hauled off and booked for outstanding warrants and thrown into the can. This made front page news in San Francisco’s papers.
My reaction to Tony Dungy’s statement was hey, what can you expect from a right-wing Christian zealot? The answer would be more of the same. Dungy is a Michigan native, from just up the road from me, hailing from Jackson, Michigan. When I could get the Detroit dailies here , I read many stories chronicling his football career, and I was a casual fan of his. Now he’s perceived as a cretin, a weirdo. It’s a strange and beautiful world, said Roberto Begnini.
Pre-season football is almost here and college games start in just a month. I watch football but I only closely one team, the Wolverines. Pro football, OK, but if I gotta do something else I am not recording what I miss. Passion for sports takes a lot out of a person, and right now I am all tapped out from hours a day tracking the greatest , most exciting Tour de France in years. Then in the evening, I monitor four or five baseball games all at once. I wish football did not start until October.
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beb said on July 23, 2014 at 8:16 am
…going to see a Mitch Albom play? nancy, you are such a glutton for punishment.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 23, 2014 at 8:37 am
Gonna watch “Ernie”, eh? I’ve wondered who helps him with the plays. Because there’s just gotta be a non-credited heavy polisher at work there. But I’ll be curious to hear what you think.
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coozledad said on July 23, 2014 at 8:39 am
The governor obviously didn’t have as much clout as Garfield, who got a roof over his head and a ballroom. The ballroom’s been closed since 1994.
http://www.deadohio.com/garfieldmonument.htm
They’re missing a huge opportunity by not turning this into a brew pub.
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Suzanne said on July 23, 2014 at 10:06 am
I heard part of what Dungy said and couldn’t help but think that Tony would not be in a position where anybody cared what he said if years ago, sports owners had kept saying the same thing about a Black athletes. “It’d just be too much hassle for the team to have a Black guy around”.
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brian stouder said on July 23, 2014 at 10:36 am
Speaking of statues, I had Pam snap a photo of me with this one, in Pueblo –
http://www.vanderkrogt.net/statues/object.php?record=usco05&webpage=ST
I’m a sucker (so to speak) for ‘party-hats’…which, as hot as it was there, were sort of incongruous
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Dorothy said on July 23, 2014 at 10:47 am
I had a visit from some pigeons yesterday, metaphorically speaking. Found out my job is being eliminated because the program that I was hired to support is being “suspended.” Which is probably another way of saying “We’ll never do it again.” It’s a relief, actually, because y’all might remember I’m not real happy in this position. I am staying for another 6 weeks, which is really kind of them, what with not having much work to do anymore. There is an open position I’m qualified for here, and I applied last night. So fingers crossed I will transition into this other job, which is actually a step up, classification-wise, from the one I currently have. (To those of you I’m Facebook friends with, I’m steering clear of any mention of this on there for awhile. My son is on his honeymoon and in case they look at social media while they’re gone, I don’t want him learning about this there.)
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coozledad said on July 23, 2014 at 11:16 am
Bad people, badly made.
http://wonkette.com/554886/cheery-operation-save-america-folks-stage-fun-times-open-casket-wake-for-aborted-fetus#more-554886
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brian stouder said on July 23, 2014 at 11:24 am
We should have open-casket wakes for all the people who get perforated by the latest gun-nut lifetime achievement loser-shooters.
Honestly – given the choice between after-sunset motoring in an urban setting with people here and there, on the one hand, or motoring in a rural setting in broad-daylight (let alone after dark) with one after the other pickup truck which has no license plate (I noted several of these in Wyoming and Colorado), etcetera –
I’ll take the urban setting, 1,000 times out of 1,000
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Julie Robinson said on July 23, 2014 at 1:31 pm
Dorothy, I’m sorry to hear that even though I know you weren’t really happy there; still job=paycheck, so I hope you get the other one.
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MichaelG said on July 23, 2014 at 2:25 pm
I know that, Sherri, but Gibbs did coach the DC football team to three super bowls and did function as a TV analyst for several years (although it was some time ago) and I cited him as a joke because he’s probably the most radical winger of all those folks.
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MichaelG said on July 23, 2014 at 2:26 pm
Good luck, Dorothy. Looks like this might truly turn out to be the cloud with the silver lining.
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Kirk said on July 23, 2014 at 3:12 pm
Gibbs was recently quoted as to how the name “Redskins” is such a prideful moniker. Easy for a rich white guy to say.
