Photo by Doug Backlund. Used with permission.

An unusual and truly unexpected bird has been sighted in Spearfish Canyon. One that even the most optimistic of birding enthusiasts would never expect to see in the United States, let alone South Dakota.

It’s a male Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush that typically only lives in Mexico, Central America and northern South America. This wayward bird is about 1,500 miles farther north than its species has ever been documented. So, this little feller is a long way from home!

It’s so unusual, in fact, that there have only been two, count ‘em TWO, other Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrushes ever recorded in the U.S. The American Birding Association reports that the only other two sightings occurred in southern Texas, one in 1996 and the other in 2004.

This Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush was first discovered in Spearfish Canyon, along Iron Creek, by Eric Ripma on July 10. Ripma is a field technician with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. The theory among local birders is that this bird probably ducked in with a bunch of somewhat similar Swainson’s Thrushes as they migrated north to their usual breeding sites in Spearfish Canyon for the summer.

A couple days ago I decided to try to catch a glimpse of the rare bird myself. I headed out into Spearfish Canyon and parked at the Iron Creek parking area – about two miles north of Spearfish Canyon Lodge at Savoy. I was only about 30 yards or so from my car when I came across several other birders on the trail – all with binoculars aimed towards the creek.

One of the women introduced herself as Jen Fowler. Fowler is a science teacher in the Rapid City school system and, like Eric Ripma, also works with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory.

Ripma, who originally sighted the bird, lives out of state and had to move on after a few days in Spearfish Canyon. Jen Fowler, however, lives here in the hills and has taken a big interest in the Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush. She’s spent a lot of time out along Iron Creek since the bird was first reported and was a huge help in knowing what to listen and look for.

We would all quietly stand in a group, just waiting to hear the Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush sing. It’s a beautiful three-toned song that is distinctly different from any other birds that you’ll hear in Spearfish Canyon.

We would hear him sing in the trees straight in front of us. Binoculars up! We’d slowly scan the trees from eye level on up. He’d sing again, but nobody would spot him. Next thing you know, we’d hear him sing 15 or 20 yards downstream.

Everybody would tilt their ears, listen and point in unison. All at once, we’d move on down the stream towards the sound. Pause. Hear bird sing. Binoculars up! Scan. Wait. Repeat.

It was like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack – except this “needle” could be easily heard and has a bill that’s almost florescent orange in color. Even though I could easily hear the evasive bird singing over and over, I never did get to see him with my own eyes.

It was definitely an interesting process and I can see why this bird is causing such a hubbub in the national birding community. More than 200 folks from 20+ different states and 2 Canadian provinces have already made the trip to the Black Hills in hopes of seeing the once in a lifetime Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush.

There’s no telling how long this out of place little visitor will remain here in the hills, but Fowler told me that if he doesn’t migrate back south once the cold weather arrives, he won’t survive the region’s often harsh winter.

Recent sightings of the bird indicate that the best times to view him are in the early morning hours, from sunrise to around 8:00 a.m – the earlier in the morning the better. He has been sighted most frequently in the poplar trees along Iron Creek, within the first couple hundred yards of the parking area along Hwy 14A.

For more information about the Spearfish Canyon Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush and for updates about ongoing sightings, visit Birdingonthe.net.

Last week the Rapid City Convention & Visitors Bureau launched a new, high-tech way to explore the area using a location-based game called SCVNGR. Visitors get to interact with the people and places of Rapid City in a new and interactive way, all through their mobile phones.

Using their own smartphones, equipped with either an Apple iPhone or Google Android platform, visitors will be able to download the free SCVNGR application and navigate around Rapid City. The object is to complete challenges and earn points as you learn more about the city.

The Rapid City Convention & Visitors Bureau has built three “treks” on SCVNGR:

• The Rapid City Trek – highlights 11 of the most unique locations throughout the city.
• The Reptile Gardens Trek – leads visitors through the famous animal attraction that’s home to more species of reptiles and amphibians than any other zoo in the world.
• The City of Presidents Trek – leads visitors through a series of life-size bronze statues of our nation’s past presidents, all located in downtown Rapid City.

All of the treks showcase quick, fun challenges to do at each location. For example, players heading to Dinosaur Park will see a three point challenge to find their dinosaur “alter-ego.” Once found, players snap a picture with their new pal while giving their best fierce face and nab their three points.

Players earn points for completing challenges like this all across town and can choose to share their activity out to their friends via Facebook and Twitter and, of course, to other players on SCVNGR.

Michelle Thomson, Tourism Director for the Rapid City Convention & Visitors Bureau said, “This is an exciting, interactive way for visitors and residents to experience and explore our city. We are excited to be one of the first cities to use this cutting-edge form of location-based social media.”

