A red fox along the Missouri River near Craig, Montana. Photo by Christopher Cauble

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The battle over control of the exclusive Yellowstone Club may be coming to n end, reports the Wall Street Journal, with Edra Blixseth taking over her estranged husband Tim's 50% stake and becoming the sole owner of the club.

The deal came as part of the couple's divorce settlement, the Journal reported (though the Journal last year ran a story characterizing the divorce as a model of amicability, and that turned out to be far from the case). The story of the club's woes has turned into a veritable courtroom soap opera, echoing with phrases such as "liquidity crisis," "breach of fiduciary duty" and "hopelessly conflicted."

The Journal says Edra will bring in Discovery Land Co. to manage the club, which is struggling with a heavy debt load and a cratering real estate market. At least some club members, who are horrified by the negative publicity, have told New West they favor professional management.

History suggests this is not the end of the story, so stay tuned.

Our tour of the Big Rock Things in the Black Hills continued as we left Sturgis and headed for Mount Rushmore. We’d stopped at a coffee stand so I could snag a double Americano for the road, and Rusty perked up from the back seat when he saw a tip jar on the lip of the drive-through window. We explained how a lot of service-oriented jobs use tips to supplement their base pay. This, to him, was fascinating. At the tender age of 11, he’s already a capitalist at heart.

We drove through Rapid City and onto Highway 16, approaching the Rushmore complex. This particular stretch of blacktop contains the highest concentration of tourist traps on the face of the earth. We kept up a steady stream of “no” as the kids, predictably, begged us to stop at water slides, souvenir stores, putt-putts, rock & fossil shops, you name it. Some of the come-ons were clever, like the Reptile Gardens: a billboard with a cartoon of a boy with his arm in a sling, and the slogan, “This Ain’t No Petting Zoo!”