Travelogue

Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west. – Robert Burns

Sixteen PWCC members went forth to South Dakota and, briefly, to Wyoming in August. We missed our connecting flight to Rapid City, SD, due to Northwest Airlines’ delayed departure from NYC and spent a night in Minneapolis. Seven us us missed the connection the next day. Unforeseen, in addition, was a forest fire which led to our evacuation from Keystone to Hill City.

August 13: The drive from Rapid City airport included an unpaved road stretch where we saw our first buffalo herd. After we settled in at the Best Western in Wall, we drove to the NE entrance to the Badlands National Park for sunset and mind-boggling scenery. Excellent roads throughout the park have observation parking from which you look down at the horizontally-banded barren spikes, four-star (out of four) scenery! I hope our photos will do it justice.

Wall, SD, home of the block-long Wall Drugstore with its fast-food cafe, is our first stay. The store advertises its ‘free icewater’ which turned out to be the best menu selection by far. More on food below.

Aug. 14: We search for Roberts Prairie Dog Town, but didn’t find them until late afternoon. We did see a buffalo scratching him/herself on a sign “Badlands, pay entrance fee.” It was as if the National Geographic had arranged it. To Scenic, a town consisting of a few horses, a gas station, a store with Native American souvenirs and mammal skulls. We drove to the southern part of the Badlands, up a dirt road with deep potholes, leading to a mountain with great views. The Visitor Center has maps and books only, there are no roads into the park, which is on the Pine Ridge reservation. We returned to the Northern part of the Badlands and stopped at every overlook. As the sun sets, the colored stripes in the hills become more visible. We also found the prairie dogs--cute mammals seemingly posing for us. They live in well-organized families where each individual has a function. As you approach their home, a hole in the ground, the ‘sentry’, emits cries to warn those underground of danger.

It was very hot in the Badlands, it’s a desert of course, with little vegetation and no shade. I look forward to returning in cooler weather.

Aug. 15. We leave Wall and drive to Keystone, stopping at the Reptile Gardens in Rapid City, a small zoo with giant tortoises, Komodo dragons, poisonous snakes and, yes, more prairie dogs. Keystone is close to Mt. Rushmore of patriotic fame. A road sign informs us that North by Northwest was filmed there. Remember how Humphrey Bogart climbs down the mountain where the heads are?

My impression of Mt. Rushmore, where we visited on Aug. 16: The notion that it is a ‘shrine to democracy’ evokes all my anti-authority sentiments. Oversized sculptures of heads of state don’t stimulate my patriotism--although I am impressed by the sheer difficulty of carving out the heads out of a granite mountain top. I am reminded of statues of Lenin and Stalin which abounded in Eastern Europe until they were finally toppled with the end of the repressive regimes. I had just read the biography of John Adams and was much impressed with him and other politicians of his time. They abhorred the exalted status of heads of state, considered themselves of the people, not high above them. To address the president as “Mr. President”, not as “your Excellency” goes back to John Adams’ preferences. But up high on Mt. Rushmore the presidents are literally ‘your highnesses.’ And don’t forget that both G. Washington and T. Jefferson, despite their major contributions to our free society, were slave holders.

Off the soapbox. We look at Chief Crazy Horse also carved in a granite mountain top, much bigger than Mt. Rushmore, although unfinished. We discover rock shops and I buy petrified wood at $1.00 per pound and ammonite fossils. We eat reasonably good food at the Railhead buffet in Keystone.

Aug. 16: We drive through beautiful Custer State Park to the “Needles” highway, named for its needle-like tall rocks. Tunnels are 12 ft. wide, a tour bus came through with an inch to spare all around. To Hill City and the Institute of Geology, a good museum which includes a copy of the almost intact ‘Sue’ dinosaur skeleton, found in the area by Sue, a woman paleontologist. The skeleton was impounded by the federal government for several years because its ownership was in doubt but then sold to a museum.

Aug. 17: We hunt for wildlife and find it, large and small: A herd of buffalo, occasional mule deer, more prairie dogs, the begging burros. The latter stop cars on the highway for food, systematically go to every car that approaches and beg, then go on to the next. They don’t like to be petted although they come very close to you. Some look diseased, with many flies on their coats, and one of them nipped one of us in the arm.

Back on the soapbox: Our attitude toward animals has undergone a ‘disneyfication’: We think wild animals are cute and attribute all sorts of good human qualities to them. But many are mean, out to make a living by begging from tourists, and the cute prairie dogs could bite you. It just isn’t true that cute equals friendly.

Buffaloes, that symbol of the rugged West, will kill you if they feel threatened--they do however make a grand photographic spectacle. For example, while we shot a sequence of a buffalo calf nursing, three adult buffaloes arranged themselves between the nursing couple and our car, ready to defend mother and child.

We photographed bighorn sheep in the grass near the road, busily grazing and not lifting their heads for their portraits. When Carolyn had to cough, they all looked up. We kept them in that position by taking turns coughing.

