Northern Black Hills Westward Ho Part 6

Time to head north. We take Highway 87, a 14 mile spectacular drive that pierces needle like granite formations and winds it's way through pine & spruce forests and meadows ringed by birch and aspen. The fact that you can see birch and aspen together is one of the unique aspects of the Black Hills. It's where eastern and western flora and fauna co-mingle. It's literally where east meets west.

This stretch of road is called the Needles Highway. There's a rock formation that looks like the head of a needle that gives it it's name but you also "thread" a lot of caves.
































We stopped at Sylvan Lake and took a wet & rainy walk. It was misty and enchanting. The rock formations that ringed the back side of the lake were like ancient sentinels drawing us in, beckoning us to get out of the car and on foot to explore. We slipped through fallen rock caves and slivers of openings to get behind the lake where we found ourselves in a towering pine forest. Someone had carved a descending staircase from solid rock in one of the crevices we passed through. It all seemed very Tolkien-ish.

































Wet and hungry we head over to Sylvan Lake Lodge, one of five state run places to stay in Custer State Park. We had passable lunch. My son Dylan played piano in the rustic lobby. This was his first public performance and it was in front of more mounted game heads than people but hey. Nourished and warm we hit the winding and rock walled road again and make our way up to the infamous Deadwood.

I was looking forward to Deadwood. The Black Hills gold rush of 1876 gave rise to the lawless town of Deadwood. Gold, gambling and prostitutes were the main industries Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane are two notable residents buried in the boothill cemetery. Wild Bill was shot & murdered in a Saloon here in August 1876.













The town itself is named after the dead trees that were found in it's deep gulch of a valley. It's a National Historic Landmark. The 1880's era building's are well maintained and the two & three story brick & stone facades create a handsome frontier town.













That's where it all fell apart for me though. The town had fallen on hard economic times and opened it's doors wide to gambling in 1989. As you look at the town and street scape Deadwood looks handsome and prosperous. When I went into one of the buildings expecting shops or restaurants I found that all the buildings had been gutted, opened up and connected. Deadwood was a town of fake facades and behind them were huge block long gambling casinos. Oh well.












Here's Deadwood in 1888. Click on the picture to get a larger view.

















And here's a Black Hills Mountain Man 2008. I tried to get a front shot of this authentic character but he was too quick for me.

Not so authentic but fun for the kids and tourists is the Wild Bill shootout.




We were looking to soak up the old west so we bagged off Main St and headed to the Adams Museum. It was full of Deadwood history, a cowboy art show and a girl from Minnesota who had a crush on my son Dylan. :)

With the day growing long we hopped in the car to finish the push to our final destination, Spearfish Canyon. On the way we drove through Deadwood's sister town of Lead (they are literally shoulder to shoulder with each other). We jumped out quickly to see the world's biggest hole in the ground. The Homestake Gold Mine was started during the gold rush of 1876 and before its closing in 2002 it was the oldest, largest and deepest mine in the Western Hemisphere, reaching more than 8000 feet below the town of Lead.

Leaving Lead (pronounced Leed) we were soon on back roads populated with pines, creeks and small ponds. The beauty was relentless. As we neared the canyon more & more stunning "log cabins" appeared in the woods. Beauty always attracts money. :)

Before we knew it we were here. Spearfish Canyon Lodge. The location and setting were sublime. The lodge is located at a crossroads on a flat plain under steeply rising rock walls. It's like being in a river canyon with no water.




















Why did we choose this place? I found out the last scene in Dances With Wolves was filmed in Spearfish Canyon. It was the location of the winter campground of the Sioux. I love that movie. Dances With Wolves was in fact filmed all over western South Dakota. We went back in the canyon and found the actual filming location. The canyon was stunning. Here's how the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright described it on one of his many visits.

"great horizontal rock walls abruptly rising above torrential streams, their stratified surfaces decorated with red pine stems carving stratified branches in horizontal textures over the cream white walls, multiplied red pine trunks and the black green masses of the pine rhythmically repeating patterns, climbing, climbing until the sky disappears or was a narrow rift of blue as the clear water poured over pebbles or pooled under the heavy masses of green at the foot of the grand rock walls."

Nice.

