The Silent "I"

South Dakota: Mount Rushmore

After our jaunt to Devil's Tower and Prairie Dog town, we made our way to South Dakota.  Mt. Rushmore is one of the sites I've wanted to see since I was a kid, from looking at encyclopedias and from the Alfred Hitchcock film "North by Northwest."  More recently, my interest was piqued by "National Treasure:  Book of Secrets," though I'm pretty sure that there is no city of gold buried beneath it.

We arrived in mid-afternoon in Keystone, South Dakota, which is sort of a cowboy-presidential themepark of a town.  We checked into Rushmore Express, a comfortable motel about two miles from Mt. Rushmore.  After a big meat extravaganza dinner at the Powder House Lodge, we made our way to the historic site.

On the road up to the entrance, you can see the giant presidential head carvings after you turn a certain bend.  It reminded me of seeing the Pyramids in Egypt looming over the horizon, like something incongruous and out of place in the surrounding woods.  The sun was starting to hang low in the horizon.  We parked the car in the multi-level parking structure and headed up to the visitors center.

The giant heats of the four presidents--Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln--loomed above the granite mini-mall of gift shops, visitor information centers, and restaurants.  You walk through two rows of stone pillars featuring the flags of the fifty states to get to the prime viewing platform.  Below that is a large amphitheatre with a stage at the base of the mountain.

We arrived just in time for the Evening Lighting Ceremony, which featured a young woman in a park ranger outfit named Summer leading the crowd in a game of presidential trivia.  Her long, wavy, strawberry blonde hair flowed out from under her Smokey the Bear hat, and she seemed sweet.  After the trivia game, she showed a file about the President's featured on Mt. Rushmore.  After that, she told the story of the writing of the "Star Spangled Banner", reciting the first three verses from memory, and then singing the familiar stanza in a high, operatic voice. I wasn't sure if I was at a national park or a Miss Teen Park Ranger pageant at this point.  She seemed sweet and earnest, and really seemed to enjoy her job as Ranger bunny.

Wyoming: Devil's Tower

After our jaunt to Little Big Horn, we motored onward back to Wyoming and spent the night in Gillette, Wyoming.  Frank and Alex took advantage of the motel's pool and went swimming to burn off some Alex's pent up energy from long days in the car.

From Gillette, we took a detour to Devil's Tower, the granite mountain made famous by the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."  I was texting my MOMocrat friend Cynematic about some MOMocrats arrangements for the Democratic National Convention.  She texted me, "Don't go with the alien, no matter how friendly they seem."

We didn't encounter any aliens, just a lot of bikers on the road and in the park.  This month is evidently a big bike rally across the west, and thousands of bikers are roaming around, decending on one small town after another, the most famous rally being in Sturgis, SD.  Famous, or I should say "infamous" since that is the site where John McCain encouraged his wife to enter a topless beauty pageant recently, showing what a great advocate for women he really is.

The bikers themselves were friendly enough, and lined up to listen to the Park Ranger's lecture on the Tower, it's geology and formation, just like the elderly tourists in Winnebagos and families like ours with bored small kids.  One elderly couple pointed out some climbers nearing the top of the tower, and loaned Alex their binoculars to take a look.  The climbers were hard to see, so we had to take their word for it that the white speck at the top was a person.  If you look really, really hard an enlargement of the picture above, you can see a white speck in the middle, which is allegedly a man helping a woman climber finish the 3-4 hour climb.  Or maybe it's really a large bird or a basket of fruit.  It's kind of open to interpretation, in my opinion.

Goodbye, Yellowstone; Hello, Montana

On Monday, August 18, we had to leave our cushy suite at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone, to travel on to our next stop:  Little Big Horn in Montana.  We went out for one last view of Old Faithful and to find a kind soul to take our picture.  We met an older gentleman from Tennessee, who was very knowledgeable about the park, and said he'd been coming there since 1968.  Frank had met him on one of his early morning photo walks, and he gladly snapped our picture for us.

We drove out of the park after another hearty breakfast at the Old Faithful Inn dining room, and headed toward the Northeast exit/entrance at Roosevelt.  Our first stop on the way was Artists Point, a beautiful, scenic spot with a view of the yellow rocks and the falls in the distance. 

I could see why this was called "Artists Point" since this was just about as inspirational a scene as anything you would find on the planet.  We didn't see any painters around, but hundreds of tourists with all makes and models of cameras swarmed the area, looking for a good shot of the falls and the canyon.  I think between the two of us, Frank and I took about 10,000 pictures of this spot alone. 

