STONEFACED

We left Osea and Emily and motored east for the last leg of our trip in that direction.  Strange things began to happen.  First the engine died and we were stopped dead in the road.  Then a roadside sign began to spin around rapidly.  The sun disappeared.  A bright light illuminated the rig from above, and strange musical notes began to repeat, over and over, and a gigantic rumbling filled the air.  Yikes, we were having a proximate face-to-face of the tertiary persuasion.

Well, that explained most of it.  The rumbling source was revealed a little further on.

You encounter the most bizarre things on the road.  And Devil’s Tower has to rank right up there.  Formed by erosion of the softer materials, leaving the harder rock, it reminded us most of Devil’s Postpile near Mammoth, CA.  The vertical columns are really neat, and change colors depending upon the sun and angle.  Spielberg made a good choice of venues.  I’d like to fatten this entry up with a few more factoids about the place, but I’m writing this about 3 weeks after the fact, and 6,000 miles away from my pamphlets and maps.  Sorry, the pics will have to do the talking.  Although this mountain is sacred to the local tribes, one still is able to climb it with permits.  A group was just starting up as we arrived, and clearly they weren’t going to make it to the top today.  As the wind was rising and the temps dropping, I didn’t envy them this night on the rock.

We got here fairly late in the afternoon, so we opted to spend the night nearby rather than try to push on to the Black Hills.  We ended up in the tiny town of Sundance, where SR14 and I-90 meet.  Nothing much there, but it was quiet and a good park to stay in.  We took off the next morning for our final destination of the trip, Mount Rushmore and its surrounds.  The town of Custer seemed to be the best central location for getting around on the scoot to the various attractions, so we headed there.  It’s a one-street town, easy to walk around.  They celebrate the local bison herds that dot the area by placing fiberglass buffs all around the town, painted by various local artists.  They look pretty neat.

We got settled into the campground, which was located about a mile out of town, down a back road, offloaded the scoot and took off for Rushmore.  We took the scenic route (well, they all are, but this was pretty good) along the Iron Mountain road.  Scoot heaven.  Twists, turns, and pretzel portions where the road doubled back under itself.  Nice!  This is the preferred route because it goes through three tunnels hewn out of the rock, and through each of them you get a framed view of Rushmore in the distance.  Well, at least with the naked eye.  I couldn’t get a shot that showed it clearly, so use your imagination.

You can sorta make out Washington’s mug on the left.  It’s smaller than you think in this pic.  His head is just below the ridge line.  This road is absolutely verboten to RV’s, trucks, etc.  The tunnels are neither wide nor tall enough.  From the marks at the entry edges, it would appear that some clown (s ) didn’t get the word.  We got to the park and found that this was the one national monument in the country where the geezer pass didn’t get us in free.  The monument technically didn’t cost anything, but parking did.  It’s a private concession that paid for the parking lots to be built and maintained.  Oh, well.  We’ll be outsourcing Congress before we know it.  Anyway, the monument is pretty impressive, and has a good museum/interpretive center.  Here’s the five great heads:

Okay, okay, just four.

As we were leaving, the exit road sort of wound around the monument’s left side and we got an unexpected profile.

As we rode back to Custer, we passed the entrance road to the Crazy Horse monument and debated going in.  We could see it from the road, and it wasn’t all that impressive.  It’s about 90% incomplete, and since the guy whose idea it was, and who did most of the original work, is long dead, it seems his family is just milking the tourist trade for something that will never be finished.  Maybe that’s a bit unfair, but we didn’t bother going in.  Back at the RV, we had just collapsed on the couches when our neighbor returned with his tow vehicle.

Well, this IS the wild west.

All that hard scooting wore us out, so it was time to sit back with a game on the tube, emails on the laptop, Loni’s wonderful chicken risotto and . . . a PIE from the local bakery.  Life IS good.

The next day we lit out for the Wind Cave National Park.  This is one of the oldest in the park system, and was discovered in 1881 by a cowpoke who happened to hear wind wooshing out of a hole in the ground, barely big enough for a man to crawl into.  It seems that the wind is a function of the air in the cave seeking to equalize pressure with the air above ground.  American Indian stories dating back centuries spoke of a "hole that breathes cool air." The exploration of Wind Cave began. In 1903 Wind Cave became the first cave anywhere in the world to be designated a national park. Cave explorers are still finding new rooms and passages, and currently it is ranked the fifth longest cave in the world.  We only got to go into about a half mile of it, but it was pretty good stuff.  No, Loni, I think it’s this way.

It’s a “dry” cave, with minimal water seepage, and is best known as holding 95% of the known “box” formations, which are formed when the softer inner materials erode away, leaving the harder “walls” behind.

We’ve been in a number of caves around the country, but haven’t ever seen formations like these.  They’re not as spectacular as stalagmites/tites, but pretty interesting nonetheless.

As it was the major football (World style) weekend of the year (Manchester United v. Chelsea), we decided to just vegetate our last day here in the rig.  We have a lovely spot to ourselves, and all the comforts of home.  Just what RVing should be!

Like all of our trips, this has been a great one.  I got to see parts of the country I’ve never been to, and Loni got to re-live some favorite childhood memories of her family vacations.  Now for the long slog back home.  Through endless promos for Little America, the world’s biggest truck stop in the middle of nowhere, past the weird otherworldliness of the Bonneville Salt Flats, across the endless tracks of central Nevada, punctuated by truth-in-advertising, and then to a brief get-together with LazyDaze friends near Tom’s Place in the Eastern Sierras.

After a couple of days with the gang, we did our farewells and headed south along 395, going down the long, steep Sherwin Grade descending into Bishop and the Owens Valley.  This is a sight we could never tire of.

Only to be confounded by a sight we never expected to see.  After a month on the road in the high country, with only one rainfall during a single night, we never expected to get a wet greeting back to California!  But it was beautiful, and a fine end to our trip.