Destination: Keystone, South Dakota - Travel Day: September 26, 2012

Destination: Keystone, South Dakota

Travel Day: September 26, 2012

I have no qualms about leaving Sioux City behind. By 7 I'm northbound on I-29 with Alan Doyle singing “Seen A Little”. I play it loud and rock along northbound through the Iowa morning. Today will not be a long drive day. I’m reversing the route back along I-90 towards Rapid City, but with stops at Wall South Dakota, the South Dakota Air and Space Museum at Ellsworth Air Force Base, and ending the day in Keystone South Dakota.

Sunrise is pleasant and takes a while to fully bloom. It promises to be another clear day, which is good because I want to re-experience the Dakota Badlands.

By 810 I’m back on I-90 West, and by 1130CT/1030MT I cross back into Mountain Time. Time Zones are a strange animal. One second you’re an hour ahead, the next second you’re an hour behind, all of which is relative to where you happen to be in the timeline itself. In most Space Opera stories there is a moment where the transition from FTL (Faster Than Light) to “n-space” (normal space) causes a moment of mental and physical disorientation, the severity of which varies from person to person, and author to author. An off the wall thinker like myself asks “What happened to right now?” Here on the little blue ball no such disorientation exists when time changes, except in the minds of..., wait where was I going with this? Oh well, another thought lost to time.

At 1130MT I stop in the small town of Wall, famous for only two things. The Wounded Knee Museum, and Wall Drug. The museum is closed due to a fire before I passed through on my eastbound leg. Wall Drug is a massive complex occupying about one square block. 

Chock a block full of things that would keep a small child in rapture, like souvenir spoons, salt and pepper shakers, knick knacks, and I’m fairly sure there were a couple of paddywhacks hidden in the back shelves. There were aisles and aisles of t-shirts, hoodies, sweat pants, sweat shirts, bandanas, jewellery, leather goods, art, and even fridge magnets. Out back was a cowboy and Wild West art museum that sports its own vicious and loud T-Rex, gambling parlours, and art displays. Only three small aisles would let you know that there was an actual drug store present. 

Short History: Guy buys the drugstore in 1931, the Depression is two years old, business is bad so his wife suggests a sign out by the highway that would eventually become I-90, advertising free ice water, and a 5 cent cup of coffee.  By luck the drug store had a soda fountain so that people could eat. Fast forward 81 years and it’s still here. Ice water is still free and coffee is still 5 cents. And people stop by the millions! No joke, by the millions! I’m not really surprised. I’ve been seeing roadside billboards for the place as far west as Washington, and as far south as Missouri . 

For the full story check it out here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Drug

 

After killing off a half hour of semi rapturous wonderment at the true art of American roadside attractions, I’m back on I-90 and ahead of schedule.

Passing through South Dakota is a mind opening experience. To one eye it’s flat, and boring, and nothing at all to command anyone’s attention. To my eye it has a constantly changing tone, texture and context. The colours of the earth and the sky, the texture of crops and sudden land thrusts, all make it a visually 

stimulating palette. 

I stop at a “scenic outlook” about a half hour from Wall. When I step out from the cocoon of the car the ever present wind, a bit too strong to be called a breeze, is a firm reminder of the geography. There are no substantial land masses to break up the wind. It’s easy to imagine that the wind on your face may very well have started a thousand or more miles away, and never touched anything or anyone, until it got to you. This where I finally understand the reality of an old Western saying, the one that goes “You can see a man coming for days”. 

I grew up in the Coastal Mountains of the West Coast, and this kind of flat land is not like anything I have seen before. To be able to experience this place first hand gives me a greater understanding of the landscape in which the people of the Buffalo Nation, the tribes of the Sioux, lived and roamed for hundreds of centuries. It is easy, in the mind’s eye, to see the massive Tatanka, the buffalo, wandering these grasslands. No television or movie, despite the newer High Definition technology, can capture this. 

It is a shame that when such subjects are taught in schools that students from all over the country can’t be here to gain some understanding and context of the land. To capture the reality, is to stand in the wind and feel the dust, to personally experience the colour and texture of all that is here. This is an education.

By 1330MT I am just outside the gates of Ellsworth Air Force Base, at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum. 

Outdoor static displays of some of the most potent military aircraft ever built are here. From a massive B-52 Stratofortress bomber, and a B-1B Lancer bomber, to an EC-135 Looking Glass airborne command and control platform, through smaller aircraft such as an F-105 Thunderchief, and an F100 Super Sabre. A lot of these I have never seen before at other museums, so it’s a delight to be able to get up close and personal.

Inside I get to tour an unexpected surprise. Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota are dotted with underground missile silos. No surprise, and no great secret there. What does surprise me is the mock-up of an actual (OK, work with me here as I’m sure there are no classified details in a public museum) underground missile launch control facility. If you think they got it right in the movies, all I can is they got it mostly right, based on what they have on display. Though the size of the ancient rack mounted data modem catches me really off guard.

As I leave the museum I see a grass fire a few miles away across the southern side of the highway. As you drive west toward Rapid City the landscape becomes less flat as it begins to form up into the Black Hills and eventually the Rocky Mountains. Grass fires here are as dangerous as forest fires back home. With the long drought affecting the Great Plains, things are very dry.

My night stop tonight is Keystone South Dakota. It’s about 40 minutes south of Rapid City in the Black Hills National Forest, and about ten minutes from Mt. Rushmore. 

On the drive south a lot of emergency vehicles go screaming past in the opposite direction, towards the grass fire. As I look back over my shoulder I see the fire has easily quadrupled in size in less than 20 minutes. It seems every piece of Emergency equipment in the region has been called out.

Keystone is a tourist town. You can’t call it anything else. Its sole purpose is to service the people going to and from Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument. It’s a couple of blocks long, with two story wooden buildings, and has covered walkways over raised wooden sidewalks. Very Gunsmoke!! Its history is, like so many western mountain towns, is in mining. It has done quite well in transforming itself. With a 2010 Census population of 337 people, I would say it’s quite something when you consider how many people stop here for goods and services on their way south through the Black Hills.

I have dinner at the Ruby House Restaurant. After going over the menu I choose a Ruby Burger with cheese and cole slaw. It’s a half pounder. I’m going heavy on protein tonight. 

My beer has to come from the Red Garter bar next door. Separate cheques for both. It’s some kind of licencing thing. Once again there is no regional beer so I settle for a Bud. I have to send the first beer back, it’s flat.

I settle for an early night.