Random thoughts before leaving Sheridan, WY

1. Why did we wait so long to take this trip "out West"? Every day brings spectacular views of things we've only seen in photographs. I'm starting to understand the allure of the West, though I will need a bit more time and experience here to appreciate Western paintings and bronzes.

2. I wonder if attendance is up at National Parks. We've certainly seen a lot of folks "on the road" which can only be a good thing. It's fun to look at license plates and appreciate how Americans are venturing out to see their country (as they've always done).

3. Reading Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee (the large format, recently published illustrated version with extra essays) and actually driving through this country is a sobering experience. Yesterday the New York Times ran an article about historians debating whether the Gulf oil spill truly is the worst environmental disaster the country has ever known. Some argued for the destruction of the bison herds and others talked about the agricultural practices that produced the dust bowl. As with any contemplation of stupidity, hubris,and hatred in the past, this makes me wonder what folks in 100 years will say about us.

4. We've been so impressed with the cities where we've stayed so far; all have managed to keep their downtowns alive and vital. All have sculpture scattered throughout and public spaces for concerts, etc. Did they work with the same consultant?

5. Motel thoughts. (a) The odor from the waffles of motel breakfasts permeates the buildings. (b) New motels have installed toilets that make a very loud, almost scary noise when flushing. (c) Every road trip should include one old "mom and pop" motel with pine paneling (like this one in Sheridan).

6.There are two kinds of diesel pumps, large-nozzle for trucks and small-nozzle for cars. If you use a large-nozzle one either by mistake or because that is all that is available in the middle of nowhere, your hands will smell of diesel all day.

Devil's Tower and Sheridan

Imagine a whack-a-mole game that occupies 40 acres and you have a prairie dog colony. They are about the cutest little buggers in the world unless you happen to live or ranch in their vicinity, in which case you are rooting for the snakes. This guy resides at Devil's Tower National Monument, which we were able to enter without paying thanks to John's ten dollar, rest-of-his-life pass to all national parks and monuments. AARP must have lobbied hard for this perk - makes us feel guilty when we watch all the young families forking out big bucks to take the kiddies to see their priceless national heritage.

It is a beautiful place, and we enjoyed walking the 1.3 mile path around the tower. The great controversy swirling around the Tower is the conflict between Native Americans and rock climbers. Since Indians regard it as a profoundly sacred place, hot-shot white climbers clambering up its side are regarded with about the same enthusiasm the Pope would dosplay if the Vatican were used for paint-ball practice. Trying to find a compromise, the park service has

established a "voluntary moratorium" on climbing during the month of June, a particularly sacred time for Native Americans (we saw many prayer cloths around the base of the tower). This prompted a lawsuit from the "nobody can tell me what to do or when to do it!" contingent, a lawsuit which went nowhere since they were not being prevented from climbing. We suspect that the vast majority of people in the climbing community respect the moratorium, but there were two parties climbing today. Which leads to this picture - the tower seen through a recently-placed sculpture by a Japanese artist which represents the first puff of smoke from a peace-pipe. It is near the campground and picnic area where we had lunch.

We then headed for Sheridan, a city we picked for location rather than any inherent

charms. It was beautiful watching the snow-capped Bighorn Mountains rising ahead of us; we will cross them tomorrow. This is classic cowboy country, and the dining options were quite slim;we opted for Mexican. Some well-heeled tourists must find their way here, because the surprisingly healthy downtown has a fair number of upscales shops, as well as a classic old Penny's department store. After relative opulent digs the last two nights, we are going retro tonight at a well-aged Rodeway motel. One corner of our bed is held up with a Gideon Bible, which must be a metaphor for something.

Tomorrow we leave for Cody, where we will spend two nights with friends Randy and Bev Leisey - we have to track her down at a pow-wow when we arrive. We may not be able to post for a few days because spending time with friends is a higher priority than writing a blog.

Mountain carvings

After the usual free motel breakfast, we set out for the day's Black Hills exploration, with some conflicted feelings given that we were heading first to Mt. Rushmore. Several people we love and respect said that as long as we're here, we really ought to see this iconic American destruction of a mountain. (We prefer mountains that are carved by wind and rain.) The drive to Mt. Rushmore is beautiful, with many "scenic views" along the way, and lots of switchbacks in the road. The Golf did fine, though most of the time we were following slow people in vans, or middle aged people on Harleys. We tried to imagine how Italians would react to the pokey driving up and down the mountain roads.

The "Presidential path" at Mt. Rushmore (described as strenuous, but only because there are a lot of steps) took us through some lovely pine forest, with many granite boulders strewn throughout. We spent enough time in the gift shop to buy 5 postcards and left, heading for Custer State Park.

Entering Custer, we encountered our drama for the day. They are repaving the road into the park and so they held up one lane of traffic while another came through. Thus, we found ourselves in a long line of cars, stopped on the road. All of a sudden, the car in front of us took off like a "jackalope" swerving out of the line of cars, across the other lane, and skidded sideways off the road, stopped by a couple of somewhat spindly trees. Without those trees, it would have crashed down the side of the mountain. We jumped out of our car, fearing the worst. Other people did the same. Thankfully, everyone was OK. The driver, a middle aged woman, was unhurt despite the fact that her side of the car rammed into the trees. Her two passengers were also OK -- two young adults from Argentina who didn't speak English. At least she told us they were from Argentina, although the young man sounded Russian to us. Someone gave the driver

a bottle of water; several of us gave her a lot of hugs; someone called for help, and soon we all had to move on because the construction crews motioned for us to get going.