The rock on either side of the falls had a yellowish hue, which changed colors in the sun.  According to Frank, this was why the park is named "Yellowstone" after the yellow stones near the falls.  The water coming off the falls and into the canyon was a gorgeous deep turquoise blue, almost as blue as the ocean in the Caribbean.  The rocks, the deep green pine trees, and the blue rushing water made for a a festival of color.

We left just as another bus load of elderly tourists pulled up and headed on out of the park.  I was sad to leave Yellowstone, despite being sick the entire time. 

We got to see one last herd of buffalo on our way out, and one that was pretty close to the road.  Luckily, buffalo are not the quickest creatures when they are undisturbed and grazing, so I got a fairly good shot of one of them by the roadside.

Yellowstone: Fire in the Hole Adventure

We woke up at the Old Faithful Inn and looked out the window to see Old Faithful sputtering and smoking, with a smaller crowd than later in the day.  The tour buses usually pull up in the afternoon and hordes of people descend to see the famous show.  Early in the morning, it's just the people staying nearby and a few park employees passing through.  Off in the distance, we could see other geysers smoking on the rocky plain.

We've been on the road for a week, so it was time to check out the laundry facilities so we could have fresh clothes and get ride of the stinky stuff in our luggage.  The laundry is conveniently located next to the Medical Clinic, so I went to be checked out by a doctor.  My bronchial crud disease seemed to have taken hold with a vengeance, and my voice is hoarse from coughing and not very pleasant to listen to, I'm sure. 

According to the doctor/nurse/medical person with a stethoscope named Eddie, I have some kind of allergy/asthmatic condition brought on by the fact that things are blooming in Yellowstone and the high altitude.  He gave me an inhaler, said he saw no signs of infection, and $250 later, I was on my way to fold laundry, feeling no better than when I went in.  I took a few hits off the inhaler, breathed a little easier, and continued to sound Marge Simpson and Harvey Fierstein's love child.

Yellowstone: Old Faithful

Our first morning at Yellowstone, I woke up hearing someone loudly coughing and hacking and groaning.  It took me a minute to figure out that someone was me.  I woke up with some kind of bronchitis/cold/crud that wasn't helped at all by the high altitude. 

Frank was up at dawn to go out to take pictures in the morning light, and didn't return for several hours.  I was beginning to worry a little that he might have been Smokey the Bear's breakfast, but then he came bounding in and was enthusiastic about his photo excursion.  I told him I felt like crap on a stick, which I'm sure was quite a downer for him.  Just call me "Mrs. Buzzkill" henceforth.

We are staying in the historic Old Faithful Inn, built in 1904.  They've modernized it quite a bit, but the rustic beams in the four-story atrium are signs of a bygone era.  The hotel was nearly destroyed in the 1988 wildfires, but a great deal of work by firefighters saved the Inn.  It's a marvelous place, and you have to book reservations at least 6 months in advance.  The first time Frank called in February, they were booked solid, but he was persistent and got one from a cancellation on the second or third try.  We had to settle for a suite (bummer, I know), which was more than we budgeted for, but the only thing available.  The suite is a spacious, two room mini-apartment, with a fridge and complimentary soft drinks and a box of chocolates.  For this price, you can bet we will be sucking down those soft drinks with wild abandon.  My dentist will certainly not be pleased.

We ate at the all-you-can stomach buffet in the Inn, loading up on scrambled eggs, french toast and breakfast meat.  We decided to venture out to one of the other lodges for some shopping and to see the morning eruption of the Old Faithful geyser, just across from the hotel.

Jackson Hole, WY: Moon, Movies & Moose

On Friday, the fifth day of our Great American Family Roadtrip, we checked out of our hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, saying goodbye to their biker clientele and excellent wifi connection.  We had breakfast for a second time at The Bunnery (it was that good), and shopped along the main street.  Alex and Frank went to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, while I headed to a mountaineering shop to buy some walking sticks for our next hike, and other gear for our trip to Yellowstone.

There was an Art Fair in town with a few hundred artists selling their wares in the local park.  We browsed the exhibitors' booths while Alex made fast friends with a little girl named Lori from Denver and played on the playground with her.  Frank sat down to keep an eye on Alex, and I went off to look at the inner row of exhibits.

I came to one that I particularly liked, by a fellow named Owen Mortensen from Utah, called Botanical Art. Owen's art is very simple, and uses pressed leaves and flowers to create simple designs on clean backgrounds. I really liked his aesthetic, and dragged Frank back to the booth to see a large piece with Ginko leaves that I liked.  Frank thought it was too big to fit in our space, but we agreed that one featuring small tropical leaves would work.  We ended up buying two pieces from him.  I also bought a set of handcarved salad tongs from another vendor to replace the ones I broke recently.

