Porter Sculpture Park - Montrose, South Dakota

 

On our way to our next campground, we made a slight detour to the Porter Sculpture Park. This was an excellent way to break up our drive, have a lunch break, and feast our eyes on some wonderful art.

Wayne Porter, the artist, was actually sitting in the gift shop and talking with all the guests. He is an affable, delightful man.

He keeps the park open except in the winter. During the winter months, he runs his sheep farm and creates his art.

He has a wonderful sense of humor and is a bit of a philosopher.

He is self-taught and his work is amazing.

I think the butterfly piece was my favorite.

Entitled "Pain and Joy"

Pain and joy can co-exist

But neither lasts forever.

The butterfly flies away.

The thorn is removed.

Entitled "Dream Afraid to Be Ridden"

The horse can not run.

It can only rock.

It can only be free when it is ridden.

Some pieces are quite complex with a lot happening.

This one made me think of the nursery rhyme - Little Miss Muffet - but no tuffet.

This captures the terror and exhilaration of childhood.

Not all of the pieces have a poem or story attached.

This piece is entitled "The Ballerina"

It has a story of a woman who cleans the auditorium as the ballerinas rehearse. The cleaner dreams of dancing on the stage. Her dreams are golden that she gathers in her bucket.

Some of the pieces are just joyful.

This was my second favorite piece - "The Yankee Ron" has the story of Wayne's brother, Ron, attempting to ride a donkey they use to guard their flock of sheep. Wayne tells his brother he is going to create a statue of Ron attempting to ride and Ron says, "That's fine, just make me taller."

This piece is entitled "The Red Hammer"

Anything worth building may break a few hammers.

This piece is entitled "Mirror Image"

Humans are like wild boars. We are more alike than different. Wild boars will attack each other for no reason.

This rock isn't one of his artworks, but he has a sign next to it.

This piece is entitled "The Wise Man"

The wise man sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil...but in order to reach this point of enlightenment, he has been mangled by life.

The artist has entitled this piece "The Magic Dragon".

Apparently, locals and tourists have often proposed in front of the dragon.

No title for this one, but I would call it "Incredulous"

"Cracked GoldFish Bowl"

Said one fish to the other,

"Let us find a way out...explore"

Said the other,

"We are goldfish, we live in a bowl."

"Yes, but there must be a crack, a door, a soul"

But, they never found one.

But, they swam far.

"Buzzard Row"

They are reincarnated politicians, ready to pick the bones of their constituents.

Oakwood Lakes State Park - Brookings, South Dakota

 

The park is right next to a lake. They rent kayaks, but the office is closed during the week.

There is an RV dump at the park entrance which is very easy to access and use.

We were the only ones in the equestrian campground. There are several campsites throughout the park. All the campsites have electrical and some are even full hook-up, but horse people get nada - no hook-ups and a single water pump at the campground entrance.

On the plus side, there is a large arena with grass. Since we were the only campers, we used the arena instead of the corrals so the horses had plenty of space and could graze.

On the negative side, it appears that bot flies have laid eggs in my horse's mane. They are really really hard to remove. I de-wormed both horses as a precaution. It takes 3-10 days for the eggs to hatch into maggots, so I have a couple of days to figure out how to get the eggs out of his mane.

There are swarms of mosquitoes and flies. I expect the lake is the reason for all the mosquitoes.

We can't go outside without heavily spraying ourselves. We put fly sheets on both horses to protect them.

We drove around the park to see some of the sites...too many mosquitoes to walk.

The burial mounds are just large grassy hills.

There is an old well-chinked log cabin that was built by a trapper over 100 years ago.

We did manage one ride around the lake. The trails are well maintained and pretty, but the insects were just awful.