High Plains Drifters...

Greetings again, family and friends! 

Our Iowa visit was very nice. We were able to get a little face-time with Venus’ brother. It was hard to say good-bye, but we had to press on with our journey. After leaving Iowa City we continued westward, passing farm after farm of dried-up GMO cornfields. The destruction that this summer has had on the Midwest is vast. We noticed signs posted next to many of the fields with numbers indicating the seed types. Some of the signs stated that the seed types were “experimental” and that others were a “show crop.” It seemed as though none of them fared well under the extended drought conditions. Hundreds of acres were yellow as if it were already past harvest time, while others revealed corn that was stunted and quite small when it should have been about the height of a man at this point in the season.

We definitely noticed that the Northeast corn crop fared far better than the Midwest. The fields extended into South Dakota until the landscape became too desolate to grow much of anything, changing into rugged shrubs and juniper and pine trees capable of surviving dry climates.  We stopped at Shirley’s Diner in a small town in western Iowa for BLTs and potato soup before passing through Sioux City and into South Dakota late in the afternoon.

That night we stayed at the Chief White Crane campground in the Lewis & Clark State Park.  It was a magical spot on the Missouri River with strong spiritual energy present (notice the energy balls in the photo). 

We saw a deer in the wooded part of the campground, and as the sun set we built a campfire and made some good food on the open flames. The moon shown bright on us, and the stars twinkled like candles in the sky. The campground’s numerous pines cooled the air in the park, unlike the heat-soaked atmosphere of the treeless surrounding areas. Most of the trees leading up to the park had been removed to make way for agriculture and had made the land seem more desolate than it needed to be.

On Wednesday morning, we got a fairly early start and drove west on the 44, a nice two-lane highway with virtually no traffic.  The landscape changed into the open dry plains you see in old western movies.  We arrived in Badlands Nat’l Park in the afternoon, and did a quick drive-through after pitching our tent.  The beauty of the Badlands was stunning. We meandered up the main road that gives you a full tour of all of the park’s most prominent features. It seemed like a smaller version of what the Grand Canyon would turn out to be with its colorful layers upon layers of rocks from ages past. The sheer vastness of these canyons and hills gave one the feeling of stretching beyond oneself and going into a timeless void where you could feel the primordial pull of eternity, the endlessness of constant change.

We had an early night because we were exhausted from heat and travel. The wind was fierce, and one of our campground neighbors had somehow lost his tent because of it. It seemed it had simply blown away. We were glad we had decided to stake down ours before we had gone off exploring or we may have been as unlucky as him. He went off in search of his tent and never returned. He must have decided on a motel.

That evening, we made the quickest dinner ever. The wind kept blowing out the flame on our fuel canister stove, and trying to keep everything from blowing away was becoming a near impossible task, so after a quick ramen noodle dinner we escaped into the relative comfort of our cozy blue-n-green tent. Instead of watching a movie or something on TV as would be our normal way of winding down into an evening in our conventional lives, we read chapters of a book to one another that we had purchased in the Badland’s Visitor Center entitled The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living; Native American Wisdom on Ethics and Character by Joseph M. Marshall III. It was a fitting way to end the evening as we were in Lakota country and it felt good to have a little educational entertainment. The stories lulled us to sleep, and the winds finally went to sleep themselves sometime around midnight, giving us the peace of mind we needed.

On Thursday morning, we broke camp and went for a short hike on the Castle Trail before leaving the Badlands. The trail was moderate on white sandy soils with mounds of red and white windblown remnants of hills.  We wound through a dried up creek bed cracked from years of droughts. There were other folks with whom we crossed paths, also exploring, spellbound by this surreal landscape.

When we departed, we headed west on the 44 and arrived in Rapid City in time for lunch, then continued on to the Cosmos Mystery Spot just outside Custer City.  It was a log cabin-style structure tucked deep in a mountain range down a dusty dirt road. We stepped into the entrance of the visitor’s area with the usual fare of tee shirts and magnets, jewelry and such for sale. We paid the young man at the counter the fee and waited for our group’s tour of this unusual place. We have created a special treat for you folks, detailing this fun spot. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it!

