On the Road Again

Once again the Badlands eluded us.  We were just too tired and decided to spend the day beside a lake in Bear Butte State Park, have dinner in Rapid City and then retire to the luxury of the Tire Barn for TV (Wizard of OZ), a hair wash in the bathroom sink and the relative cool of their air conditioning.

Monday we went into Rapid City to visit the many statues of presidents on their street corners and wait for Celeste, who was ready by noon and…off we went!

We camped at Custer National Forest in a totally empty campground which was not typical for a National Forest in that there was an established campground with a picnic table and pit toilet and no fee.  Our first stop the next morning was Battle of Little Big Horn National Monument, which was a far cry from Wounded Knee.  First of all, it was established by the US Government and, therefore, rather elegant.  Although the main markers and information paid for by the US government was about Custer, there was a recent monument and explanation of the Indian part paid for by the Indian tribes involved.  The Indian memorial emphasized peace while the US memorial was to the battle.  All in all, it was much more palatable than Wounded Knee.

We went directly from there to Bozeman where live both David’s son Joel and his professor from college Dave and his wife Becky.  We stayed with them on their sheep ranch and had the luxury of not only our own little cabin, but an outhouse with a composting toilet.  Imagine lying in a log cabin in a real bed, lulled to sleep at night to the babbling of a brook and the baa-ing of sheep.  If I were poetic, I could write a poem about it.  That combined with showers at both Joel’s and the farm as well as washing machines at both made for a very complete stay.

Dave and Becky were charming hosts who opened their home to us so that we could come and go as we pleased and made us lamb shish kabobs for our first night’s dinner which we shared with Joel who took us on two great hikes the next day.  We decided to show off for them and made them dinner the second night using a combination of our camp stove and their kitchen.  Each day and night, our entertainment was their 4 month old border collie puppy, Hannah, who was the most mischievous dog we have ever seen, always bouncing around where she was not supposed to be.

The next day was a full day driving and driving through the Bear Tooth Mountains for about 10 hours with Joel as our guide.  Our first stop was the Boiling River in Yellowstone.  It is a hot, hot spring (about 150 degrees…someone fell in last year and died!) which feeds into a cold, cold fast running Yellowstone river.  Along with a bunch of other folks, we sat at the edge where the boiling and cold water came together.  A cm. one way or the other and you were either way too hot or freezing.  Combined with the speed of the river which made it impossible to stand, and the heat of the rocks, which made it impossible to balance, and I can’t say it was relaxing, but most entertaining.  We hiked to a fire tower , turned tourist observation post at 10,000 feet and visited with the lonely volunteer; hiked around glacial lakes bordered by 4 foot thick snow and drove and drove.  Had dinner in Red Lodge and then drove some more to get home.

The next day I actually had a manicure and pedicure and the car had an oil change and lunch at the restaurant where Joel works , then a long hike through Dave and Becky’s fields looking for sheep skulls to send to grandson Sage.

Saturday was our departure day.  Of course we had to have some lamb chops for camp dinners and I bought some more wool for knitting projects.  Dave and Becky process their own wool into yarn which they have dyed and sell their own organic, predator friendly meat as well.  Their website is www.lambandwool.com.  Visit it to order their products which we love. Goodbye Hannah Banana!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to Leave

It is now July 26 and time to leave Custer State Park after 5 lovely days and head to Montana via Deadwood, Sturgis and Battle of Little Big Horn.  Well, that was the plan, anyway.

We left Custer and drove onthe Needles Highway which we were told was quite a wonderful drive.  Little did we know it was SPECTACULAR.  The Eye of the Needle is just that. And the road to get to it wass like nothing we had ever driven through.  Not a tunnel, but a crack in the rocks that cars wedge through.  It then opens onto a pull off full of cars and people standing in the road waiting for a car to drive through so they can take the photo to give the road a bit of perspective..  Even the road after that strange part was exciting as we had to go through a very small tunnelI jumped out of the car and held up traffic while I ran ahead through the tunnel for this shot.

Next on to Deadwood, which everyone told us was quite hokey and ful of casinos.  But it did have Moriah Cemetery and the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. 