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Dexter said on July 23, 2014 at 3:18 pm
At first glance I thought the statue was of Moses Cleaveland , first mayor of Cleveland. (The “a” was dropped to fit the masthead the day he was elected, as the story goes.) I wonder of the sculptor was the same person.
http://images.politico.com/global/2014/07/08/140708_moses_cleaveland_ap_605_605.jpg
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Dexter said on July 23, 2014 at 3:28 pm
Oh…I guess a bronze-cast statue isn’t sculpted at all…I know so little about art…can you tell? Or are these bronze-cast statues at all? What do you call them?
One of these http://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=20894&stc=1&d=1216330462 passed me today at an intersection, slowly…I hate seeing animals trucked to slaughter…ruins my day…but yes, I still eat bacon, such a hypocrite I am… 🙁
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brian stouder said on July 23, 2014 at 3:36 pm
Kirk, here in Fort Wayne, one of our oldest public high schools – North Side High School – has always called themselves the Redskins.
I have (quietly) asked about this, and the official line is that “it is not an issue”.
(tick tick tick tick tick)
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Sherri said on July 23, 2014 at 3:51 pm
There is no shortage of radical wingers among sports coaches, executives, and players, too, for that matter, but Tony Dungy is the Oprah of football – meet with him and be absolved of your sins and cleared for your second chance. He was the biggest advocate for giving Michael Vick another chance after his conviction for dog fighting; evidently, that wasn’t too big a “distraction.”
Maybe they should ask Rene Portland her opinion.
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Sherri said on July 23, 2014 at 5:25 pm
On a different topic, I’ve been reading about the so-called “sharing economy”, such as Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, and others, and I have a question. Can anybody tell me the difference between these “services” and casual labor, other than a middle man is taking a cut? The middle man doesn’t seem to be taking much, if any, of the risk; they just provide a “platform” for finding the casual labor other than driving over to Home Depot.
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Deborah said on July 23, 2014 at 6:28 pm
I’m writing this from Laramie, WY. Left Santa Fe at 6:15am and arrived here around 3:30. I didn’t expect to get here that soon. Tomorrow we go to Devil’s Tower, I’ve been there before but Little Bird hasn’t, then on to Rapid City, SD tomorrow night. The drive up through Colorado on the western slope side was even more beautiful than I remembered it the last time we did it. We have been listening to an audio book, the Secret Life of Bees. We’ve gotten interested in bees since our lavender has been going gangbusters. The bees love it, the lavender bed is right below the living room windows and I love hearing the buzzing. Watching them is very peaceful too. We’ve looked into beekeeping, maybe next year. Anyway the audio book is a great way to drive Miles and Miles and not have it seem like it. The young woman doing the reading is excellent. Little Bird saw the movie a few years back, but I didn’t.
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Deborah said on July 23, 2014 at 6:29 pm
Why does my auto correct capitalize miles?
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Scout said on July 23, 2014 at 6:51 pm
Deborah – it’s a Mystery!
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HexDecimal said on July 23, 2014 at 7:14 pm
Deborah – it could be “use contacts” is turned on, and you have a contact named Miles.
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Deborah said on July 23, 2014 at 8:26 pm
Interesting HexDecimal, I don’t have a contact named Miles but we know a guy named Miles that I’ve complained about in some emails. Is there that kind of cross platforming on the gizmos? That’s kinda scary.
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Jill said on July 23, 2014 at 9:21 pm
Good luck to you, Dorothy. I hope the next job turns out to be a better fit.
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Dexter said on July 23, 2014 at 10:21 pm
I guess she wasn’t “pwegg-nunt” at all, but now the kid has to get his daily doughnut elsewhere…slow news day, eh?
http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2014/07/23/4-year-old-banned-from-connecticut-doughnut-shop/
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Kirk said on July 23, 2014 at 11:28 pm
In belated honor of the first moon landing, a Buzz Aldrin video I had never seen. Sound is necessary; it’s safe for work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wptn5RE2I-k
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alex said on July 23, 2014 at 11:32 pm
Ahhnold (“da govanatah”) make cweaning wady “pwegg-nunt.”
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HexDecimal said on July 24, 2014 at 12:10 am
Deborah – so it’s either in your dictionary with a capital “M” or I this blogs dictionary with a capital “M”. If it is in your dictionary I can’t help change it if it’s not an ipad or iPhone. But there should be a way to edit your dictionary. Note that ipad is spelled on this device as IPad, but the blog offers the suggestion change of ipad. Hope this helps.