From there, we drove through the cute mountain town of Hill City.  It was made up to look like an old western town with lots of shops and shoppers, log cabin-façade buildings and covered wagons advertising this and that. After winding through the town, we arrived at Jewel Cave Nat’l Monument.  We decided to stop there at the last minute, seeing that it was on our way to our next destination and neither of us had ever before been inside a cave of that depth and magnitude. Lady Luck was on our side because we ended up buying the last two available tour tickets for the day! What a beautiful and amazing place this was, encompassing over 160 miles of underground caves housing countless crystals, minerals and other natural geologic features.  Our tour guide was passionate about caves and presented the information with a warm sense of humor. We left there at around 5pm and moved west into Wyoming.

That evening we stopped in the quiet little town of Sundance, and got a nice clean room at the Bear Lodge Motel. As we entered the lodge, we couldn’t help but notice the heads of elk and moose with massive antlers and a buffalo head staring at us from the high walls as though it could charge at any moment. There was an elderly gentleman sitting on a chair with a big white and black cat seated by his side looking like an inflated Oreo cookie. He smiled at us and slowly rose from his seat to help us at the counter. As we went through the usual routine of questions and answers about our information, Venus asked him if this was the same Sundance as Robert Redford’s film festival. He told us that it was not, but he did share with us the story of how the real Sundance Kid got his name.

The story goes like this: Harry Longabaugh was arrested and jailed in Sundance for having allegedly stolen a horse from his employer, a cattle rancher. Word is that he really didn’t steal the horse, but rather the rancher went back on a deal he made to give Longabaugh the horse as payment. While serving his jail sentence, a friend of Longabaugh’s gave him the name the Sundance Kid. We checked the old man’s story on Wikipedia and confirmed the story as true, with some very minor alterations. He handed us our keys with a grey-toothed smile, and the cat rubbed against our legs as we exited the lodge. Later, at the ARO Restaurant across the street, we enjoyed the kind of friendly service you only get in a really small town.  The strawberry rhubarb pie was pretty good too.

On Friday the 24^th, after getting a thorough hot shower and a good night’s sleep, Jack mailed some post cards and we hit the road around 9am, our standard departure time.  We drove all day through the beautiful plains and hills decorated with sagebrush and the tiny yellow flowers of the rabbitbrush until we began encountering rougher terrain and mountains.  We took the 14 west just after Sheridan and began climbing into the Big Horn Nat’l Forest where the mountains were majestic and covered with pungently crisp pines. Many of the rock layers dated back to the Ordovician Period, some 400-plus million years old. High in the mountains where the air was clear and crisp, we enjoyed a lunch consisting of a turkey club and an open-faced hot turkey sandwich with white gravy in a spacious log-cabin style building with very high ceilings and antler chandeliers called Bear Lodge.  I guess you could say we were in bear country, although we were fortunate enough not to meet any.

After lunch, we continued down the steep mountain road. We could smell the acrid odor of brake dust as we cautiously meandered down the slope with a foot on the brake the entire way. 

We continued on the 14 and drove west until we reached Yellowstone Nat’l Park.  As we approached the park, the mountains looked weathered, the trees were stripped bare and charred, showing signs of a past forest fire.  Young trees and shrubs were growing up where the old had passed on.  We entered the park around dinnertime, and were greeted by a herd of buffalo munching on their supper of grasses by the roadside as the tourist paparazzi flashed and clicked.  

That night we camped in Bridge Bay, a beautiful pine forest campground.  We were located at about 8,000 ft. above sea level.  The temperature sank to the upper 20s that night. Brrrrrrrr!  We froze our butts off and decided that we weren’t up for another night of popsicalizaton at this elevation.

So on Saturday morning, we went down to see Old Faithful blow, and blow she did, right on schedule.

We wound around a raised path amidst smaller bubbling pools of boiling water and sulfur gases rising from the depths below. 

After a wonderfully delicious lunch at the Old Faithful Inn, we bid farewell to Yellowstone and all of its grandeur and made our way south for the Grand Tetons. You may notice a Christmas tree in one of the photos of the inn below.  Although it's only August, the Christmas theme could be seen throughout the inn, because some years back there had been an enormous snow storm on August 25th (the same day that we were there), and nobody could leave the park. So, the staff decided to lift the guests' spirits by decorating the inn as though it were Christmastime and not the middle of summer. Each year since then, the park staff has continued to decorate the inn as a tradition to mark this day. 

Our next entry will be posted shortly; we just have to write it all down first. Bye for now! J