Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Captain’s Log – Star Dates 08222009 through 08242009Location: Eastern Rim of Galaxy of Wyoming
(Translation: Mountain View RV Park, Sundance, WY; AB Campground, Cheyenne, WY)
Trip Miles: 7800.8
Diesel Price: $2.51/gal in Sundance; 40.7 gallons loaded.
Report from Engineering: Everything’s cool! Keep on truckin’!
Weather: Bright sunshine and thunderstorms with high winds; Daytime temperatures around 80-85F.
I have a Patty Loveless CD playing as we roll into Wyoming on I-94. I LOVE that woman! She is, without ANY doubt …whatsoever…the greatest female country singer alive on the planet today! Her rendition of old country standards is PERFECT for the miles and miles and miles of driving we are required to do while visiting this Rocky Mountain state!
Wyoming is a HUGE piece of real estate with very few people in it! Ninth in size among the U.S. states, it covers nearly one hundred thousand square miles. In this great expanse live roughly half a million inhabitants. Wyoming ranks fiftieth in population among the fifty states. Its total population is approximately one-sixth the population of San Diego County, California. We crossed into the state at Beulah, population 33!
Upon our check-in at the pleasant Mountain View RV Park in Sundance, the proprietor suggested we take in the local rodeo…which was to be held at the fairgrounds about a mile from our campsite! Rodeo is the Sport of Kings here in Wyoming. The locals know how to ride exceedingly well, having learned from early childhood, and the horses that they ride are beautiful. The rodeo was an intimate event, with the fans watching from the backs of pickup trucks and the rails of the rodeo ring. The local Chamber of Commerce was selling the hot dogs, Budweiser and Coors Lite. Courageous participants came in from Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming. The events were exciting to watch, particularly the bareback bronc riding and bull riding! It is no news that this sport is highly dangerous…the EMT’s were on hand to pick up any wreckage. Watching this evening rodeo was twenty bucks well spent!
“There are things in nature that engender an awful quiet in the heart of man; Devil’s Tower is one of them.” --- F. Scott Momaday, Kiowa author
I have a gripe with Col. Richard Dodge who named this inspiring 867-foot volcanic wonder Devil’s Tower back in 1875. It seems more appropriate to me to call it Bear’s Lodge like the Kiowa did. The Tower has great spiritual significant to several Indian tribes, who gather here for ceremonies each June when the National Park Service has restricted activities such as climbing. About 5,000 climbers come each year to climb the Tower, establishing over 220 routes to the summit. We walked the 1.3-mile path around the Tower in reverent silence early on a Sunday morning.
Our favorite view of the Tower is through a large granite sculpture, entitled “Circle of Sacred Smoke”. This sculpture was created in 2008 by internationally renowned Japanese sculptor Junkyu Moto as part of his international peace project…
Remember the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind? And it’s musical theme DOO-DOO-DOO-DOO-DOOOH? The theme is by Zoltan Kodaly. Devil’s Tower was the filming location for this famous film!
Upon the strongest of local recommendations, we ‘did lunch’ at Cindy B’s at Aladdin, WY, population 15…while listening to a couple of local farmers talk about their hay crops. The lunch recommendation was well justified!
Cheyenne is a great place to watch trains! The long Union Pacific freights stop here to change crews. Outside the artfully restored railroad depot, there is a viewing area where we watched a crew change and departure of a very long mixed-freight train…up close and personal! After seeing U.P. Big Boy 4004(the largest steam locomotive ever built) on display in a Cheyenne park, I was in hog-heaven! The Commodore enjoyed the train view, too! We ate a great lunch at Shadows, inside the depot.
Driving south on US 85 across Weston and Niobrara Counties, we crossed a succession of enormous basins framed by long mesas. The land is sweet and green and gold and the cattle are fat. There’s not much human presence out here…this place makes eastern Nevada look overpopulated! We passed a sign that said Lost Springs, Population 1…Shawnee looks like it died out years ago…we keep rollin’ south…
Onward Into the Galaxy of Colorado!
Affectionately,
Captain Baldy
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Captain’s Log --- Star Dates 08192009 through 08212009Location: Star Cluster of Heroes
(Translation: Mount Rushmore National Memorial and surroundings, South Dakota)
Trip Miles – 7300.0
Diesel Price -- $2.68 per gallon; 27.5 gallons
Engineer’s Report – Pesky fresh water leak, otherwise we’re good. Clear for transit to galaxy of Wyoming.
Weather – Brilliant! Daytime temperatures ranged from 49F to 81F.
How does the son of Danish immigrants contain enough genius and love to carve a granite mountain into exquisite 60-foot-high likenesses of great and good men? Of course, Gutzon Borglum was aided by a team of courageous and skilled drillers over a fourteen-year period. Ninety percent of the carving work was done with dynamite! What skill! Barbara was lost in photography here, as befits the artist that she is. Trust us… the sight of Mount Rushmore National Memorial WILL arrest you!
The Crazy Horse Memorial, some twenty miles from Mount Rushmore, will stop you in your tracks as well! This is a huge work-in-progress…a work initiated by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear and Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski back in 1948. Stupendous in scope, it will take generations, perhaps centuries, to complete. Whatever time is required, this memorial to a great Lakota chief and to all American Indians will be a Wonder of the World in design and in size. No government funding was accepted by the sculptor for this project, which is now directed by the late Korczak’s widow and family. When complete, the statue will be 641-feet long by 563-feet high…the most immense memorial ever created…by white people…to honor the American Indian and his heroes. Rightly so! Workers are now blocking out the 22-story horse head and have painted an outline of its 45-foot ear and 16-foot-wide eye, located 260 feet below Crazy Horse’s face.
Down in Custer State Park, Commodore Barbara sighed as she wistfully scanned the horizon, hoping for a glimpse of a distant bison. Suddenly, she heard the Captain shout, “HOLY S---!”, and jam on the brakes of our truck. About a hundred feet from us was a herd of bison casually ambling down the center of the road! I never--- not EVER---imagined I’d be cutting a path through a herd of wild buffalo. However, seeing as I was driving our well-armored F-250, I did exactly that in order to help a group of bikers who lined up behind us. The critters nonchalantly moved to the side at the last second. We didn’t want to upset them, especially the big bulls. Experts say they can get real mean!
Here are a few of the things we did NOT do while visiting the Black Hills…we did NOT “do” the Presidential Wax Museum, Old McDonald’s Farm, Reptile Gardens, Bear Country, the Black Hills Maze or the Sitting Bull Crystal Cave! We did not do paintball at “Splat!” nor did we check out the Mangy Moose Bar & Grill! Sorry, we didn’t want to part with the required cash to share in these overwhelming experiences! What we DID do is take an engaging FREE tour of the Mount Rushmore Black Hills Gold Jewelry Factory and spend a couple of hours in Rapid City’s arty downtown district. We did some geocaching in this district amid life-size bronze statues of U.S. presidents on each street corner. All our presidents were represented thusly except for Bill Clinton, Dubya and Barack. We’re sure they’ll show up in due course!
In addition to Barbara’s high school reunion, our visit to South Dakota’s Black Hills was a main objective of our journey. There is so much to see and do in the Black Hills – hiking miles of forest trails, enjoying lovely lakes and seeing an abundance of wildlife and unique historic sites! We are delighted we came here and wish we had the time to experience more of the Black Hills’ many attractions!
We are now rolling west on I-90…Wyoming is 17 miles away.
Affectionately,
Captain Baldy
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