South Dakota day 1

September 4

We awoke in our van to see that the campers and trucks around us in the Walmart parking lot had changed during the night. We wanted to reach Mount Rushmore today by sunrise, as we had been encouraged to do by my good friend Deryl. Because we were so far east in this time zone, sunrise was later than it had been a few days ago when we were in Butte, MT. Yet we lost this advantage and started out a little too late for sunrise at the mountain of the presidents. Some mornings are just harder than others to get up to speed that quickly. My face hurt enough by now that resting my swollen cheek on my pillow required careful placement. I needed mild painkillers so I wouldn't have to deal with the distraction.

We did get to Mount Rushmore ahead of almost everyone else, however, even if the sun did get there before we did. Access to this National Monument is via parking garages that everyone has to pay for (no free pass here!). Our van had enough clearance here, but we drove through and parked under the sun anyway. The day was getting hot already this early in the morning, but being able to get out of this lot was more important to me than having a place in the shade.

Razelle and I had breakfast in the cafeteria. The gift shop had yet to open this early. By the time we finished eating the balcony facing the faces was full of photographers and posing subjects. In no time, after the gift shop opened its doors there were lines at the cash registers.

I walked down a series of steps to the Sculptor's Studio. I mentioned Razelle's disability to the ranger there and she arranged for us to drive in below to a special staff parking lot so Razelle could hear the interpretive talk. I reclimbed the steps and got Razelle into the gift shop for a few significant purchases; then we walked upstream against the onrush of incoming visitors and entered our van, and drove to the special gate where I called the number on the gate, spoke to someone the ranger had spoken to and the gate magically opened.

Razelle was so grateful for this gesture that, after the interpretive talk, she presented the ranger with one of our refrigerator magnets. We exchanged email addresses, too. 

Then we drove to the Crazy Horse Monument. The admission price there was a little steep, but I understood why that was. This project is a private undertaking and is only financed by those who visit. Again, the crowd was thick. I dropped Razelle off and found a great spot to park. We entered and watched the film, then went through the museum's halls and gift shop to the restaurant. They had bison stew and bison burgers on the menu.

We tried to take pictures of each other with the sculpture of Crazy Horse against the sculpted mountain, as it looks today, but so many other people were doing the same that we needed to be assertive to accomplish this. In the gift shop I finally found a dream-catcher worth buying. I also bought a refrigerator magnet with an appropriate slogan. It says, "Never forget your dreams."

We left Crazy Horse and drove back past Mount Rushmore, and past Keystone to a tunnel through the mountain. Razelle and I took turns posing with this tunnel. It goes together with other tunnels we've passed through on our journeys. We then continued on to Wall, SD.

The famous drugstore in Wall cannot be adequately described. It is a sprawling complex of shops selling every kind of merchandise you can think off. It has preserved the character of the old west as best it can, and perhaps it has done so with a dollop too much of kitschiness, but, it certainly still draws people off the highway.

I looked for an appropriate carrying case for my GPS here. I showed the shop owner my cloth glove contrivance and he laughed heartily at my ingenuity. But he didn't have anything to replace it, so I regrettably left him without a sale. We didn't drink any ice water in Wall, but we did buy four kinds of fudge.

Our last destination for the day while we still had light was the Badlands National Park. We drove the loop road the length of the park. We came across a woman lying face down in her underwear with a man attending to her bottom. I thought he might be applying a tattoo, Razelle thought he may have been removing cactus spines. We'll never know.

We arrived at the visitors' center in time to see the last showing of the interpretive film. It explained everything about the park I had explained to Razelle earlier as we drove, but it did it better and with visuals. The evening light made some of the colors more vivid, but, as with the Painted Desert, by the time we reached the far end of the park where the formations were most dramatic, we were already seeing those colors fade in the light of the growing dusk. We left the park, returned to the interstate and drove into the darkening prairie. By the time we crossed the Missouri River, we saw it with moonlight glistening off its broad expanse. It was a beautiful sight. I drove on, now within the Central Time Zone, all the way to Mitchell, SD. We drove past agricultural land so full of night-flying insects that I had some difficulty seeing through their dashed signatures on my windscreen. Their remains on the glass couldn't be entirely removed by my wipers. We reached Mitchell, SD later than anyplace else yet on this journey across America. We were starting to make Walmart a habit; the one in Mitchell was our third night in a row where we ended our day of travel at this refuge by the road.