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HexDecimal said on July 24, 2014 at 12:13 am
“I” should be “It’s”
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Sherri said on July 24, 2014 at 1:35 am
Yes, I plagiarized my master’s thesis, but I had PTSD! http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Montana-senator-s-thesis-appears-to-plagiarize-5641953.php
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Dexter said on July 24, 2014 at 2:07 am
I’m not a real humbug anymore since the US has quit a lot of the space program’s wasteful spending, but in the hoopla of 1969’a moon landing, the great , late Gil Scott-Heron gave us another perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwkXZ0SmTs
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Dexter said on July 24, 2014 at 2:19 am
What’s eating Jack White at this Cubs game? http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1925745/thumbs/o-JACK-WHITE-CUBS-GAME-facebook.jpg
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MarkH said on July 24, 2014 at 5:39 am
The asshole in Kirk’s video got what he deserved.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 24, 2014 at 8:01 am
He’s 84 now, but I’ll bet he’s still got the strong right he showed at 72. Buzz was always the more fun interview; Neil the nice guy, but Buzz is always good for a quote. His Twitter feed is @TheRealBuzz, fun to follow even if it is mostly one of his assistants.
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beb said on July 24, 2014 at 8:17 am
Apparently Mitch Albom’s play was too much for Nancy…
In other news, we have another missing airplane. This one is from the Air Algers, flying over Africa. Not thought to be a twerrorist attack but 119 passengers are missing.
Woman pulled a gun on a man trying to tell her to slow down in a store parking lot, and elsewhere in the same state a woman pulls a gun at a Kroger’s. The latter woman was arrested.
Arizona took two hours to execute a prisoner last night, which seems like a good reason to ban further lethal injection executions. The Guillotine, which is the most horrific of killing machines, had the one advantage of being swift and sure.
World’s sorest loser, Chris McDaniels, continues to rack up support by parking his campaign bus across five parking slots in front of a comic book store trying to celebrate “Batman Day.”
And in the category of “I didn’t believe they existed” – a tea part candidate had a town hall meeting where he asked for compassion for the refugee children from Central America. The candidate was quickly put in his place by the xenophobes in the audience. *sigh*
And I so wanted to end on a happy note. Weather in Detroit is cool and sunny. A great day for bike-riding.
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Minnie said on July 24, 2014 at 9:14 am
Dexter, did you mean to post this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwkXZ0SmTs
Here’s my favorite late Gil Scott-Heron. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_astp3BjM
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brian stouder said on July 24, 2014 at 9:28 am
A great reset-post from Beb!
And for another head-scratching thing, we come to this article. (One cannot help thinking the editor/publisher of this newspaper is related to Barney Fife)
http://nypost.com/2014/07/06/obama-called-the-n-word-in-west-village-newspapers-headline/
The WHAT in the White House?
Well-heeled West Villagers will be in for a rude surprise when they open the latest copy of their local newspaper and see the headline, “The N—-r in the White House” — except without the dashes. The convoluted screed by author and journalist James Lincoln Collier is actually a pro-Obama piece — but that didn’t stop West Villagers from decrying the printing of the slur
He genuinely strikes me as well-intentioned, and bone-headed (he even has an article just below his, strongly objecting to his headline!)….or else ‘crazy like a fox’ (so to speak)
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brian stouder said on July 24, 2014 at 10:17 am
More statue issues
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-student-ends-trapped-giant-vagina-sculpture-n138311
an excerpt:
MAINZ, Germany — Call it a stimulating study-abroad experience. An American exchange student sparked an “extraordinary rescue mission” when his leg became trapped inside a giant vagina sculpture. “It was a dare,” fire department squad leader Markus Mozer told NBC News. “The young man had tried to pose for an unusual photo and climbed into the artwork.”
Sounds like statutory rape, to me…
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MarkH said on July 24, 2014 at 10:48 am
Brian, the Collier story, headline and controversy is nearly three weeks old and, I believe, was discussed here at the time.
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brian stouder said on July 24, 2014 at 11:12 am
A clean miss, on my part!
Anyway – I bet the guy sold a few extra papers, and got a lot more internet clicks.
Before Oxy-Rush went completely crazy and began believing in his own infallibility, he would use similar attention-grabbing language (“femi-Nazi” leaps to mind, which was always an absurdity, and which he now treats as accepted wisdom).
Anyway, Mark, I will try a little harders to keep up!
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Judybusy said on July 24, 2014 at 12:08 pm
Dorothy, I hope you get the next job! I didn’t see your former co-workers at my workshop–it was all non-profits. It was a good couple of days.
By the way, if anyone knows of a person looking for work in the development/fundraising world, Clare Housing of Minneapolis is looking for a director of resource development. We are having a hard time finding someone who wants to be be a generalist; applicants are wishing to specialize.