Jewel Cave was sold out when we arrived in the afternoon, but we went into Wind Cave. This cave has been excavated up to 105 miles, and was most interesting geologically with its ‘boxwork’ ceilings, but without the photographic appeal that stalactites provide. According to our guide, Alvin McDonald, the teenager who discovered wind cave, led groups of tourists into the cave in the late 1890s. One time he got so excited when he noticed another part of the cave for the first time, that he climbed out of the cave and left his 12 tourists in the cave overnight, without light or food, of course. He remembered them in the morning and led them out of the darkness with a full refund of their admission fees. I had the feeling that our guide, who was leaving his job after this last tour with us, unconsciously sympathized with Alvin.

Aug. 18: We worry about the forest fire. It’s hard to get news on the radio, but we smell smoke and see smoke clouds. It’s called the Rockerville fire because of where it began. Our Best Western in Keystone wants us to leave because Keystone may be evacuated. Chuck finds us a Best Western in Hill City.

We visit the mammoth site in Hot Springs; 26,000 years ago mammoths fell into a sink hole and couldn’t get out. Researchers have been studying them and have given various skeletons names they (not I) consider funny: Bonaparte, for example, or, one skeleton complete except for its head--Marie Antoinette. Before leaving Hill City, we shoot 1880 railroad cars in display at the station. We stop at an underground waterfall, probably the result of a miner drilling in the wrong place, then visit Crystal Cave, and the Petrified Gardens.

I searched all the rock shops we stopped at for a perfect jaw with teeth of an ancestor of the camel which roamed the midwest together with other now extinct mammals. But I found only ammonites (forerunner of the nautilus) and other shell animals. Rock shops fascinate me. Their wares are older than antiques and more durable, although the intact fossils go to collectors and museums. Petrified wood is cheap to buy at $1.- per pound, but expensive to ship home.

Aug. 19: We visit a wild horse sanctuary. These most photogenic horses are kept in a huge area, but lured to remain in a tourist-accessible small field by means of food in pails provided for them. Their young are sold off, and the herd is kept at a certain number.

Aug. 20: To Deadwood. Spearfish Canyon loop is a beautiful road. The canyon walls are almost vertical, with a mix of deciduous and evergreen trees; colors are a subtle mix of greens. We take a hike down from a small and pretty waterfall.

Aug. 21: Fog, heavy rain. Sirens warn of floods. Relatively good food at the Four Aces, a restaurant and casino in Deadwood. This town commercializes Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane with reenactments three times daily of gun fights in the street. You can see the shoot-outs, gamble and eat cheaply. You can’t escape slot machines, every store or restaurant has them. Tchochkes stores sell souvenirs of the Old West, Black Hills gold, Western garb and old photos.

Aug. 22: Bear Butte today, one of Native Americans’ sacred mountains, a volcanic bubble, uplifted but unerupted, called a lacolith. On a path to the top, Native Americans tie string, ribbons and pieces of cloth on trees, probably with the same intent as messages left in the wailing wall. Small herd of buffalo near the Butte.

Aug. 23: We drive to Wyoming on the Interstate, after we stop at a fish hatchery and admire beautiful adult trout in a pond. We learn that trout are fertilized in the lab of the hatchery. Eggs and sperm respectively are squeezed from their bodies by what I assume are specially trained and licensed fish squeezers and fertilizers, a profession I had never thought of before.

Sundance, Wyoming, is about 30 miles from Devils Tower (who took the apostrophe?) National Monument. It’s a most impressive unexploded volcano. We shot it from different directions, in both sunshine and in a thunderstorm with hail. Geologists only agree that the earth eroded around the monument, but not on how the rock tower came to be there in the first place. Remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind? The space ship lands in front of Devils Tower.

Good prime ribs at Avo’s in Sundance. Fast food in the Midwest includes not just heating up fried foods but tastes like they’ve been rebreaded and refried. If your doctor thinks you’re short on calories and suffer from cholesterol deprivation, go to South Dakota. An example: I ask the Cafe waitress what cheese sticks are. She: Cheese, breaded and deep-fried. And apple sticks? Apple slices, breaded and deep-fried. Potato-munchies? Potatoes and cheese, breaded and deep-fried. What is chicken steak? Hamburger, breaded and deep-fried. Sirloin tips? Beef, breaded and deep-fried.

Aug. 24: We return to Devils Tower, walk around it, 1.3 mile, very close to the boulder field on the south side, and with a good view of the rock climbers. Beautiful scenery, rock columns, some broken off the tower (the last big one fell 10,000 years ago), pine trees partially burned, their bark eaten by porcupines. We return to Sundance by the northern route, stop at Aladdin whose population numbers 15. Through a birch and fern forest with many shy mule deer who run away when we stop the car. Last night dinner of the whole group at Avo’s with excellent prime ribs and much good feeling about the trip.

Aug. 25: We drive to Rapid City airport and fly to NYC without a hitch. I could have stayed much longer. As always, the trip was well planned by Chuck and Helen and was marked by the camaraderie and good cheer among club members that is typical of all our trips.