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RAZELLE'S PHOTOS OF THIS DAY

"Black Hills prospector" in his element

Entrance sign at Mount Rushmore

Black Hills road tunnel near Keystone, South Dakota

Aaron behind the wheel at Keystone Tunnel

Aaron waving hello at Keystone Tunnel

Wyoming to South Dakota

September 3

We awoke before dawn and we both felt it was a good enough time to start driving. We got our act in gear, stopped in Walmart to use the restrooms, and then drove through Cody in the dark. We never did see Cody during daylight. I decided that the route the GPS selected ought to be amended and chose to take US 14A (alternate 14) instead of US 14. Razelle asked why the alternate route and I couldn't give a really convincing answer. It just looked like a better alternative to me.

The towns we came to were very small. We had to slow down as we passed through each one. By the time we reached Lovell, Wyoming the sun had come up. We then crossed a wide body of water on a straight road lined with flotsam on both sides, indicating that it wasn't always above water. At the end of this road sat the tractor that must have been called into service whenever the flotsam needed to be cleared. Before us was a formidable wall of a mountain ridge. The road across it promised to be steep and exciting. It kept its promise. Razelle was not too thrilled by the hairpin turns and switchbacks. At a pullout we stopped to eat breakfast from our food supplies. An explanatory sign explained the history of the construction of this road and gave significance to the vista below us.

We continued upward and crested the ridge; then we drove on the plateau above. After a distance on this plateau we saw the dome of an installation of some kind on a mountain peak that still had patches of snow on it, way up here. Just beyond it there was a sign pointing to "the Medicine Wheel." All I knew was that this wheel was some sort of Stonehenge-like thing. At that moment, almost after passing it, but not quite, I had a compelling impulse to try and see this wheel.

I turned into the gravel road that led to the Medicine Wheel. Within a mile I came to a parking lot and parked the van. Only one other vehicle was here. Beyond a gate at the end of this parking lot the gravel road continued into the distance to a hill that seemed to have some kind of structures on it. Razelle was having trouble with the thinness of the oxygen in the air at this elevation, so she stayed with the van while I walked onward past the gate to investigate the structures ahead. The road there was longer than it appeared at first. It passed a patch of snow. I saw a couple of hunters in orange vests with hunting dogs and hunting rifles (I assumed the other vehicle in the parking lot was theirs).

As I walked on the gravel, a single stone caught my eye. It was jade green. I picked it up. I reached the medicine wheel after passing jutting rocks on the shoulder of this promontory – they had anthropomorphic features. I took in the surrounding vista and I felt a reverence for this sacred spot envelop me. I took a few pictures, and included "no evil," our stuffed toy monkey in some of them.


A sign said to walk around the wheel to the left (clock-wise). I felt compelled to set my green stone on a post of the fence that encircled the Medicine Wheel, alongside other such stones previous visitors had set there. It was Shabbat, Saturday morning. Ordinarily, we would have been in a synagogue this morning, but I had searched the Internet for a synagogue near Cody and found that either none were close enough to reach; or they were close enough, but they didn't hold Saturday morning services. This was the closest "sanctuary" around so I closed my eyes and prayed a personal prayer. Then, feeling uplifted, I returned to Razelle along the same gravel road I had come.

I walked as quickly as I could. When I reached the patch of snow I collected a double handful, balled it up and carried it in my hat back to the freezer in the van. I also collected an older couple – a heavy-set man who favored a leg, his wife and their two tiny dogs. The man had served with the Merchant Marines distributing humanitarian aid around the world. He had complimentary things to say about his experience in Israel; less complimentary things to say about the countries in that region that he also had visited.

I noticed more vehicles were in the lot when I reached the van and a young woman in uniform was near the small cabin by the gate. A sign on the gate said only those unable to walk could drive beyond that point. Razelle was very eager to see the Medicine Wheel after I described my experience. The woman in uniform opened the gate for us and Razelle and I drove to the Medicine Wheel.

We were alone there. Razelle found a stone, too. She circled the site in the proper direction, counted the posts that encircled the Medicine Wheel and placed her stone on the one whose number had the most significance to her. Then we stood together and prayed parts of the morning service aloud. We said Shehechiyanu, the Shema, Adon Olam, the Cohanim's blessings, and we both said the Mourners' Kaddish for our fathers, whose death anniversaries were coming up in a few days. We didn't have a minyan (a quarum of ten) when we said Kaddish, but it seemed appropriate enough to us to say Kaddish here together in the rarified air on this mountain top among the spirits of this sanctified place. And it felt very important that we each remember our fathers here while we could. We returned to the van with tear-streaked cheeks and an emotional sense that our impulsive choices to take alternate routes and gravel roads to this spot were not done by chance.