The next day, just outside of Deadwood, we rode past this wagon train. Check it out. It was a 100th anniversary reenactment of the historic Ft. Pierre to Deadwood Trail Wagon Train.

We also stopped at Kevin Costner's Tatanka, Story of the Bison museum. Kevin created the museum after the success of Dances With Wolves to share what he learned while making the movie. Bison are an incredible animal perfectly suited for the extremes of the west. They were also the basis of life for Plains Indians. They used every part of the animal for spiritual inspiration, food, clothing, shelter, household items, tools, weapons, and ceremonial items.

If you've never seen Dances With Wolves or love the spirit and mythology of the American West and Native Americans check it out.




We couldn't be so close to Sturgis and not stop in, so we did. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally finished a week before we got there so the town was a sleepy little hamlet. It reminded me of Batavia, NY. One main drag lined with shops, some of them empty. Apparently the rally makes so much money businessmen can rent a building with a yearly lease and only open for business during the rally.

It's pedal to the medal as we head out of Sturgis. We're off to Montana and the Battle of Little Bighorn, otherwise know as Custer's Last Stand.

Oh yeah, anybody keeping track of animals out there. We saw a Marmot at Sylvan Lake and Trout & Deer at Spearfish Canyon. :)

Prairie Dogs and Rattlesnakes

It wasn't all Buffalo in South Dakota. There were critters underfoot.



And Prairie Dogs weren't the only one's inhabiting all the holes in the ground!


Whoa! Let's get outta here!

To the Badlands and back. Westward Ho Part 5

The next day we headed east into the rising sun leaving the Black Hills in our rear view mirror. We powered north on Rt 79 and turned right onto Rt 90 east towards the Badlands. Rolling hills and farms flattened and turned to prairie. Before we got to the mangled and deconstructed beauty of the Badlands we were once again in the beautiful nothingness and expansive skies of the prairie.

Sprung up under the endless sky is Wall, SD. It's a small town that was no more than a grid of about eight streets. It's named Wall because it's located near the northern wall of the Badlands and the main attraction in town is Wall Drug.

Wall Drug was a pharmacy started back in 1931. The Great Depression and the isolation of Wall conspired to put the pharmacy out of business, but a husband & wife team came up with an idea to lure passing travelers off nearby Rt 90 by offering free water to the travelers. They put up billboards along the highway and the rest is history.

Wall Drug is now a full blown tourist attraction, a Disneyland on the prairie. There's western wear shops, bookstores, souvenir shops, a bakery, a restaurant, a water fountain play area, a robotic T-Rex, a gold panning attraction and more shops in a newly opened rear building.

We had a perfect roadside attraction lunch of burgers & fries in the midst of an impressive collection of western art. My favorite part of Wall Drug was the enormous display of historic photographs in the new rear building. The photographs dated to the mid 19th century and chronicled the hardscrabble existence of pioneers and Sioux alike. It also displayed photographs of (then) Colonel George Custer's Black Hills expedition. It showed photographs from that expedition next to current day photos. The landscapes looked the same except where a wagon train of 500 wagons once was, the new photograph showed a modern roadway in the same spot.





Here's Dylan with a saloon gal in the faux facade western town area and of course another Buffalo picture ...this one's stuffed however.





Drew in the western shop. Draw pardner! And Drew upon the mythical jackalope.















Molly too. How did I get her to do that? :)

Belly's full and bladders empty we beeline towards the Badlands....except for one quick stop to gas up and clean the windows so we aren't photographing through a bug juice glaze.






The Badlands are an eerie and beautifully eroded environment of buttes, spires and pinnacles. The erosion puts on a show of jagged edged peaks that look like the entrance to Mordor. But there's also softness displayed in beautiful round multi-hued humps that look like half submerged giant marble eggs.












The Badlands got it's name in the 1800's from fur trappers who called this area the badlands because of the complete lack of drinkable water in the region. As with everything out here in South Dakota it's also rich in Sioux history being the place they did their Ghost Dancing in a valiant but futile effort to regain their lost lands and way of life to the tidal wave of whites.













Standing in the midst of this eroded landscape feels like being inside a drip sand sculpture. It's nature's own Gaudi style architecture for prairie god's. :) If you go to the Badlands I recommend going at dawn or being there as the sun sets so you can get great photos. The mid-day sun washes all the color out of the land.








