by Shawn Inmon
Dawn and friend
Badlands is a huge park—379 square miles huge. It’s also filled with natural beauty not to be found elsewhere in South Dakota. When we were talking to the Ranger at the entrance, I asked him why it was called, “badlands.” He said it was because everyone but the Indians had a hard time getting across it. It made for treacherous going, both on foot and on horseback.
There is a long loop road that you can drive through the park, with many opportunities to stop and look at amazing vistas and rock formations, or go for a short hike. We did all of that.
We stopped at one lookout where the hills undulated like ocean waves. It was through those very hills and valleys, the Lakota Chief named Hehaka Gleska, or Spotted Elk, and sometimes referred to as “Bigfoot,” led his people on the way to Wounded Knee. There, of course, both he and many of his tribe would die, on December 29, 1890.
South Dakota Badlands
This trip has changed me in many ways – deepened my understanding of the geography of our country, showed me that everywhere, people are the same, and thrilled me with the diversity and beauty of our great nation. However, it has forever changed the way I look at the plight of the indigenous peoples of America. I will never again be able to look at the way our country was founded and expanded with anything other than sadness at what was taken away from all native Americans. Injustice, no matter how many centuries old, should not be forgotten.
Onward.
After we left Badlands National Park, we drove north to Wall, South Dakota. Why? Wall Drug, of course. If you’ve ever driven across South Dakota on I-90, you’ve seen signs for Wall Drug, promoting their “free ice water” and extolling the many virtues to be found there. Wall Drug started out as an actual drug store in the 1930s, but it is now a tourist trap, with cheap souvenirs. Yes, we picked up several more magnets and a sticker, not to mention a little prairie dog statue. There are also lots of clever photo opportunities, like the chance to get your picture taken in front of a faux Mt. Rushmore, or riding a huge jackalope.
We had lunch at Wall Drug, which wasn’t too bad, then headed south again, toward Mt. Rushmore.
I’ve been to Rushmore before, but Dawn hadn’t, so it was a must-visit for us. We also planned to stop at the Borglum Museum in Keystone, a town that’s close to Mt. Rushmore. However, it seems that the entire town of Keystone closes up shop and rolls up the sidewalks sometime in September. The museum and everything else that looked vaguely tourist-y was closed. That was too bad, because I really enjoyed my last visit there—it gave a lot of perspective and information on Gutzon Borglum, the man who carved Rushmore, and the how and why of the creation of the faces.
This turned out to be the only National Park where we had to pay to get in. When we rolled up to the entrance, we showed them our America the Beautiful Pass, and they said, “Very nice. Eleven dollars, please.”
When we inquired why, they said, “Oh, it’s free to get into the park, but it’s eleven dollars to park.” Nice way to work around the pass, National Park Service.
I can’t help but wonder, if Mt. Rushmore was undertaken today, what four presidents would be on there? I’m sure Washington and Lincoln would still make the cut, but maybe not Jefferson. He’s gotten a little bad publicity the last few decades, and probably not Teddy Roosevelt. I can’t help but think it might be our 20th Century martyred President, John F. Kennedy, or perhaps a popular President, like Ronald Reagan. We’ll never know, but like all the best questions, it leads to an interesting discussion.
Very large faces
The truth is, I’ve never been all that crazy about Mt. Rushmore. Not that I’m not patriotic, but it is a bit of a drive out of the way to get there, they charge you to park, and it is still a decent little hike up to the faces. Once I got there, I had that vague feeling of, Yep. There they are all right. Just like in the movies. It was hard for me to imagine sitting for several hours, staring at the faces, but I suppose some people do.
Dawn liked it much better than I did. The extra driving, the $11 for parking, the hike, didn’t faze her at all. In fact, she said it was one of her favorite stops. Just goes to show you how two people can look at the same thing and see different things.
Since we were in the area, we thought we should also swing by and see the Crazy Horse Monument. This is a monument, not just to Crazy Horse, but to all indigenous people. It was started in the 1940s, and, since they are doing it all with private funds, progress has been slow. I was curious as to how much work had been done in the seventeen years since I had checked on it. And the answer is, to my untrained eye, not much.
Crazy Horse’s face is complete, and substantially larger than the faces on Rushmore, and his straight arm is well-begun, but my memory is that most of that was done in 1999. I am not 100% sure what’s been happening over the last decade and a half. If it ever gets done, it will be spectacular—a stern chieftain pointing out at the lands his people once roamed. When it is completed, it will be the largest mountain carving in the world. If I’m going to live to see it, though, they’re going to have to step on the gas.
Day Fifty-Three
Home is in sight, now. We only have three states—Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—standing between us and Washington. That makes it a little tempting to skip an attraction, and put another hundred miles or so under our wheels instead. That was the case with Devils Tower, in the southeastern corner of Wyoming.
I’d seen it before, and it struck me the way Rushmore did. A drive out of your way, then when you get there, you kind of stare up at it, and think, “There you are!” Then you get in your car and go on. However, I knew that Dawn loved Rushmore, so I thought there was a decent chance she would feel the same about Devils Tower.