We returned to the parking lot to thank the young woman for enabling Razelle to pray at the Medicine Wheel, but an older man in uniform was there instead. He opened the gate with a smile. We told him that the woman's act was far more significant for us than she could have known, then we drove on.

The descent from this plateau was even more dramatic, it seemed, than the ascent had been. On our way down we encountered a lot of traffic going up in the opposite direction. We surmised that they were all streaming toward Yellowstone National Park this Labor Day Weekend. We were keenly aware that our destinations were going to be popular destinations the next two days, with crowds at venues and competition for lodging. Nothing we can do about that.

We reached Interstate 90 at Ranchester, Wyoming and then zipped along the interstate at highway speeds. We reached our turnoff to the Devil's Tower by late afternoon. As we drove in its direction we strained our eyes in the Tower's direction looking for it to come into view. We imagined Steven Spielberg as a kid on some family road trip having the same moment of awe when the Tower first appeared in the distance. Of course we don't know if he ever took such a trip, but we imagined it, anyway.

Then we saw it. 

At the appropriate place we pulled off the road and took its picture in all its splendor with the lighting emphasizing its texture and prominence. We reached the entrance booth and showed our pass. Beyond the gate we came across an impressive number of prairie dogs active along the roadside and poking out of the turf in the receding distances. These creatures are protected here and it was a pleasure to see so many of them this visit. When I was here in 1997 with Maayan there didn't seem to be as many.

At the visitors center we got into a discussion with one of the rangers who intends to visit Ayer's Rock in Australia, which she mentioned was similar to Devil's Tower in the respect that both are monoliths. I described the Uluru region to her and sketched a diagram of the roads and related rock formations. Isn't it amazing that we are so knowledgeable? Did all this really happen on one trip? And in such a short time? We ourselves marvel at the scope of what we've done and we can't grasp the enormity of it, at times, until asked the kind of questions this ranger asked.

We continued driving while we still had light. At Sundance, Wyoming we turned onto the Interstate and drove into South Dakota, our thirteenth state on this trip. Our GPS was programmed to takes us to the Walmart Superstore in Spearfish, SD. We easily found it, pulled in among campers and trucks, turned off the engine and lights and went to sleep, this time with more confidence than the last that it was safe to sleep at Walmart.

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RAZELLE'S PHOTO OF THIS DAY

Aaron walking along the path to see the Medicine Wheel

Montana to Wyoming

September 2

We awoke early this morning to cold – comparable to the cold we'd experienced in Australia. I researched a little on the Internet this morning, to learn that it was 37°F (3°C) this morning when we woke up, and the light we'd seen above Butte was an illuminated statue called "Our Lady of the Rockies." She is the second tallest statue in the United States, surpassed only by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. I also learned that Butte, Montana had an interesting history involving mining and labor unions. I wonder what the political leanings of the current populace might be, considering their past.

I went to the campground office and got a receipt. I told the proprietors about the places we'd been, but they were not impressed. I heard myself talking and my swollen cheek seemed to be making my pronunciations a little different. The swelling is getting worse when it should be getting better. I'm beginning to be concerned about this. How much patience should I have before I decide that the three doctors in Seattle were wrong not to give me antibiotics?

We drove to the town of West Yellowstone, Montana. According to my GPS we actually drifted briefly into Wyoming getting there, but saw so signs to that effect, and I doubt that the few miles in question are even maintained by any authority in Wyoming. As we drove south across rangeland in the direction of that gateway town, we saw range upon range of mountains in the distance rising higher than the ones before them. The viewing conditions were such that the lyrics "purple mountain majesties" came to mind as a perfect way to describe this vista.

West Yellowstone this Labor Day Weekend had shops that catered to outdoors types and this was their last chance to sell off their stock before the summer season ended. Razelle found some items she was very pleased with. I bought a new backpack to carry my irreplaceable items around in whenever I leave the van. The IMAX Theater here was the big draw to West Yellowstone. I walked into the lobby and smelled the popcorn, but we didn't stay to watch the show and I didn't buy the popcorn, either.

Our access pass got us into Yellowstone free of charge. We drove directly to Old Faithful, but passed a number of interesting features along the way we considered seeing on our way back, if we could. We found a parking spot among license plates from many of the states I still hadn't found until now. Fewer than ten remain to be seen, now.

