Destination: Billings Montana, via Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument, and Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument

Destination: Billings Montana, via Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument, and Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument

Travel Day: September 27, 2012

I’m up early, well before 6. By 630 I’m outside a place that serves breakfast, but it’s closed. The sign say it opens at 7, but it’s still not open even then, so I stand around and feel the morning. It’s a bit chilly, but not even close to being cold. A true mountain morning in the early fall. It’s quiet, but no real sound other than a blanketed, muted softness to everything.

Eventually someone comes along and opens up. I order a quick breakfast of eggs and sausage. My server is from the northern Midwest, but he knows of my hometown. He was in town the night of the big hockey riot the year before, but he said that didn’t color his appreciation of how pretty the place is. And he said we have good beer!

I leave Keystone at 8 to head for Mt Rushmore. Keystone is not a place I’ll miss very much.

Mt. Rushmore is an iconic American wonder. The visual presentation of four of the country’s most legendary leaders and thinkers, is respectful and honorable. Though I can’t help but think of the many times I have seen it mocked on TV and in movies, and humorous as it may have seemed at the time I’m not sure I would find it so now. One of the things I had heard most often about the sculpture from people who had seen it was how small it really was. 

After seeing it for myself I thought the same thing until I took a moment. Such inflated expectations really come from within ourselves because we expect something so big in our minds to be just that much bigger. 

In my day to day work I hear that about some of the people I deal with from both politics and show business. When I took another look at the mountain, I found the proportion to be just right in relation to the size of the cliffside palette the artist worked with.

As I sat there for a few minutes I also realized how America’s Natioanl Parks and Monuments are great social equalizers. Everyone has pretty much the same experience, they come to have a similar understanding of the history, and it didn’t matter how if they came in a bus or a Cadillac or a beat up Honda. They all came to see the same thing, and in that they share a common experience.

I leave Mt. Rushmore around 9, and I’m a bit subdued by the experience. I stop on my way out to stare out at the Black Hills in the gathering morning light, and find I'm becoming aware of the land itself. I make a quick stop just around the corner and take a picture of George Washington’s profile at a roadside pullout.

I become more and more aware of something within myself that is being, well talked to is the wrong word for it, but I am aware of a “something”. Whatever music I try to put on is just “wrong” for the nature of what I’m seeing and feeling. So I make do with XMSirius’ Spa Channel, but it’s still not right.

At 0925 I make the turn off the Highway to the Crazy Horse Monument. Crazy Horse Monument is an attempt, on a very large scale, to depict First Nation leader Crazy Horse on his horse, out of the side of a mountain. Where I had expected the sculpture at Mt. Rushmore to be bigger, I wasn’t prepared for just how big Crazy Horse is going to be when it’s finished. Much larger than Mt. Rushmore, by a factor of about ten!

There is a very informative First Nations Museum attached to the Crazy Horse viewing platform, though I wish it had a more tribal context in it’s information cards. In the gift shop I hear some quiet flute music playing, and I buy a CD called “Song Of The Aspen” by Bryan Akipa. I play it over and over throughout the day. I have finally found the music that fits my “mind mood”. There is something profoundly spiritual about this place. These Black Hills are truly a gift, but there is also something magical here, as if this is a place where all hearts and spirits once lived. 

At 1015 I’m back on Hwy 16 heading south to Custer where I’ll turn west and follow Hwy 16 northwest until I intersect with I-90. From there it’s again west to stop at Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument, and then into Billings, Montana for the day.

The two lane road curves and winds its way through quiet and lightly forested mountain valleys, and except for a few other vehicles I have the road to myself. I make a couple of stops to take pictures, and one to read about a major forest fire that swept through a few years back.

I make a stop to take a picture of a sign about a Civilian Conservation Corps camp that was in the area during the Great Depression. I’m impressed, but the cows that are watching me seem entirely bored.

For the third time this trip I leave a place saddened. Not because of the place itself, the sadness is in the leaving. In this case not because of not having seen enough, but because I haven’t “felt enough” of the Black Hills.

At 1120 I stop at an information sign at a pullout. It signifies the importance of the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage coach line. There is a restored coach that ran this route at the Crazy Horse Museum. The air smells very much like “country” is supposed to smell, like an outside barn.

I press on, driving along what has to be the loneliest stretch of road I have ever encountered. The scrubgrass prairie just goes on for miles and miles, I rarely encounter another vehicle, see no buildings, other than crumpled line shacks, and I don’t even see a cow. 

I see some small dead animals at the side of the road, but that’s it. And the sky begins to get high cloud, and it becomes a slight dirty green color. As driving experiences go, and I’ve had a few, it’s thoroughly surreal.

I make a quick gas stop at a place called Moorcroft, Wyoming at 1230. It seems the gas station is a popular spot, which in a town of a thousand people says something. I’m kidding, most of the plates were from out of state, and a lot of the people seemed to be as road dazed as I was.

Two hours later it’s a pit stop and a fuel up in Sheridan Wyoming. I used this place on my drive out. There are no attendants, just pull in, swipe your card, and pump away. And so I do. I actually wouldn’t mention it at all except an unattended gas station right next to a motel just seems weird.