With the sun arcing down to California we started back to the Black Hills. We went south and took Rt 44 West. The Badlands loomed to our right as we drove. Eventually we intersected them again as they extended southwest across our path. Just past the park we took a slight detour and ducked into the town of Scenic, South Dakota.

The Longhorn Saloon was once proclaimed to be the most dangerous bar in America with plenty of bullet holes in the ceiling to prove it... and it looked it. Check out the signage on the building. Unfortunately the town was completely closed down the night we drove in. Not a person in sight. It looked like a ghost town although I'm sure it comes alive on the weekends.





































Past Scenic we are surrounded by an approaching storm. The setting sun made silhouettes of the clouds to the east while to the south the sky was purple. It was vibrant and radiant against the spring-like greens on the fields and trees. Distant rain fell creating veils that reached down from the heavens and made a beautiful rainbow as the low sun reached in and touched everything. The west facing sides of every tree shone with a brilliant golden hue. It was gorgeous....then we saw lightning hit the ground!! We were happily taking pictures and video until we saw that. We all got back in the car!. We watched the rest of the unfolding spectacle through the front windshield like being at a drive-in.

Starving, we made our way into Rapid City. The city was bigger than I imagined it. It has about 60,000 residents. That's about the size of Utica, NY. It's the second biggest city in South Dakota and it wasn't a hick town. It was surprisingly urban & hip. We did a little poking around (this night and another morning) and found The Dahl Arts Center and a whole alley downtown dedicated to art (Art Alley) where anybody could, with permission, create art, write graffiti, create a mural etc... More important this night we found the Firehouse Brewing Company.
Molly & I had the Strong Arm Porter and the Brown Cow Ale. We had chicken wings, burgers, baked pasta with three cheeses and jambalaya but the piece de resistance was the Gorgonzola Ale soup! Wow. I ordered a cup. It was so good my son wanted a taste...he slurped up the rest of the cup! We had to order more, this time a bowl...and then another. Mmmm. If you're ever in Rapid City get yourself in front of a bowl of gorgonzola soup at The Firehouse Brewing Company.

Down the street from the brew pub is Prairie Edge. Prairie Edge is a retail, online and mail order gallery/store dedicated to Northern Plains Indian artwork and craftwork. The store is housed in a restored National Historic Registered building originally built in the 1800’s. It's beautifully done and the art work is stunning. I've always had a soft spot for native arts so I lingered there for a while sponging up the culture..



Night had fallen as we left the city to go back to Custer State Park. As we were leaving downtown we were stopped at a railroad crossing. A freight train came plodding down the track. To our left was an empty two story parking garage. Under fluorescent lights three kids lingered in the summer heat. As the train rolled past two of the kids, girls, started throwing stones at it, laughing and throwing more. We could hear the metallic ting when the stones hit. The third kid, a boy, skateboarded around their parked Corolla indifferent to the target practice. That's what I was expecting from South Dakota not Art Alley and Gorgonzolla soup. It was a good slice of country fun in a city that gave us some good surprises, I'm glad we saw that.

Black Hills. Monuments and More! Westward Ho Part 4

Time to hit the Black Hills tourist trail.
Number one on the list, Mt Rushmore.

I had preconceived notions of what Mt Rushmore looked like. I knew the Presidents were carved upon a tall stone wall, and they were, but what I never imagined was that Mt Rushmore was a real mountain. Seeing the monument from a distance on top of that mountain was a revelation and as we walked up to monument, even though we knew what we were going to see, the size and clarity of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt carved in stone was incredible. This sum was more than the image. The power of the mountain transformed into visionary leaders on an incredible scale was inspiring. Being at Mt Rushmore was more than seeing Mt Rushmore. It was like standing at an alter to the United States. As Rome fell, so one day might the US, but Mt Rushmore will stand forever.



There's a great visitor center there. There's a film on the making of the monument, the sculptor's studio is open to the public and a terrific trail takes you down into the debris field under the monument. From here you get unique and inspiring views of each President.

























When you leave loop around to the left of the monument and you'll get this great profile of Washington from the road.