Then on to Sturgis, where in a week will take place the 50,000 person motorcylce rally.  And this is where our plans drastically changed.  Pulling out of the supermarket parking lot and driving off we were told by a biker that we had a flat tire on Celeste.  We pulled into a large parking lot and sure enough, our new tire was destroyed.  David tried to lift Celeste by putting her littl foot down, but there was too much weight on that side.  As David was trying different methods to raise her up, along came two cowboys...and a forklift.  They scooped up our little Celeste, David put on the spare tire and off we tried to go.

However, we were stopped several times by folks driving by to point out that Celeste was listing to the right.  We decided to buy a new tire in Sturgis so that we woud have two of the same and correct the list, so we thought.  However, the only tires available were in Rapid City (which the locals call Rapid).  So, off we went to the Bargain Barn, where, upon removal of the spare, we found that the Leaf Spring had broken in half, causing the tire to catch on the frame on shred.  So...now were were looking at repairs on Monday morning. since we had to have two new springs built for us. 

As David and I were talking to each other about where to stay and how to camp, one of the workers offered to let us tcamp in the pwork area in front of teh garage, and he gave us the keys to the shop so we could use the bathroom and left the electricity on so we could plug Celeste in overnight.  (Later that evening, on the way back to Camp Bargain Barn, I feared that the store was alarmed and he had forgotten to give us the code.  I called and he assured me that they had no alarm.)  Funny thing is, he had us park directly under the night security light. 

So, we set up camp, went off to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant and then to see the Dark Knight, our existential comic book experience.  We went to that movie because the guy in the convenience store told me it was better than Lord of the Rings.  (For those of you who have seen No Country For Old Men, please think of that movie when seeing Dark Knight...Ellen as movie critic). Just to add to the escitiement, there was an extreme storm warning for Rapid City that evening.  it seems that every evening in SD there has ben stormy weather.  This time with major winds. 

Sunday its back to those bad-lands which we missed before and to Bear Butte (which I call bare butt) state park for a long, long day and even longer night at Camp Bargain Tire.

Caves, Springs and a Mike-less Evening

Custer, Wind Cave Hot Springs

Custer is a cute little town at the edge of Custer State Park where we spent an evening listening to the strangest outdoor show called The Magic Banjo, all about a banjo that conjures up folks from the past.  Well, the banjo player wasn’t great, the 1881 folks were quite corny and the whole thing was delightful.

The next day we took a tour of Wind Cave, a limestone cave with over 129 miles(and counting) of tunnels.  Since it is a dry cave, created from standing water dissolving the limestone, not dripping through there were none of the usual cave formations.  No stalagtites or mites, but boxwood (which look like lace or honeycombs) and popcorn.  And the entrance was a small opening no bigger than the ranger’s hat.  This caused wind to pour out as the pressure between the inside and outside changed.  Hence the name of the cave.  Luckily, there was a man-made entrance that we could walk through and an elevator that we could ride back up to the surface after our 200 feet descent.

Wind Cave National park is also the location of the re-instatement of the buffalo herds.  After all but 300 buffalo were killed by the end of the 19^th century, our government, in its wisdom, decided to import buffalo from the Bronx Zoo and Yellowstone to put them all back.  Is there logic to this?  Well, they are now doing so well that the park is now exporting them back to various zoos.  What is going on?  They are, however, all over the place, roads, hillsides and meadows.  In addition, the place is crawling with prairie dogs and their towns and prong horned antelopes that were also introduced to the park years ago.  In addition to rattle snakes, this is quite the wildlife place.

We had lunch in the town of Hot Springs.  We then spent part of the afternoon looking for the heat.  We found a luke-warm river, which after some questioning, realized was as good as it was going to get.  Apparently, according to the local music store owner from Connecticut, there is a hot springs in a stream, and a cold spring in another stream that combine to make this warm river.  Hence the name of the town, Hot Spring.  Go figure.

The rest of the day was spent with me holding my cell phone in various places in the car while David drove all over creation looking for reception.  Quite exciting, only to be matched by the 15 minutes we spent at a lovely lake beach before lightning and thunder drove us to Celeste where we sat out a hailstorm and rain.  This was actually very exciting since it was the first rain since May 19.

