Colorado

Saturday brought us down into Colorado from Cheyenne; we drove over to the Rockies through Golden, up through Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park and down to our hotel. A LONG day! Spectacular views – this highway is the “highest continuous auto road in the US”. We were delighted on the way down from the summit at 11,800 or so to see a herd of elk right beside the road. Must have been at least 30 cow elk and we say only one large bull. Well, did he have a big responsibility!

And later on down we saw a cow moose and her calf. Good wildlife sightings on this highway.

Moose Cow & Calf

Sunday to Mt. Evans – quite a drive up from the Denver area at ~6,000’ to the end of the road at 14,172’. We then walked another 100’ up to the summit – Chris kept getting compliments for being a real trooper wearing her protective boot. Great views all around, a very nice trip.

Bristlecone Pine forest

We dropped down to a lower elevation for lunch, then over to Golden for a tour of the Coors brewery. They merged with Miller in 2008, for those of you who hadn’t been aware of this. They have a nice audio tour ending up with tastings of several beers. We liked several of them! {Chris wasn’t so sure she would like Coors beer}. We took a round-about route to get to the tasting tour parking lot and learned that the “factory” is HUGE – five miles long – very impressive.

Colorado has been somewhat of a culture shock for us. After having been in lonely prairie country for several weeks we are now on the outskirts of a very large city. What a change! We got quite used to driving on highways with no other traffic; guess that we will have to kiss that experience good bye until some other time – our route back to Los Angeles will not be on lonely roads (except for a scenic byway day after tomorrow).

Monday we enjoyed an interesting tour of the state capital building in Denver, then drove out for a visit with Pat and Roger Maddaford. Had a nice visit with them! Their home is our in the country with gorgeous views of the Mountains.

View from Pat & Roger's living area

Tuesday we drove to Grand Junction, with a scenic bypass down through Leadville and up over Independence Pass, the highest pass in the US on a major highway at 12,095’ – not sure how this claim stands with the Rocky Mountain Park road’s claim, oh well. Great views from up there.

After lunch in Aspen, we made our way to Grand Junction.

We’re on our way home.

South Dakota & a bit of Nebraska

The drive from Bismarck to Wall near the Badlands was through very empty country – really empty. Hard to find a bathroom stop place. Lots of prairie and big ranches.

We stopped in Pierre to visit the South Dakota Heritage Center. Had expected it to be very similar to the one in North Dakota, but were surprised. The major Indian culture in these parts was the Sioux, as opposed to the agricultural Mandans and Hidatsas. Also, the homesteaders had a tougher time of it in “West River” (west of the Missouri). Lot more sod houses than up north. And more of a problem from the dust bowl era.

We also visited the National Grasslands visitor center in Wall; this was quite interesting and is the only center representing the 21 National Grasslands in several states, including one site in NE California. Interesting for us is that these Grasslands largely came from land that the US Govt. bought back from homesteaders who met with failed expectations during the dust bowl years of the Great Depression. Those folks generally had a very rough time, but the land is certainly in much better shape now (no plowing to expose the soil). The rolling prairie with the grasses leaning over in the ever-present wind is a beautiful sight. And of course we had to visit Wall Drug.

Sunday was hot; 100 deg F in Rapid City with a strong wind from the SE. It had been three years since the city has seen 100 (but, we have noted that 95 or so has been rather common this summer). Had a nice drive through the Badlands,

Bighorn Sheep ewes and lambs

 then we took a swing through the Black Hills above Mt Rushmore. It was more pleasant up there, and we got some good advice from rangers at a National Forest visitor center about sights to see on our Monday drive up in the northern part of the Black Hills.

Wow! They do have weather changes here. As predicted, a front came in from the north on Sunday night dropping a bit of rain and the high in Rapid City was only in the mid 70’s on Monday. A very welcome change. We enjoyed a nice drive into Wyoming to see Devil’s Tower and enjoyed a nice walk around this monument – it is big!

Devil's Tower dominates the landscape

A climber's paradise

Well fed prairie dog

Up through Spearfish Canyon for a beautiful drive and waterfalls,

then after a picnic, on to Lead for a very interesting tour of the Homestake Gold Mine site – the mine closed in 2002 after 120+ years of operation. Our guide said it was the largest gold mine in the world. They had both an open pit that was nearly a mile across, and tunnels down 8,000 feet below the surface. But since the mine closed the town is rather dead with lots of property for sale.

Open Pit mine, 1 mile across

Three miles down the hill the good folks in Deadwood saw this coming and managed to petition the state of ND to allow gambling – Deadwood is the third largest gambling city in the US behind Vegas and Atlantic City. Just as I write this I wonder why our tour guide thinks they are larger than Reno?? In any event; every spot in town has slot machines and we saw plenty of blackjack tables, and poker, but no craps tables. At least in the two large casinos we visited. We also visited the Deadwood cemetery to see Wild Bill Hickok’s and Calamity Jane’s graves, among others.

Wild Bill on the left and Calamity Jane on the right

The scenery on this drive through the higher country of eastern Wyoming and the northern Black Hills was really pleasant – beautiful.

So Tuesday we go to the Central States Fair in Rapid City – their web site made us believe that this fair is a big deal. Well, maybe to the good folks here. It really seems more like a small (really small) county fair but fun none the less. The fair started last Friday (four days ago) and we were rather stunned to learn that all of the animals (except for a very small sample) were gone already! Apparently the 4H’s and others bring ‘em in on Friday, do their showing and judging things on Saturday and Sunday and take ‘em back home Sunday evening. Oh well. We will be back on Thursday for a rodeo.