To play, grab the free SCVNGR app from the Android Market or Apple App Store, Once in the app, tap the treks tab and select the Rapid City, Reptile Gardens, or Presidents trek. Through the SCVNGR app, these treks can be accessed for free by anybody at any time.

Treks can also be played via text message by sending the trek’s keyword to 728647. If playing by text, keywords for the treks are:

• RAPIDCITY
• PRESIDENTS
• REPTILEGARDENS

“We are offering our visitors a way to not just tour the city, but actually play their way through the city,” Thomson said. “Players are saying it’s a lot of fun!”

For more information about Rapid City’s SCVNGR game, check out www.visitrapidcity.com/scvngr.

I had a chance last week to meet Mary and Don Nolin, two of the winners in the “Vacation Makeover: Destination Mount Rushmore,” online contest. They won a free vacation to the Black Hills, worth up to $4,000, and a Kodak Zx1 Pocket Video Camera.

Mary and Don,  a very nice couple from Lincoln, Neb., are no strangers to the Black Hills. In fact, they were married at the Franklin Hotel in Deadwood in 1995, and they regularly return to Deadwood to play the slots and see the sights.

Their story about the Deadwood wedding, posted on the contest page, www.blackhills.travel, won more than 10,000 votes from online readers. That’s how they won the trip.

But this trip will be much different than their past Black Hills adventures. For one thing, if you’ve ever traveled to the Black Hills you know $4,000 goes a long, long way.

Intern Caitlin Roeder pieces together fragments of an ancient mammoth tusk in the lab at the Hot Springs Mammoth Site. The Nolins got a behind-the-scenes Mammoth Site tour.

Their schedule includes more than two dozen attractions, including Custer State Park, Wind Cave, Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park, Wall Drug, two gold mines, a couple of caves, a few museums and family attractions such as Reptile Gardens, the Cosmos and Bear Country USA.

On Thursday, they got a private, behind-the-scenes tour of the Hot Springs Mammoth site. (Fascinating, by the way, for us tag-alongs.)

“We’re going to need a vacation from our vacation,” Mary said with a chuckle.

Click above to watch the movie and go for a wild ride through the Black Hills!

That’s just a sampling of what video gamers will experience this Friday, July 2, when the full version of Rushmore Scenic Byway is released online. Rushmore Scenic Byway is a new race track download for the PC-Only game Nascar Racing 2003. The track will feature landscapes, wildlife and attractions from all over the Black Hills region.

Chad Coppess, South Dakota photographer and creative-extraordinaire, has been working with a video game artist from Chicago for more than a year to create the lifelike digital race track.

“It’ll be a free download for everyone who has Nascar Racing 2003,” said Coppess. “It all started when I was a teenager dreaming that there should be a car race on the scenic roads in the Black Hills. Instead, now we have a version that anybody can race – without the expense or safety risks.”

Coppess’ photography of the Black Hills region has been transformed into the 3-D virtual world where the race track is set. As players navigate the course, they’ll travel along simulated versions of Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road. Around pigtail bridges and through rock tunnels. They’ll pass by the likenesses of Crazy Horse Memorial, Rapid City’s Dinosaur Park, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Deadwood’s Days of ‘76 Rodeo, Sylvan Lake near Custer and so much more.

Digital wildlife can be spotted along the route including: buffalo, pronghorns, mountain goats, elk and bighorn sheep. Billboards for actual Black Hills attractions like Wall Drug and Trout haven also line the route.

“It’s a lot of what makes the Black Hills a classic American road trip – all squeezed ito 3.8 miles of twisting, turning mountain roads,” explained Coppess. “We designed it as a compacted, scaled-down version of the Hills, with a 1950’s feel.”

Even though the Rushmore Scenic Byway track was created for a video game from 2003, Coppess said that there hasn’t been another game like it since then and there is still a large community of players that are actively racing it.

Chad told me that there are already several online gaming leagues that plan to use his Black Hills race track as part of their weekly racing series. If user downloads of Coppess’ track are similar to other tracks by the same Chicago artist, about 1,000 downloads can be expected during the first week alone!

That’s a lot of eyes that will be repeatedly seeing images from the Black Hills on their computer screens. Chad created the Rushmore Scenic Byway race track just for fun and because he loves what the Black Hills area has to offer. “If it ends up helping get the word out about South Dakota’s fun vacation opportunities to folks who might not otherwise get that message, that’s even better,” said Coppess.

The Rushmore Scenic Byway track for Nascar Racing 2003 will be available to download for free this Friday, July 2 at www.windycityracing.com and www.racingrafix.com.

