P52 Photo Challenge - Sunlight - Week 24

For this week's P52 challenge, the theme is "sunlight."

As I looked back on the photos I took during the past week, there was one from the trip that Sophia, Olivia, and I took to southwestern Minnesota and southeastern South Dakota that fit well with the theme.

As we drove over the border from Minnesota to South Dakota, we stopped at the first rest area. There, ahead of us, was a huge concrete tipi. I had the girls stand by the tipi for a quick picture.

Then, the girls were off. The groundhogs had captured their attention as they were running through the grass and disappearing into their tunnels.



This gave me some time to take some photos of the tipi as the sun was rising, and was casting sunlight onto the concrete poles. The poles themselves were creating shadows on other poles; and the interplay of sunlight and shadows was interesting to watch.

As a side note, the tipi structures mark rest areas along I-90 and I-29; and are unique to South Dakota. South Dakota architect Ward Whitwam, FAIA (Fellow of the American Institute of Architects), designed these tipi structures in the 1960s. The first two were constructed in the late 1960s at rest areas near Salem and Wasta. The remaining tipi structures were constructed in the 1970s.