We took the "wildlife loop" and saw deer, burros and pronghorns, but no bison. Emerging from the loop, we entered the "Needles" area which is most amazing--huge natural rock formations that are dramatic and beautiful.

We decided we should be equal opportunity tourists in viewing mountains carved up, so

we headed for the Crazy Horse monument. We wished we had stopped at the bottom of the hill instead of paying $20 for the privilege to drive up and park. We looked at Crazy Horse (probably not to be finished in our lifetimes despite a rather large recent contribution) and spent a little time in the museum/gift shop. John was quickly afflicted with "gift shop-itis" and we left to drive to Hill City, which our waitperson at the wonderful slow food restaurant told us about last night. It's a little place with lots of touristy stuff (many t-shirt vendors and a big Harley Davidson apparel store). We did the tourist thing of getting ice cream cones and sitting on a bench watching a small part of the world pass through Hill City. Interestingly, the ice cream was Blue Bunny brand, which we thought was a Wisconsin thing.

Since we'd spent some money to buy a lifetime senior pass that got us to Mt. Rushmore

($10 for anyone 62 and older -- such a deal), entrance into Custer State Park, and admission to the Crazy Horse Memorial, we decided to eat cheaply tonight at the Ruby Tuesday by the motel. Susan studied the menu with great care and thinks she found the most healthy item on it: Asian salmon and spinach salad with edamame and black beans. Black beans are Asian? John had a burger. We ate outside on the Ruby Tuesday patio and watched cars, motorcycles, and a few bicycles going up and down the road that leads to Mt. Rushmore. Tomorrow we enter Wyoming, heading for Devil's Tower and then wandering our way to Sheridan. At the moment, John is fighting stiff competition for use of the coin-op washers and dryers in our hotel...

Sioux Falls to Rapid City

A windy day on the plains! We fought a 40mph headwind across the state, so our little Golf diesel did not live up to its mileage potential. Prairie grasses whipped in the wind as if the

land was alive until we crossed the Missouri, where prairie gave way to plains, then plains in turn gave way to the eerie

rock formations of the Badlands. Just before we turned off route 90 for the Badlands loop, we stopped for fuel at a desolate station on an exit that went nowhere except said desolate station.

The Badlands made John think of parts of Utah rendered on a somewhat smaller scale,

but it was a new experience for Susan. We made a picnic lunch of sorts in the gusting winds, finished the loop, and returned to route 90 for the final run into Rapid City.

After checking into our hotel we made our way downtown, as we did last night in Sioux Falls. It is a remarkably vibrant downtown, both in terms of historic preservation and new initiatives. For example, they are nearly done with placing statues of all U.S. presidents on downtown corners (it took us all evening to find Nixon, who remains tricky

even in bronze), and there was a high-energy street fair/concert underway featuring a competent Beatles cover band accompanied by (for unknown reasons) a troupe of belly dancers. For the second night in a row we found an altogether remarkable restaurant (the McFadden Culinary Tour of South Dakota) called The Corn Exchange. They have been open for 13 years, are champions of slow/local food, and have a well-chosen wine list. We shared an order of tenderloin that came from a nearby ranch where the cattle eat only grass and have daily tai chi classes. Tomorrow we plan to visit Mt. Rushmore (because people kept telling us we should) before exploring Custer State Park in the Black Hills.

Appleton to Sioux Falls

We left Appleton just a few minutes after 9 this morning and headed south, then west. We crossed the Mississippi at La Crosse and took I-90 straight across southern MN. It's very flat for most of the way, with lots of green fields. When we got across the border into SD, there were some small hills, just a hint of what's to come. Sioux Falls is a city of about 100,000 people which like so many cities, has spread out from the old inner core. We're staying at a motel by a big mall area but after dropping off our stuff, we avoided the mall area and drove into the middle of the city. The Falls park has only been around for a couple of decades; we imagine that it was formerly quite industrial as we saw one steel mill and several hulks of empty factories. Unfortunately, though the park was lovely, we didn't learn much about its history, except to know that a spunky woman pestered the city fathers to create it. After walking around the park, and climbing the observation tower, we drove down the main street (Phillips) and found a very nice restaurant (in business 33 years) where we sat outside and had a good dinner, served by a waiter who just moved here 2 months ago from Phoenix to help his partner fix up a house. They'll be returning to Phoenix in the fall but for now, he's definitely enjoying being in the green Sioux Falls country. He told us about a city park, so we visited that after dinner, walking around looking at the flowers and children on playground equipment and in the wading pool. It's a lovely evening here and we're ready for a good night's sleep and more driving tomorrow.

Odd observation about Sioux Falls: there are lots of very small casinos sprinkled all over town, many of which also conveniently include ATM machines, tattoo parlors, and pawn shops. We don't understand this, and our waiter agreed that it's odd.

McKenna Park includes a tribute to the Irish immigrants of Sioux Falls - here is John with "the potato man"...

Getting ready

It's 8:16 p.m. on June 15. Susan just pressed "send" on a brief writing assignment and now it's time to pay bills and pack. We're launching this road trip after a busy and wonderful weekend highlighted by having Kate, Eric, Henry, Colin, Susan's mom, Susan's sister, and Kona the bulldog all sleeping in the same house on Saturday night. We are feeling very blessed.