If you’re a regular visitor here at the travel blog, you might have noticed things look just a little different this week. We’ve added a couple of features that will make it much easier for you to comment on blog posts and share the Black Hills love with your friends!

Over the past few months, we’ve noticed that many of you find your way here from a Black Hills Travel Blog link somewhere on Facebook – the world’s most popular website and social networking community. So, to tie the two together – you can now enter a comment and automatically share it to your Facebook account as well!

What’s New: At the top of each blog post, just below the title, you’ll see a little box/button that says “Like.” Down below each post you’ll see that same “Like” button along with a comment box.

If you don’t have a Facebook account: No problem – type whatever comment or question you have in the comment box. Enter in your name, a valid email address (so we can reply to you) and the couple of security check words you see (so we know you’re not some alien robot spammer) and then post it. That’s it – your comment will be posted to the blog! Nobody else will see your email address and whatever name you entered will be the only one that appears with your comment. No need to worry about the new “Like” button, unless you use Facebook.

Already have a Facebook account: Great! If you’re already logged in to Facebook, make a comment on any Black Hills Travel Blog article and click “post.” Voila! Your comment will appear on the blog and, if you choose, will automatically show up on your recent action/news feed on your Facebook wall. You can also use the “Like” button on any post, just like you would use it on Facebook.

By the way, if you haven’t checked it out lately – we post tons of content about everything Black Hills-related over at the official Black Hills Facebook Page and also little snippets throughout the day on the Black Hills Twitter feed. Come visit – make friends!

We’re always looking for ways to make the Black Hills Travel Blog better, so we hope that you’ll find this Facebook integration helpful.

Go ahead – give it a try. Click the “Like” buttons.  Leave us a few comments and let us know what you think.

Laser scanning (like the type happening at Mount Rushmore) records the 3-D surface of objects in digital form. A huge amount of data can be gathered in an unbelievably short amount of time. For example, the Leica scan stations that are being used can record up to 50,000 points per second!

The laser beams hit a surface and then “bounce” (technical term) back to a receiver. The length of time that it takes for the beam to return helps determine the size, shape and composure of the surfaces that the beam touched. The clip below demonstrates this by showing the different colors for the different materials: wood, stone, bronze, etc.

In total, millions of points are gathered  and collected together to form “point clouds” that will be used to form the extremely accurate 3-D model of Mount Rushmore.

Point clouds are recorded from several different points of view and then joined together to produce accurate dimensions for the model. These point clouds can be useful on their own or they can be further processed to produce photo-realistic animations.

The entire process of scanning Mount Rushmore National Memorial will end up producing a virtual model that is accurate to within 4-6 millimeters of the actual sculpture! Pretty impressive stuff, if you ask me.

Check out this cool video of preliminary scan results from inside the Sculptor’s Studio at Mount Rushmore. The Sculptor’s Studio is the building that was actually used by Gutzon Borglum, and later his son Lincoln, to manage the monumental carving.

The entire sculpture of the four famous faces is being digitally scanned by precision-guided lasers, high definition cameras and a variety of other impressive tools. The National Park Service has teamed up with the Kacyra Family Foundation and its project, CyArk, to bring a technical team from Scotland to scan Mount Rushmore.

When all is said and done (which will only be a few more days) an exact 3-D model of the memorial will have been created. The hi-def photos will be aligned with the “pointcloud” formed from millions of laser points and a realistic digital model of the mountain will exist for the first time.

The purpose of the scanning project is both preservation and education based. By creating this digital record, the NPS will be able to more closely monitor any potential future change or damage to the sculpture.

The digital model will also be used to create virtual tours of the entire mountain, including the rarely seen Hall of Records – a hidden storage area that Gutzon Borglum had blasted into the mountain on the back side of the faces.

“This project will allow us to create a ‘fly-through’ experience for people that maybe don’t have the resources or ability to physically visit the memorial,” said Amy Bracewell, Mount Rushmore Historian. “They’ll be able to take an online tour of the memorial and the surrounding area. We’ll be able to use the model for a wide variety of educational programming,” Bracewell said.

The media tour of the project yesterday helped the whole thing make more sense to me. And I’ll try to help it make more sense to you – pictures should help. The first four photos below are from several different phases of the scanning project. Images #5-8 are from preliminary laser scans conducted earlier this week.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing an incredible video of the 3-D laser scan results from inside the Sculptor’s Studio at Mount Rushmore – be sure to check back tomorrow or subscribe by email to the travel blog so you won’t miss it.

Until next time.

[View with PicLens]

Despite the snow and rain from the past week, the 3-D digital scanning project at Mount Rushmore National Memorial has captured some impressive data from the scans. The project began on Monday, May 10 and the team has been scanning the historic resources at Mount Rushmore including the historic Sculptor’s Studio, the Hall of Records and the Shrine of Democracy sculpture. The team will continue scanning through the end of this week, weather permitting.