Here is the link: https://careers-macc.icims.com/jobs/2168/director-of-resource-development/job
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Jolene said on July 24, 2014 at 2:54 pm
From my Twitter feed: Longform, the web site that features high-quality, longform journalism, has published an early piece by Roger Angell about how he watches baseball. If you scroll down, you’ll get to a link at which you can buy one of his early collections of baseball writing for a couple of books. A good deal for fans of baseball and/or great writing.
http://reprints.longform.org/roger-angell-stadium#story-cover
Also, wanted to mention that The New Yorker has opened its archives for the remainder of the summer. A good chance to read things you’ve always meant to, if, unlike so many, you don’t already have a stack of unread New Yorkers at your house.
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brian stouder said on July 24, 2014 at 3:05 pm
One thing I read in New Yorker that stuck with me was a great put-down…probably directed at that fellow in the Bush administration who the general said was the “stupidest &(*#^@ on the planet!” –
something like
“_______ (fill in name) is often in error, but seldom in doubt”
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LAMary said on July 24, 2014 at 3:11 pm
Judybusy, you probably know this already, but universities that have public administration departments frequently have job boards that let you post jobs free. I know USC and UCLA both do and I use them for development and fund raising positions all the time. I’ve had pretty good luck.
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LAMary said on July 24, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Here’s this, Judybusy:
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=odvfvgeab&oeidk=a07e9f1d4mx5b72e8c1
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MichaelG said on July 24, 2014 at 3:54 pm
Judybusy, just for the sake of curiosity, I would be interested to know what that resource director job pays.
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Judybusy said on July 24, 2014 at 4:40 pm
Thanks, LAMary! I will pass those along to our ED. Michael, I’m don’t know off the top of my head–I’m on the board, so not necessarily in the day-to-day details.
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Deborah said on July 24, 2014 at 6:06 pm
We checked into a really depressing hotel in Rapid City, SD. The kind of place that when you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror you want to shoot yourself because of the bad lighting. Everything in the place is a different shade of brown and it smells like a swamp. The air in the room is either freezing cold from the air conditioning or steamy hot. The high here is 99 today. And it wasn’t cheap, even through Orbitz. I guess because it’s so close to Mt. Rushmore they can get away with it.
Today was kind of a downer. Wyoming has some gorgeous scenery but there are now a lot of fracking sites that are ugly and depressing, with big drilling rigs, tanks, odd water holding pools with plastic liners and various machinery that is all piled around in seemingly disorganized mounds. Then there are a bunch of trailer and double wide communities plopped around all over the place for the workers. Is this progress?
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Little Bird said on July 24, 2014 at 6:18 pm
Deborah’s really not kidding about the hotel room. It’s seriously sad. Dark, and dreary with a lamp base that looks like an overly curlicued funeral urn. It’s bad here.
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Sherri said on July 24, 2014 at 9:31 pm
There’s a primary election going on here for the state legislature. I got a piece of mail today from a Republican front group attacking the Democratic candidate for state senate in my district. What did they accuse him of? Of secretly being a Republican who just pretended to be a Democrat to improve his chances of getting elected.
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Jolene said on July 24, 2014 at 10:32 pm
Sounds like an attack that might work, Sherri, if you don’t know who the attacker is. Presumably, the front group has a name that totally obscures its identity.
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Jolene said on July 24, 2014 at 10:34 pm
My favorite example of twisted logic is the R’s suing Obama for not having implemented on schedule a law that they tried to repeal 50 times. You’d think they’d give him a medal.
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Kim said on July 24, 2014 at 10:40 pm
Little Bird and Deborah – sounds like a situation a little liquor would cure! I think you are just passing through, but I stayed here (probably 30 years ago, but it looks pretty much the same) and it was an a-maz-ing location right in the Badlands.
I don’t mind the somewhat bad hotel experience. My daughter and I were in Charlottesville, VA a week or so ago and stayed somewhere that wasn’t exactly cheap – it was fine and safe, but my daughter asked if the towels were from Home Depot’s self-spa department, which presumably is right beside its sandpaper aisle.
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brian stouder said on July 24, 2014 at 10:50 pm
Deborah – we had great luck with hotels. Pam and I had no reservations anywhere – so possibly we could have saved a little here and there.
When we did Cheyenne, we stayed in Greeley (the one spot we spent two nights), and this easily saved us $150. –
I don’t remember where we stayed over the Mt Rushmore part of the trip; we spent time at the monument, and at a nearby zip-line (for Shelby; I took photos from the launch point, up in the tree tops) and time at the Crazy Horse monument. (Pam could tell us the details)
The only room that was a clinker was one that I selected – because I was tired, dammit! – which was the last room available – and which was a smoking room. Pam went and bought a plug-in air freshener wheich improved things greatly, but we all smelled like a bar-room even after showers the next day. (in fact, between the smokey smell and the air freshener smell, I think the resultant aroma was more that of a ‘gentleman’s club’…
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