Arriving at the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument is a sombre experience. Unlike Mt. Rushmore which is a celebration of intellect, and positive achievement, Little Big Horn is the exact opposite. I am unprepared for what I’m going to find here.

The battle that occurred here is one focal point of history’s fickleness of who “wins”. The real truth of this place is that a lot of people died in a very short period of time and you can feel them here. Just as you can in any place where a large group of human lives violently ended. I have felt the same thing when I have visited European battlefields. I would like to think we make these places in “historic places of interest” so that we can get to feel this way. As if the dead are shaming, and teaching, us not to do it again. But we do, usually at the hands of arrogant and egocentric idiots.

As usual I learned a lot of things I didn’t know. Like the makeup of the 7^th Cavalry, and that the infantry troops were mostly unemployed immigrants to America. Three squares and a cot, in exchange for your services. I learned more about the Sioux Wars, and it gave me more context to the underlying conflicts.

Outside, I quietly wandered through the grave markers, mentally taking notes of names and dates. Not that any of the people buried here have any link to me, but beyond the names and dates are real people, and real people died here. One of those gravestones simply reads, “Chippewa Indian Woman”. I am saddened to read such simple wording, and somehow in a personally bewildering but grateful way, that someone saw fit to at least mark her place.

Custer isn’t buried here, though there is a marker (the one marked with black)for where he fell on the battlefield. After a few years they exhumed his body and re interred it at West Point Military Academy. Not so for the rest of his men, who either lay where they fell, or are in the graveyard a couple of hundred meters away.

There is also a monument to the Cavalry horses that fell.

In the Interpretive Centre I learn that a grass fire a few years back burned away a lot of cover, allowing battlefield archeologists to recover even more artifacts after they thought they had all they were going to find. Using the newly found items as a guide, they managed to build a more comprehensive and effective map of how the battle unfolded.

There are a lot of signs around telling you to watch out for snakes and to stay on the paths. Some people don’t get the message and I watch a young woman in flip flops walk through the grass to get a family picture next to a fence. Me, I’m hyper vigilant!!!

Written on the side of the Interpretive Centre is a pearl of wisdom that speaks volumes of the differences in the philosophies at play here.

I am not entirely unhappy to be leaving. This place is an emotional and intellectual challenge for me. As monotone as the land is around the battlefield, there still grows some color as fall trees blaze in oranges and yellows.

I make the short drive into Billings. I’m staying at the Dude Rancher Lodge in downtown Billings. It’s a true throwback to roadside motels. After checking in I walk a few blocks over to the Montana Brewing Company. It’s a bar, but at least is has some local options. I settle on a MBC Pale Ale. Not at all bad, when paired with the Chicken Alfredo. My server is Kelsey, and she’s bright and cheerful. Just the kind of person I need after today.

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.

Destination: Sioux City, Iowa - Travel Day: September 25, 2012

Destination: Sioux City, Iowa

Travel Day: September 25, 2012

I’m on the road by 710 after a lobby breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. Fresh out of the block this morning Mr. Shuffle gives me Randy Travis and “Walk Your Own Road”. His musical games continue.

I like Missouri. It’s got a variety of driving terrain, changing traffic volumes, and it’s visually interesting. I run into some heavy rainstorms, and nearly lose the right side of the car at an onramp to a guy in a green Taurus who didn’t look. Once on I-29 just north of Kansas City, I use the OnStar to call my nephew to wish him Happy Birthday. He doesn’t answer, so I leave a voicemail. 

The miles and the music carry me along. It’s a strange, soft, cocoonlike sensation flying along in a combination of machinery, music, and randomly generated thoughts. After all these days on the road it’s becoming a more comfortable place to be.

Then there’s Iowa. Look at the pictures. That’s Iowa.

Mile, after mile, after mile. I’m thankful for the good night’s sleep. I have no urge to nod off. Though I probably could and not hit anything.

I find the hotel just off the highway, after dodging some rather confusing construction zones through Sioux City. It seems they are trying to rebuild the entire stretch of highway through town. The hotel is also bit of a bizarre design. It’s as if it was once a motel with outside walkways, but somewhere in its life they built in the walkways, and then left the floor to ceiling glass windows in place. It also gives me a bit of a creepy feeling. I can’t put my finger on why.

My dining options are limited. Once again it comes down to fast food or Applebee’s. Remember that I faced the same choices in Sioux Falls? What is it with desk clerks in that part of the world where the best they can suggest is Applebee’s? To be fair it’s not their fault dining options are limited, but I’m seeing a trend.

So I drive to Applebee’s. I take my seat. I am presented with a drink menu that includes several beer choices. I ask for one of them. Sadly none of the listed beers are available. Seems the old menus don’t correspond to the new beer offerings. The young server is apologetic. I ask him a philosophical, and purely rhetorical, question that I am sure confuses him. “Where do we begin to address the disconnect between corporate management decisions and the operations people who need to do the work?” I think I might have frightened him a bit because the manager then comes over to explain the beer offerings. I make the choice of a medium dark ale, and the Bourbon Street steak with baked potato. The young server comes back and we have a conversation. He would one day like to visit Canada.