When I had been to Devils Tower before, I had driven there from I-90. This time, we came at it from a different direction, sneaking up on it from the back roads. When we were still about ten miles away, I saw it peeking like a nervous bride over the hilltops.
Eventually, it came out in all its glory and I stopped a few miles away to get a different perspective than you get from driving straight at it from I-90.
If there’s anything else like Devils Tower in America, I’m not aware of it. The Native Americans had stories about a landscape this unique, of course. My favorite was about two young boys who went walking, got turned around, and started walking away from their tribe instead of toward it. After four days of walking, they were lost and tired, but then a gigantic bear chased them. They prayed to the Creator, who took pity on them and lifted the ground under their feet so high that they were able to escape. The bear was so huge, though, that he could almost reach them. He jumped and clawed and climbed after them, leaving his claw marks everywhere on the tower. Thus, the striations the run vertically up and down the tower.
Devils Tower
I love stories like that. I also love that although geologists have theories about what caused Devils Tower, they’re not completely sure. I think we are sure about too many things these days, and a little uncertainty is good for our human consciousness.
Around 4,000 people climb the 867 foot high tower every year. We watched someone climb it while we were there. Well, mostly we saw someone standing still resting, but they were about a quarter of the way up, and that’s farther than I’ll ever get.
Only one person has gotten up there without climbing, though—a man named George Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins was an expert parachute jumper who managed to land on top of the tower after jumping from an airplane. He had rope with him that he planned to use to climb down the tower, but it was lost in the jump, according to historians. So, he was stuck on top. He had an amazing view, but not much in the way of supplies. Eventually, an experienced climber named Jack Durrance made the climb and helped Hopkins climb down.
By the way, why did Hopkins attempt the stunt? A friend of his had bet him $50 he couldn’t do it. Word is, the friend paid up.
It was early afternoon when we left Devils Tower, but we weren’t feeling
great. Almost two months on the road was taking its toll on us. The migraine that had started in Michigan had proven particularly resilient, and had traveled half a dozen states with us now. We are doing our best to eat well on the trip, but our reality is, we eat one meal a day in a small café or the like, and the other out of a bag. It’s all starting to catch up with us.
So, we drove west a few hours, then found a motel in Buffalo, Wyoming, and crashed for the night.
Day Fifty-Four
We woke up today, aiming at Greybull, Wyoming. That is a sentence you won’t often read, as most people have never heard of Greybull, let alone had any intention of ever going there. I wanted to stop in Greybull because I lived there for a year in 1984-85.
I was working as a manager at a department store in the Tri-Cities in eastern Washington in 1984, when I got a call from my very first boss in radio, asking me if I wanted to come and manage a radio station he just bought in Greybull.
Managing a radio station seemed a lot more appealing than overseeing the sales of Levi 501s, so I gave notice at the department store, packed up everything I owned, and moved to Greybull. I ran an AM/FM combo there for a little over a year, until I got homesick for Washington and moved back.
Greybull would be the 4th town we’ve hit on the trip that I lived in at some point. It was one I was most looking forward to, because I wanted to see what the little radio station I had started looked like, thirty years later.
Before we got to Greybull, though, we drove through the Big Horn mountains. I’m not all that crazy about driving through much of Wyoming. Like South Dakota, or eastern Nevada, it can all start to look the same after a while. The Big Horn mountains are the exception. Prairies merge into deep green forests, which give way to deep blue lakes and snow-capped peaks. The drive from Buffalo to Greybull isn’t famous, but it is beautiful.
We approached Greybull from the south, a direction I didn’t often use when I lived there. So, I was surprised when my old radio station materialized on our right. I had hoped to go into the station and introduce myself and look around a bit. The building is still there, the call letters are still in evidence, but there was no one there.
I went around back and peeked in the window into the room where I used to do my morning show. It was an intense feeling of déjà vu, as everything looked the same as when I had last walked out, thirty years earlier. Aside from the addition of a computer monitor, everything looked like I had just stepped out for a cup of coffee.
Behind the station is the broadcast antenna, which we called a “stick” in the business. Behind that is a small brown house. When I ran the station, the man who lived there stopped in to tell me that our stick was so close to his house that his coffeepot played our station. He wondered if I would quit playing that Kool and the Gang song that was driving him crazy. How could I say no?
A Google search revealed that the station is still on the air, but it broadcasts satellite programming all the time, now, and it broadcasts out of Cody, an hour or so away. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t go home again.
There was one other thing I wanted to accomplish in Greybull. While there, I became friends with a man named Jeff Probst. No, not the guy who hosts Survivor, although he may be related to him, for all I know. The Jeff Probst I knew ran a store called Probst Western Wear. It had been in business for decades before I got there, so I hoped that it was still open for business, and maybe I could say hello to Jeff.
I remembered exactly where the store was, because it was on the corner where the only stoplight in Greybull was. Yes, it was literally a one stoplight town. Dawn parked the car on the side of the store.
The front of the store looked exactly like I remembered it—with the exception of the sign over the door that read, “Thanks for 71 great years. Come in and say goodbye.” I was a little late to say goodbye, as the store was completely empty inside. Time, and retail, waits for no man.
