Hey all! Some of you may have noticed that I dropped the board for the last week. I took the family to South Dakota- and Mt. Rushmore- for the week. I come home with a rather entertaining story.

Do any of you know what train chasing is? It's a hobby that my parents and I have had for my entire life. What you do is find a railroad with some sort of significant history, or a railroad with rolling stock with significant history, you take a ride on the train, and then you get in your car and follow the train on it's route, taking pictures and video and just generally having a great time with whomever is nuts enough to go with you. This time around, it was my mom, my dad, my daughter and myself. Mom was driving, Dad was filming, I was photographing, and my daughter was looking pretty. So here's the kilt related part of the story- I went on the chase dressed like this:



The engine in the background is the one we were chasing. We started the chase at the Keystone, SD end of the line and chased the train to Hill City, SD. I climbed on various hillsides at the different locations we had scouted out. I was very close to the train. We had about 25 locations to take pictures from. When we got into the Hill City station, we stopped into the depot to use the facilities and look around the gift shop to kill time waiting for the chase on the return trip to Keystone, and while we were there, I had several people come up to me and say that I was the most interesting part of the trip for them! I actually had several families who's kids wanted to get their picture taken with me! I had no idea the stir I would cause, until I started talking to these people! Kids asking me if I was a pirate, grownups saying that me on the hillside with them on the train enhanced the atmosphere... At first I thought it was odd, and then I started seeing things from their perspectives. So all in all, this was the most unique chase I have ever taken part in. I'm off to Georgetown, Co tomorrow to see what kind of havoc I can stir there. So here are my two favorite pics from this weekend's chase, showing how I may have "enhanced" the atmosphere.

This one is from a cutaway in the mountain side that I climbed, so I was actually above the train at the edge of a manmade cliff:



This one is in front of the original station along that stretch of the line. It's supposed to be restored- eventually. I was standing on the deck.



Now off to Georgetown!!