Mt Rushmore must be one of the most widely visited American monuments. We had toyed with the idea of starting the "license plate game", the game where you simply try to spy license plates form all 50 states as you travel the highways and byways. Pulling into the parking garage at Mt Rushmore blew that notion up. We literally saw all 50 states as we looked for a parking spot, including Alaska and Hawaii!

Saying goodbye to the Presidents we head towards another national monument. This time it's the Sioux Nation who is creating a monument to native peoples and their leaders by carving a likeness of the legendary Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse's head is so large all four President's on Mt Rushmore would fit in it! The final monument will not just be Crazy Horse's head however. He will sit astride his surging mount, hair blowing free, pointing towards the future. It'll probably take another 100 years to finish carving. I recommend a visit.

































Here's a model of the finished sculpture in front of the mountain being carved.






















There was a huge visitor center here too filled with information about the sculptor and a center for Native American arts. In front of the monument we watched a dance performance where the air was broken with the rhythmic beat of one drum accompanied by a high pitched native chant. Graceful dancers went trance like entering the personae of their totem animal in the eagle dance or buffalo dance.

Even though the monuments have been inspiring and thrilling we have a 12 year old with us who has other activities in mind. In the town of Keystone we tour the Big Thunder Gold mine. Founded by two German immigrants they dug this mine part time for over 30 years ... and never struck it rich. We panned for gold in Battle Creek filling two viles with souvenir gold flakes and we took a ride up the Rushmore Tramway so we could ride the Alpine Slide luge! The old mining towns turned tourist towns reminded us of towns we know in the Adirondack's like Saranac Lake, Lake Placid and Old Forge.



Heading back to our room at the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park we are once again immersed in a surreal and thrilling wildlife spectacle. Safe in our 2000 pound vehicle we get the extraordinary experience of being inside a Buffalo herd. Check it out.

Wildlife Loop Road, Custer State Park. Westward Ho Part 3

Excited by our Buffalo & antelope sightings the night before Molly & I are up at 5:30 AM to drive the Wildlife Loop Road in Custer State Park.


















Driving the loop to Rt 87 and back is at least a 30 mile round trip. The landscape is gorgeous rolling prairie grass hills and scattered forests. We had the road to ourselves. The rising sun was our constant companion, ever changing the color of the sky and landscape like a painter trying to entice us deeper and deeper into their fantasy. The sun threw out star bursts as it tried to climb above the earth while the opposing hills took on a radiance reflecting the golden grasses.



































The beauty of the dawn was enough to please but the Wildlife Loop did not disappoint. We saw Buffalo, Pronghorns, Mule Deer and Turkeys.









We stopped for breakfast at the Blue Bell Lodge. They say the Blue Bell Lodge is as comfortable as an old pair of blue jeans ...and it was. It's a beautiful log lodge, western style with field stone fireplaces, smooth logs and finished woods, well taken care of and polished. The interior shone in the morning light. We're up so early Molly & I have the place to ourselves. The food is good. Sausage, eggs and coffee. I can't resist sitting at the bar before we leave because the bar stools are horse saddles. :) Giddy up.

As we round the last bend in Rt 16A to get back to the State Game Lodge we encounter a huge surprise. The Buffalo herd has migrated into the State Game Lodge area and they are everywhere!



Back at the lodge it's time to get the boys out of bed. Today we tour the Black Hills!

Custer State Park, South Dakota. Westward Ho Part 2

We started to see hills in the distance as we crossed the border from Nebraska to South Dakota. The lodge pole pine covered hills look black from a distance, thus, the name Black Hills. General George Custer, a Lieutenant at the time, lead an expedition here that found gold in 1874. The gold rush that followed attracted prospectors and miners into what was Sioux Indian land. It spawned the legendary town of Deadwood where famed outlaws like Wild Bill Hickcock and Calamity Jane lived and now lie buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery. The gold rush was the beginning of the end for the nomadic Sioux as whites moved in and the government reneged on their treaties and took the Black Hills from them. Little did Custer know his discovery of gold was also the beginning of his end.

We didn't know what to expect here. I thought the area was going to be poor, rural, backward, desolate and dirty. I was wrong. It was absolutely gorgeous. For me it turned out to be the surprise of the trip.