Jackson Hole, WY: Cowboy Disneyland

We rolled into Jackson Hole, Wyoming late Wednesday night, and couldn't see much of anything other than one big elk crossing the road on the dark mountain pass.  We woke up to find ourselves in what looked to me like Cowboy Disneyland.  The downtown is a quaint, western-themed array of high-end shops, souvenir shops, bars, and restaurants.  Instead of horse-drawn carriages or taxis, tourists ride around in mock-stage coaches. 

Idaho: When in Jerome

We woke up Wednesday morning at a Best Western in Jerome, Idaho, population 7,780, plus the three of us. We could have stayed in the booming metropolis of Twin Falls, but Frank insisted that we stay in Jerome so we would be closer to the destination for the day:  The Hagerman Fossil Beds.  Why we didn't just stay in Hagerman, I don't know.

We left Jerome with no more than a blink, and headed to nearby Hagerman to find the National Park Visitor Center to find out about the Hagerman Fossil Beds.  The Fossil Beds are a large archeological find, but you can't actually walk around there, since the land is too unstable.  The Hagerman Horses were prehistoric forerunners of modern horses, the equus simplicidens, probably the link between prehistoric and modern horses.  The Fossil Beds are famous because there were a group of about 26 horses found in one spot, but they are not sure why they were all congregated there together.  The Park Ranger said that they thought it could have been a flash flood that did in the horses, but no one knows.  Horse history is not exactly my cup of java, but Frank was intrigued by this, so we drove out to the site to take some pictures.

Nevada: Cowboys, Canyons & Sushi

We arrived around 9pm on Monday night in Elko, Nevada, after a long drive down a barren strip of road that seemed to go on forever and a day.  It was wonderful to see the lights of a city twinkling in the distance as we approached Elko, even if they were mainly casino lights.  After a long stint in the desert, we had to be reminded that this was the other thing Nevada is famous for--gambling.  We ate dinner at one of the casinos, and had to put up with endless questions from Alex about why kids could not play these games, which looked fun, and didn't cost that much (penny slots abounded).

In the morning, we packed up and headed out again, and decided to check out downtown Elko.  It's a small, western town with a few storefronts, casinos, and businesses that look faded in the white-hot sun.

We found a sushi restaurant around the corner from the Western Folklife Center and decided to try it.  It was an odd place, run by young, attractive Caucasian women who all looked more like they should be playing on the US Olympic Beach Volleyball team than serving up nigiri in a dusty cowboy town.  Frank said the sashimi was remarkably fresh, but the other food (including Alex's Kraft Macaroni and Cheese) was somewhat tepid.  The miso soup tasted like used bathwater with chunks in it.  I don't recommend it.

We made our way to the Western Folklife Center, home of the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and went in to look at the Buckaroo exhibit.  The exhibit was a small collection of artifacts and photos celebrating Hispanic culture and its contributions to the cowboy lifestyle in the high desert region.  The word buckaroo in an anglicization of the Spanish word vaquero which is what Spanish cowboys are called.  You live, you learn.

The museum is small, but the collection was nicely laid out, and there is a short film about cowboy life that was in a room that they must also use to store meat in, because it was so cold in there I could only sit through about five minutes without loosing feeling in my extremities.  I wandered through the old timey saloon replica and back to the gift shop and left Frank and Alex to watch the movie.  We had read about the museum in a guidebook, and it was a nice respite from driving and scenery.  The women who worked there were friendly and curious to know how we found them.  If you're ever in Elko, Nevada, I recommend a visit to the museum, but skip the sushi.

Sand Mountain: Like Iraq, Only In Nevada

We left Mono Lake after a pleasant hike and photo opportunity, and headed down the long, lonely stretch of road known as Highway 50.  This was the first transcontinental highway, named the Lincoln Highway, built in 1915.  The highway is known as "The Loneliest Road in America," and after driving for an hour without seeing another car, a house, or any sign of human activity, I knew why.  At times like these, you start to long for a glimpse of the Golden Arches, just to know that civilization as you know it exists.

Our destination was the Sand Mountain, near Fallon, Nevada.  Alex grew restless in the back seat, and kept asking whether we had arrived in the middle of nowhere yet, and Frank said, "Why yes, I think we have." 

When Alex asked how we would know when we got there, Frank said, "You can't miss it."

After several hours of desert landscape rimmed by far-off mountains, I was astonished to look up and see a big white mountain of sand rising up like a mirage in the middle of the desert.  It looked incongruous to the rest of the landscape, like some movie set from Lawrence of Arabia that had been built long ago and abandoned.  Aptly named "Sand Mountain", it was, in fact, a big mountain of find white sand.