Old Faithful erupted within less than 10 minutes of our arrival. Razelle was moved to tears of happiness while watching it spout heavenward. This moment, emotionally, for her, was on par with her first moments at the brink of the Grand Canyon. Razelle and I posed with our backs to the eruption while a stranger took our pictures with Razelle's camera. I had no opportunity to turn and look at the eruption before it was over. I was very upset to have driven all this way and miss it. Razelle, however, had seen it and that was what I'd hoped for. I'd been here with Maayan in 1997 and we'd seen Old Faithful erupt twice. Still, I had counted so much on watching this again during this visit that I wouldn't leave here until after the next eruption.





We ate in the Old Faithful Lodge. Afterwards, I wandered among the other geysers in this geyser field and waited for the anticipated eruption of Old Faithful from a vantage point downwind of its vent. I noticed during my previous visit and noticed again this time that the steam from Old Faithful smelled like maple syrup to me. Razelle stayed on the viewing seats and saw Old Faithful erupt from that direction, while I admired this eruption through glasses that became speckled with Old Faithful's spray. This was perhaps the most spectacular and protracted eruption I have ever seen. It justified the wait, by far.

We drove away from these geysers with others who had seen it, and yet traffic had not become an issue until we found a crowd of cars on the roadside. We discovered that the focus of their attention was a lone bison grazing between the road and the stream. Many people were out of their cars taking pictures. I did the same, but when the bison sauntered in my direction I put some parked cars between myself and the beast.

Throughout the remainder of the day we would encounter clots of cars clogging the flow of traffic. Once it was a female moose, once it was some turkeys. Most times we couldn't see anything at all as we strained our eyes all the way to the horizon as we threaded our way past the congregation of roadside naturalists, so we had no idea what the fascination was. They were a curiosity to us, more than the phantom beasts could have been.



Yellowstone had been subject to devastating fires a few years before Maayan and I were there in the 1990s. I could see that these areas were now sprouting a healthy forest of mid-sized trees; very encouraging. However, many other parts of the park had huge tracts of trees that had died standing up and still stood as testimony to the National Parks System's policy of letting nature take its own course. There was particular beauty in this policy, in a peculiar way.


We circled around the top of the figure eight road system in the park. I walked a short trail to the Artists Paint Pots while Razelle waited in the van. One feature here really appealed to me. It was a pale muddy geyser that percolated with a catchy cadence, while shooting cots of ropy mud above circular ripples of soupy silt. The jets of steam emanating from this stuttering and plopping and hissing ooze added to the cheery effect. This was nature having fun in the mud. I returned to Razelle in the van feeling thoroughly entertained by this interlude in our tour of the park.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone truly was grand, and we saw it with just enough daylight left to appreciate it.

We then passed vast meadows and finally saw a herd of several dozen bison on a hillside by the road, while herds of cars and tourists were occupied looking elsewhere at bison we couldn't see. Finally with the sun on the water, we passed Yellowstone Lake. It was far larger than I had expected it would be. We turned away from the lake and twisted up a mountain road, dwarfed in our van by dense spires of dead trees as far as the eye could see, their barkless bleached forms catching the last rays of the sun in such a stunning way that I wished I could have found a turnoff to freeze their images with my camera; but no such turnoff appeared before the effect was lost and the sun was gone. We drove down, down, down out of Yellowstone National Park through a canyon I wish we could have seen in better light. I'm sure it would have been among the most memorable parts of the trip if only we had gotten here sooner.

At the bottom of this canyon, the city of Cody, Wyoming greeted us. We had not yet arranged for a place to stay, so at the first RV park we came to I pulled in and spoke with the proprietor. He asked me how we dealt with sanitary matters during the night, since we had no sanitary hook up on this simple van. He then rejected us as customers and told us he didn't need our business, there were other places we could go. This incident left me deeply wounded. We had been treated as untrustworthy vagabonds, as homeless people. We certainly had more integrity than he did. We drove into Cody looking for other options when we came to a Walmart Superstore. There were many other RVs already parked in a far corner of the parking lot here. This was the first time we saw this phenomenon. We'd heard of it; we'd contemplated trying it, but now we were doing it – sleeping at Walmart. I had no idea if it was safe, or if it required signing in or what.... I actually knocked on the window of a van like ours to ask what the procedure was and I startled the occupant who was sitting behind his steering wheel. He said it was OK to just turn off the van's engine and lights, relax and go to sleep. I tried to sleep, and succeeded eventually, but I didn't relax. I felt vulnerable in this parking lot. It was a first for us.

Selfie with spent geyser

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RAZELLE'S PHOTO OF THIS DAY

A bison in traffic in Yellowstone National Park