Over the weekend, my friend Yun Jianjing and I enjoyed traveling around western South Dakota.  We first took a scenic morning drive down Spearfish Canyon, replete in its autumn colors.  There was a stop at the iconic Mount Rushmore National Monument to marvel at what took 14 years of passion and dedication to construct.  In the evening, we took a 4.5-mile hike through the hauntingly beautiful Badlands National Park and watched the sun set over the vast emptiness that is the South Dakota prairie.  All this culminated the next day in a windy climb of Harney Peak, sentinel of the Black Hills, highest summit in the U.S. east of the Rockies.