The next day we went on one of the best hikes we have taken through a prairie in CusterState Park.  Great hike because everything was green, not red and dusty, a good length and crossing a brook at three points.  Quite lovely.

Then into a great lake for a swim, back to our camp for a quick change and then back into Hot Springs for dinner and an open mike evening at a coffee bar.  Dinner was great:  Indian taco from me(I have been looking for one) which i fry bread with taco stuff on top; and a buffalo steak for David to fulfill his bison craving.  Then to the open mike evening.  However, it was an open "mike-less" evening.  Two guitar players alternating sets with the 5 year old daughter of one of them who told jokes.  Except that we couldn't hear anything since there was no microphone!  Pretty strange.  So, back home we went through another of the famous Black Hill storms.

My Opinion: A Shame and Disgrace

The day afterRushmore we decided to take a very long drive to visit Wounded Knee and the Badlands.

MY OPINION:

I have to interject an editorial here about Wounded Knee.  As we always do, we research the site we are visiting in the AAA book and on a map and on the GPS.  Neither our GPS nor AAA had ANY reference to Wounded Knee, nor did anyone we spoke to have any information about it.  We eventually found it on the map and started our trip.  Not once did we see a sign or any indication that it existed.  We drove onto the Pine Ridge Reservation and things looked even bleaker.  Miles of empty road with an occasional trailer parked in a field.  Finally we came upon a small pine bough covered lean-to off to the side of the road with a hand lettered sign “Visitor Information” and a rather ragged billboard with the history of Wounded Knee Massacre.  We spoke with the Lakota woman manning the information booth who showed us a homemade history and told us her story.  She was raising two grandchildren, having sent two of her own children successful away from the res. as adults. Although there were schools on the reservation, there were no stores or churches and she was earning money by manning the information booth and selling trinkets.  She pointed out her trailer with an outside and no running water. She showed us the hillside where the mass grave had been dug for the massacred Indians, and a memorial stone put up by the son of one of the murdered Indians.  The path to the grave was unpaved and the graveyard was decrepit. 

Isn’t this part of our history?  Do we only record our successes?  Aren’t our disgraces part of our history too?  Aren’t the Indians part of our history?

The next day we heard on the radio that the county in South Dakota that encompasses the Pine Ridge Reservation is the third poorest in the country.  What gives?

BACK TO OUR TRIP

After we spent the morning at Wounded Knee we attempted to go to the Badlands, but missed it.  Despite the GPS and David the surveyor, we lost thousands of acres of Badlands), had a terrible fight (unrelated to the loss) and stormed on home.  However, we did see this fine dinasour in a field, all by himself.

 

The Big Faces

Black Hills

On to the Big Faces!  We were quite confident that we could find a campsite in Custer State Park, near Mt. Rushmore, since there were many different campgrounds to choose from.  So, on the way, we stopped for breakfast at a great restaurant, called Crazy Woman Café, in an adorable little town (pop. 350) called Ten Sleep.  The name came from the fact that it took the Indians ten nights (sleeps) to get there from their winter campground.  I bought a t-shirt there and when I wore it for the first time, I got many, many comments because the name is so catchy.

Then we made another detour to Devil’s Tower, the iconic monolith of Wyoming where they filmed Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  There was also a huge prairie dog colony that we visited. We took a short hike part way around the base, and then off to South Dakota. However, when we got to Custer State Park at about 5:30 pm, much to our surprise, there were not sites to be had.  However, taking a lesson from the folks from New York that we met at Sinks Canyon, we stopped in at the first campgrounds, and lo and behold…a site had just opened up.  Lucky us!  Not the greatest campsite, it being in an open field right by the road.  But…we met a lovely couple we had lived in Juneau, Alaska for 25 years and had a nice evening with them, learning many useful tips on life in Alaska.