Dawn and I had lunch at a little Chinese restaurant that hadn’t been there when I lived in town, then headed off for Cody. Cody is as close as we could get to Yellowstone, and starting from there would give us the maximum amount of time to spend in the park the next day.
By the time we arrived in Cody, it was late afternoon, which left us just enough time to tour the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Kind of a big title, but it lives up to it. The Buffalo Bill Center is actually five museums gathered under one roof. We spent about three hours there and got through maybe half of it.
Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Buffalo Bill Cody was an extraordinary salesman, but he had the bonafides to back it up, as well. His life was long, and fascinating, and his section of the museum does a great job of detailing it. Of all the museums we’ve seen on this trip, I would put this at the top of the list. If you ever pop out of Yellowstone on the eastern end and find yourself in Cody, it’s absolutely worth a visit. It’s $19 per person, but easily worth that. The pass is good for two days, and if you have the time, I think you could well spend that long looking at everything.
We found another rustic little motel on the Yellowstone side of Cody, holed up for the night, and prepared for our assault on Yellowstone tomorrow.
Day Fifty-Five
The drive from Cody to Yellowstone is spectacular. We saw a number of spreads that had to have hundreds, if not thousands, of acres. It would take a special person to make a living off the earth in such a remote place, but I would bet the people who do wouldn’t trade it for anything.
We spent our entire day in Yellowstone, and of course that wasn’t nearly enough time. We could easily have spent another few days wandering around the park. It’s high on our “return visit” list.
In a word, Yellowstone is spectacular. Geysers, wild animals roaming free, and scenery to make your heart soar. We learned that two-thirds of the world’s geysers are located inside Yellowstone.
We were a little concerned when we rolled up to the east entrance to the park. As we had gained altitude, the temperature had dropped into the low thirties, and snow was pelting our windshield. There was a sign outside the entrance that stated: “Chains or snow tires required.”
Uh-oh. The advice of my friend Al Kunz, who told us to drive clockwise around the country, echoed in my mind.
We asked the ranger at the gate if the roads were really bad. She shrugged, said, “I’d just be careful.”
We were careful.
We looked at the road conditions, and figured that the average safe speed on the roads was about 20 MPH. Since the loop around Yellowstone is 140 miles, that would be a long day of driving.
Just a few miles inside the park, though, we dropped down in elevation, the snowflakes stopped, the road cleared, and we had great conditions the rest of the day.
Here’s a few fun facts about Yellowstone National Park. It was the very first National Park, thus earning it the nickname of the “Granddaddy of National Parks.” Yellowstone is huge—it covers over 3,700 square miles. Anyone who thinks they can cover it all adequately in a single day needs to reconsider. There are over 300 active geysers, (don’t think Old Faithful is alone in letting off steam) and almost 300 waterfalls. Also, there is a lake, cleverly called Yellowstone Lake, that has over 100 miles of shoreline.
The day we saw Yellowstone Lake, the wind was whipping whitecaps everywhere, and waves were crashing into the shore like it was the Pacific Ocean. It did not look inviting.
Most people come to Yellowstone to see the geysers, and we were no exception. We parked in the Old Faithful parking lot, and were just coming around the corner as it blew its top. So, we spent 90 minutes in the visitor’s center, looking at exhibits, watching a film, and of course, buying another magnet. We are definitely going to have the best-dressed refrigerator in Seaview, WA.
Some people believe that Old Faithful goes off every hour, but that has never been the case. In fact, it’s not regular at all – it’s just predictable, within reason. A Ranger takes a measurement of how long it explodes, then does a lot
of that math that I never thought I would need in real life, and predicts when it will blow again. They post that time in the visitor’s center. They do list the caveat that the projected time is plus or minus ten minutes. They were actually about twenty minutes off for the one we saw, but no one complained.
The eruption lasted several minutes, and it was impressive, but I can see how they have a hard time gauging exactly when it will erupt again. It’s like when I’m cooking, and it tells me to time something after it reaches a hard boil. I am constantly questioning whether it has hit that point or not. I’m sure the rangers who measure the eruption run into the same self-doubt.
Aside from the geysers, the other thing every tourist wants to see is wild animals. Bears, moose, elk, wolves, and bison roam freely throughout the park. As we drove away from Old Faithful, we were afraid we weren’t going to see anything wilder than a chipmunk. Yes, chipmunks are a ton of fun, but we have those at home and were hoping for a bit more from Yellowstone.
For us, at least, the western portion of the park was much better for wildlife. We were poking along at thirty miles per hour when we saw half a dozen cars pulled off to the side of the road up ahead. This is always a good sign that something is afoot.
We joined the line and saw a herd of about fifteen bison, just hanging out in the field. They seemed completely oblivious to the fact that they were the stars of the show. I thought Dawn was excited by seeing the prairie dogs. Multiply that by several dozen, and you’re closing in on her reaction to the bison.
Today is our wedding anniversary, and since we are still on the road, I tried to sell Dawn on the idea that seeing the buffalo was her anniversary present. In the moment, it seemed to have worked.