As we made our way off the prairie and into the Black Hills the diversions started to multiply. We drove through the enticing town of Hot Springs where natural hot springs and fossilized mammoth bones beckoned. We didn't stop however. We'd been in the car about 9 hours so with blinders on I drive straight through Wind Cave National Park and a Wild Mustang Refuge focused on getting to the Custer State Park Game Lodge before dark.

As soon as we got on Rt87 the magic started. Buffalo. A solitary Buffalo. Wow, what a majestic creature....and huge! Solid, broad shouldered, head down, horns curling outward, black inky eyes following us as we pass. I hoped we see Buffalo. Little did I know, we'd see a lot. Over the course of the next two weeks we'd see a couple thousand but we never, and I mean all four of us, never lost the thrill of seeing or being in a herd of Buffalo.


Here we are on Rt87 entering Custer State Park. This is literally where the Buffalo roam and the deer and antelope play.









When we finally got to the State Game Lodge it was dark. The lodge was woodsy. It had a great porch and field stone fireplaces. Presidents Coolidge and Eisenhower used it as summer White House's. We squeaked in just under the wire for dinner service and dined on Buffalo, Elk, Venison and local trout. What'd you expect at the Game Lodge? They had a wonderful wine list too that Molly & I partook of after which we all went gently into the night and slumber.

NE Colorado & Western Nebraska - Westward Ho Part 1

We're in virgin territory. We're traveling the northern plains and the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. This is home to the fabled Wild West and the great Indian tribes of the Sioux, Pawnee and Cheyenne. It's also home to the legends of Wild Bill Hickcock, Calamity Jane, General George Custer and Buffalo Bill. And, it's the landscape of the tuneful "Give me a home where the Buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play". I'll become my own Buffalo Bill as I explore one of the great landscapes of the world.




On the east coast our world is framed by the environment. The urban and suburban developments, the trees and forests. We have to look up to see the sky. That framing is flipped on it's head out west. The Great Plains are framed by the sky. Everything else is subservient.


Traveling on the plains our existence shrinks to ant-like proportions. We revel in the solitude. We're captured in euphoric gaze at the stratospheric billowing clouds painting the heavens. We're in awe of the pioneers and the travelers of the Oregon Trail. On every ridge I expect to see a line of Sioux sitting majestic on their painted ponies surveying us as friend or foe. I think of two of my favorite movies, Dances With Wolves and Pow Wow Highway and love that I have entered their landscapes.























Cutting through the plains are gully's, gulches washouts and mini-canyons. Striations of sediment stripe the exposed earth and give color to the golden grasslands. Occasionally in western Nebraska buttes & bluffs rise from nowhere. These were significant landmarks for the great western migrations of the Oregon and Mormon Trails. I think of Bonanza and every cowboy movie I've ever seen as grass, sage and prickly pear cactus roll away from a gulch back towards a distant towering butte.







At desperately empty crossroads on the oceans of prairie we find abandoned cars patina'd to desirable finishes and ghosted homesteads standing as monuments to a past generations life's work.










It's not void of life out here though. There are a few homesteads, huge cultivated farms and even larger grazing lands with Texas Longhorns and Black Angus. Freight trains too cut across the landscape, their orange engines cutting a striking figure against the deep blue sky.



































We flew into Denver from Boston and spent our first night in Boulder Colorado. In the morning we headed east, the Rockies receding and diminishing in our review mirror. Our goal was to get out on the plains. We head north through the Pawnee National Grasslands ...on a dirt road. Very cool and adventurous. We collected bugs on our windshield and streamed a billowing plume of dust as we broke the silence of the nothingness.





Somewhere in the middle of nowhere we find our road washed out. What do we do? We go for it!






Further on we inconspicuously entered western Nebraska. We had no idea where we were but as long as I kept the sun on my left I knew we were heading north and we'd eventually run into Rt 80. We did, and continued to head north to the Oregon Trail landmark of Scott's Bluff where we took a slight detour east. We passed Courthouse Rock and Chimney Rock on our way to the town of Alliance to see the infamous Carhenge, a recreation of Stonehenge made out of cars!





With the sun arcing downward on the western horizon and satisfied with our first day's explorations we make haste for South Dakota. We know we're getting close when we hear the strains of Lakota tribal chanting on a radio station broadcasting from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Welcome to South Dakota.