Our first full day we visited Mt. Rushmore but were stopped in our tracks for a while by the buffalo that kept crossing the road.  Apparently this state park has the largest herd of buffalo in the country.  At one point two males started crossing the street in front of us.  It was quite cute until they stopped and one smacked the other with his horns.  Then the second one had to hit back and I started saying to David, “Back up.  Back up now.”  Since one was almost as big as the car, he did until the boys calmed down and ran up the hill on the other side of the road.

 

Mt. Rushmore was quite a spectacle. It included the mountain carvings, the sculpture studio, a long paved and stepped walkway with many views of the carvings, several videos and a kind of pathetic nod to Indians which consisted of a few teepees and artifacts.  The place was packed and it certainly lived up to our expectations.  It was a great tribute to Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and T. Roosevelt as well as a tribute to our country.

The this photo is the model from which Gutzon Borglum worked to create the mountain sculpture.

This was in great contrast to the Crazy Horse memorial that we next visited, which seemed more like a tribute to the sculpture Korczak Ziolkowski. The only visible sign of a sculpture was the face of Crazy Horse.   Missing his hair, the rest of his body and the horse. this is what the mountain should look like.  It seems that old K refused to take any government money so the project has been poking along for 50 years so far.  There was very little mention of Indians and the carved plaque that will eventually (not in my lifetime) be on the sculpture was a quote from K.  Great Indian dance demonstrations, however.

 

Soaking up the Heat

Thermopolis and Medicine Lodge

The Ranger at Sinks Canyon told us that if we liked his park, we would love medicine Lodge State Park, and since it was in the direction we were going, we took off.  We stopped along the way to visit Thermopolis, the site of a wonderful 104 degree hot springs. The high school had this bizarre mascot outside (not me…the big cat).  Although there was a major water park complex at the site, there was also a state run pool which was free through an agreement with the Indians.  The rules said that you could only stay in for 20 minutes, and they were not kidding.  It was very hot.  But they had SHOWERS in the bath house, and since we were once again dry camping, they hit the spot. This is a photo of the seeps above the pool.

 

Then it was on to Medicine Lodge.  The only problem was, we could not find it listed in our AAA book, nor could the GPS identify it.  After getting a little lost, we came upon a tiny sign that pointed to an archeological site, and that turned out to be it.  A little disappointing since the petroglyphs were minimal, and not at all up to Utah standards.  The highlight of the stay was the appearance of another Chalet camper in the next site.  We looked so cute next to one another. The park had some great views, like this one of Ship Rock. 

Sinking and Rising in Wyoming

Sinks Canyon State Park

One of the real appeals of traveling for over three months is the ability to change plans.  We had originally discounted the idea of traveling to South Dakota to see the big faces, but realized that we did, indeed have the time to include them in our trip. So, no we are heading through Wyoming, across the state, to SD.

We found a state park that seemed like a good place to stay the night…and ended up staying two! Sinks Canyon was wonderful  First of all, the geography.  It seems that the Popo Agie (pronounced poposhoe) River which is quite a fast flowing narrow river, flows into a limestone cavern and mysteriously disappears.  That is the Sink.  Then, it mysteriously appears two hours later and ½ mile down the road into a wide pool filled with trout.   That is called the Rise.  Then the bed narrows and it once again becomes a noisy, quick flowing river. Our campsite was right on the river above the Sink.  It was so noisy that the first night, half awake, I wanted to tell David to turn off the fan because it was making too much noise.  And to make matters even better, when we walked the few feet from Celeste to the river after setting up, I found 12 cans of Corona beer just waiting for us, cooling in the pools.  Then, the state ranger told us when we went to the Visitor’s Center, that he would DELIVER firewood to us that evening. David took this photo our campsite from across the river.

Our full day at Sinks we had a beautiful hike through a sagebrush meadow, then through town and onto the Wind River Indian Reservation to visit a cemetery that contained Sacagawea’s grave and the grave of Chief Wasachkie.  There is some controversy about the location of Sacagawea’s grave, whether it was in Wyoming, or South Dakota. Either way, we were able to find the monument, but not the grave, even though there was a plaque directing us to the site. The cemetery was a bit unkempt but quite colorful since all the graveshad plastic flowers on them.

That evening we had a campfire and shared our beer with another camping couple from New York. Great fun.