I make my way back to the hotel and a rather unremarkable night’s sleep. In all this was one of those road days that will soon fade away. I’m guessing that’s why a lot of people are from Iowa, but choose to live somewhere else. It’s the American version of Saskatchewan.

Destination: Blackpool

Travel Day: December 20, 2012

I wake up feeling like my brain has been dismembered, and then crudely sewn back together with some parts missing and others in the wrong places. Dreams were harsh and murky. As I shower I consider which is worse, a tequila hangover, or “I lost a day” jet lag. Something is missing, and I have no idea what it is. Oh wait, it’s gray and raining. Nothing is missing, it’s just like home!

In the hotel restaurant my brother and I have a full English breakfast of fried eggs, thick Lancashire bacon, wonderfully seasoned sausage, institutional hash brown wedges, baked beans, and an Americano coffee. We both relish the meal. It reminds us of the Christmas breakfasts our dad always made for our extended family. I feel full, simultaneously sad and happy, but only slightly more alert.

 

A cab picks us up from the hotel to take us round to the car hire at the airport. We reserved a small Peugot 208 with Avis. It’s slightly larger than a roller skate, and getting in on the driver’s side requires some contortionist moves I thought I’d forgotten. Cars here are not built for people my size. They are built for great gas mileage, and with petrol advertised for 1 pound 30 pence a litre (approx. $2.10 Canadian) one would hope so.

 

Our first stop is a couple of blocks up the road from the airport, at a Currys Electronic store. We need to get a mobile phone SIM card for a phone loaned to us by a cousin. However, me being me, I suddenly realize they have “unlocked” phones. We have a heck of a time getting them at home. “Unlocked” means they are not tied to a single carrier, and the number and service can be changed with the simple act of changing the SIM card. This provides huge flexibility in being able to carry the phone most anywhere in the world. You buy a local SIM for around $20 (includes a modest amount of service time and data) and then you get smartphone service without the criminal like international roaming rates of most carriers.

We are served by Brian and Luis, a couple of really great guys at the “phones 4U” concession booth, who help us to understand the mobile phone landscape. There is a very wide selection of phones, carriers, and plans. Nothing at all like the closed monopolistic competition we suffer with in Canada. I buy a Samsung Galaxy Ace smartphone for 70 pounds (about $112), and 30 pounds of calling time and data (250 minutes and 250mb). It’s a smart move as I now have a phone I can travel with anywhere. I also remember the $600 replacement cost of a new i-Phone 4 when I lost my last one. For a carrier we select a UK wide “pay as you go” on the O2 network.

From Currys we journey across town to my Aunts house. It’s just over four miles, but when you’re driving a manual transmission for the first time in 20 years, on the left side of the road for the first time ever, four miles seems like four hundred. The road lanes are narrow, and at times the painted lines are ambiguous. Around bus stops are squiggly white lines, sometimes people cross the centre lines to get around illegally parked cars, and making a right turn across oncoming traffic is a new one on me. Speaking of parking, I have minor heart attacks as cars can park most any direction they choose, making you question whether or not you've been an idiot and turned into a one way street, because cars on both sides are pointed towards you. And most people park on the sidewalk.

Then there is the protocol of roundabouts. I understand the basics of yielding to traffic on the right in the roundabout, but who has priority when it comes to actually getting into the roundabout? After a few attempts I get it right, thankfully, as roundabouts are more common here than traffic lights. Some roundabouts are so busy they have traffic lights to aid right of way.

My brother, bless his soul, makes no comments on my driving style or ability. His job is to watch the SatNav and warn me of upcoming turns, or which exit we take while in a roundabout. We only get lost three times, and that’s because we find ourselves in the wrong lane at intersections or miscount which exit of a roundabout. I’ll only briefly mention how easy it is to nearly sideswipe parked cars since all the usual unconscious driving cues are now on the other side.

We have a tearful reunion with our Aunt. We haven’t seen her in several years, since her last trip home to Vancouver. She was a major figure in our lives as we grew up. Her decision seven years ago to return home to England was hard for all of us. She now lives in a lovely bungalow on a street at the edge of a farm field. From her sunroom at the back of the house she looks over a low green hill with grazing sheep. Very peaceful and quietly pastoral.

Around four it begins to darken up and in our fatigued state head back to the hotel. We retrace our route, getting lost yet again as we take the wrong lanes at intersections and roundabouts, and have problems seeing street signs. Turns out they are either in small letters high up on the sides of buildings, or low down on retaining walls hiding behind cars. And it’s still dark and raining.

Safely back in the Brewers Fayre bar at the hotel we have a couple of beers and some really wonderful fish and chips.

 

According to the Mayan calendar tomorrow is supposed to be the end of the world, maybe. If it happens, so be it, because yet another tick mark has been placed on my bucket list. The tick mark sits next to “Surviving a day driving on the wrong side of the road, while on the other side of the world”!