The National Park Service has partnered with the Kacyra Family Foundation and their project, CyArk, for this project. The scanning team also includes heritage conservators and digital design experts from Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art. Local support from Wyss and Associates, Respec Engineering, Inc, and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology have also been instrumental in the success of the project.

Throughout the first week of the project, the team has been able to complete the digital scans of the interior and exterior of the historic Sculptor’s Studio, the Hall of Records behind the sculpture, and several perspective scans of the Mount Rushmore sculpture.

Scanning stations have been set up behind the sculpture to get the top of the heads as well as stations along the Presidential Trail to scan the front of the faces. A scanning tripod has also been custom made for the project to capture scans directly on the mountain. The Mount Rushmore technical ropes team was busy on Monday, May 17 working with the tripod on the sculpture before the team begins using it for scanning.

The scanning data that has been captured is the first highly accurate and comprehensive survey of the mountain. The advanced 3-D terrestrial laser scanners that are being used on the project are capable of capturing 50,000 plus dimension points a second.

The highly accurate data is giving the National Park Service the opportunity to use cutting edge technology to interpret and record one of America’s icons. The memorial will use the data for not only long-term preservation planning of the historic resources, but also to develop 3-D modeling, virtual tours, and other interactive interpretive programming.

The staff at Mount Rushmore has set up an updated website about the project that can be viewed by clicking HERE.

Several years ago – out in Spearfish Canyon -  two HUGE boulders broke loose from the canyon wall and came rumbling down, eventually splashing to a stop in Spearfish Creek below. They’re known locally as the Kissing Rocks.

Thankfully, no vehicles were in their path. Rumor has it, however, that a couple of unsuspecting deer weren’t quite so lucky.

In order to keep all Black Hills visitors and residents safe, road and engineering crews are always on the lookout for potential rock slide areas near roadways.

A possible hazard area was recently identified on Highway 14-A between Deadwood and Central City in the northern hills, near the Broken Boot Gold Mine.

From what I’ve been told, the entire rock wall along that stretch of road had been weathered pretty heavily by repetitive freezing and thawing during the past winter. But, there was one particularly large rock up along the top ledge that was crumbling and cause for concern.

So, crews are now hard at work blasting and excavating that area to keep folks safe.

I went up to the blasting area today for a while to see the process with my own eyes.

Small sections would be broken up with explosives. Then, heavy equipment would move the remnants away one load at a time. The top ledge would be cleared and the whole process would begin again.

From the ground, it looked to be a very well-orchestrated, yet fairly tedious project. It kind of got me thinking about the absolute enormity of mountain carving projects like Mount Rushmore National Memorial or Crazy Horse Memorial – but I’ll save those musings for another day.

It was fascinating work to watch and it’s easy to see how it will make that section of road safer for those who travel it.

The blasting and excavation in that area will continue for a few more weeks and are expected to be complete by the end of May. In the meantime, though, traffic delays in that area are to be expected.

So, if you’re planning to be in the Lead and Deadwood areas in the next few weeks, be sure to plan ahead and possibly use another route between the two towns – unless, like me, you’re curious how the whole thing works and just want to hear a big BOOM!

As a little kid growing up on the farm, my parents always told me to wash my hands and face before dinner. Well, they’re not sitting down for roast beef with all the fixings but the Black Hills’ four famous faces will be getting a thorough washing during the next couple of weeks.

On Monday, staff at Mount Rushmore National Memorial began annual preservation work on the giant carving and other areas of the mountain.

The memorial’s preservation team will clean portions of the mountain to bare rock by removing debris and vegetation. The team will also be removing loose hazardous rock, and inspecting sections of waterproof membranes and fracture sealants. This yearly project is done to protect the sculpture from erosion when water intrudes into cracks in the rock.

As part of the annual work done on the mountain, the memorial’s preservation team will set up an alpine high-line transport system between the base and the top of the mountain. The rope and pulley system will be used to transport equipment and supplies up the the mountainside workers.

The Mount Rushmore preservation team is made up of a wide variety of specialists from across park divisions as well as park volunteers and advisors to the project.

Ropes access technicians round out the preservation team and are trained to use a ropes system to perform work directly on the surface of the sculpture. This team is the only certified industrial ropes team in the National Park Service.

The work will also prepare the mountain for a detailed 3-D digital laser scanning project in May. Visitors to the memorial should expect an increased level of preservation activities in the coming weeks as more projects are implemented.

The preservation team and alpine high line system will be visible on the sculpture throughout the duration of the project. Seasonal facilities and trails will continue to be fully operational and open to visitors during this time.