One of the show categories/competitions was Legos

Wednesday found us back east of Rapid City and a tour through the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. The Minuteman II missiles were in service from 1962 until about 1992; we toured the Delta control center including a visit down into the command center where two officers were on duty in 24 hour shifts. Our guide served there in about 1965 and it was very interesting to hear his account of life “in the capsule”. He did explain that the two on-duty officers were not necessarily bored out of their minds; they had the opportunity to take college classes so they could use that 24 hour time period to study. Then we drove over to one of the missile sites; each control center had 10 missiles scattered ~10 miles around the center. And there were about 1,000 missiles in service during this 30 year time period. Anyway, we could look down into the concrete tube and see the missile “ready to go”. Not quite; it has been decommissioned. Very interesting experience. Incidentally, there are still several hundred Minuteman III missiles in service.

Finally on Thursday we visited Mt. Rushmore and spent more time there then we had anticipated. This is quite a place; we went on a ranger guided walk to learn all about the development of this project and enjoyed our time there.

Off to Custer State Park to drive through this part of the Black Hills which is very hilly, steep and interesting. Quite different from the northern Black Hills. Saw various animals.

Antelope

A not so wild "wild donkey"

Then back to Rapid City and a visit again to the fair to see the rodeo – we had great seats and enjoyed the show.

Friday found us leaving on our route south into the panhandle of Nebraska before turning west to Cheyenne Wyoming. England has Stonehenge, Nebraska has Carhenge.

And this whole part of the country has “hoppers” – grasshoppers are everywhere, and very plentiful. While in Nebraska we visited two historic sites where we learned more about the emigrants traveling the Oregon-California-Mormon-Pony Express trails. That’s the way they describe the trail in Nebraska now as they all used about the same route.

Chimney Rock

Good stuff; history is very interesting. Next, off to Colorado.

North Dakota

Our trip to North Dakota was a little longer than anticipated as a lot of road work is going on in this state. We figure that the representatives of this state in Washington have been doing an outstanding job of getting federal stimulus funding for highway reconstruction projects. Why else are we finding lots of one way trips through construction sites? And plenty of newly repaved (or redone) highways.

Entering North Dakota, we saw grasslands, badlands and plains, but the plains are quite hilly.

Grasslands

Badlands

Prairies

We visited both the north and south parts of Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Interesting Badlands views. Teddy was quite an interesting character.

Feral Horses

Bison & Prairie Dogs

We stayed in Medora (the only place with lodging available because of the oil work) which turned out to be a great place to stay with easy access to the south Park. We also attended the Medora musical festival Tuesday evening – a great show of song and dance. When we got there we saw a spectacular view of two elk (boys with horns) on the ridge beyond the amphitheater. Great fun watching them and the dominance one displayed over the other. And the silhouette against the evening sky was quite nice.

Then, we noted that there was a fence on the far side of the ridge they were eating on. A little deeper observation revealed that there was also a fence that we could barely see halfway down the hill from where they were grazing. Ah Ha! A trick for the tourists to think they are seeing real wildlife! The elk were indeed real, but later on a rider on horseback herded them down to a corral. And we learned from a person in the seat next to us that this happens every night. Oh well, made for a fun starter to the show.

The couple sitting next to us shared that they were there to see their 16 year old niece and to chaperone her. Turns out she was one of the stars, very talented young lady, and her last name was Larson which gave us another connection with out seatmates.

16 year old Macey Jo Larson on the left

Next day we drove the route parallel to the interstate highway from Dickinson to Bismarck. This was an interesting drive through small towns that the interstate has left kind of high and dry. The towns were nice and neat and clean, but services such as grocery stores seemed to be pretty much non-existent. Guess people either shop in Dickinson or Bismarck. At New Salem we saw a very large, monstrous, statue of a Holstein cow erected to honor the dairy industry in this part of the country. Great views of the landscape from this site!

Dave & Salem Sue

On to Bismarck and the TI for some updated tourist information. Next job is plotting just what to do here for the next two days.

Thursday found us exploring Bismarck. We took the tour of the capital building (interesting!) and learned that the two houses are in business for 80 days max every two years. Kind of makes them work together to get the work done, you think?

And we learned a couple of things about how this state is managed. First, it is one of only a few states with a budget in the black. And second, we drove yesterday and the day before on a number of roads undergoing reconstruction (witness delays due to one way traffic in several places – we learned not to look forward to the orange “Road Construction Ahead, Watch for Flagman” signs). And noted other roads that have been recently completed.

Next door is the state Heritage Museum; an extremely interesting place where we spent over two hours learning about the state from prehistoric times through the Indian and settlement periods up to modern times. Including a pretty good description of how the slant drilling and frac operation works to free up oil in the sands in the NW part of the state. This technology came into its own recently and last year the action picked up big time. So why hasn’t Halliburton built temporary housing for all of their people rather than taking over lodging in the western part of ND??

Then we visited Fort Abraham Lincoln. Again, quite a place. The first stop was the cavalry headquarters where Custer was commander for 2-1/2 years prior to his final mission at Little Big Horn with a knowledgeable tour guide taking us back in time as he performed his sergeant role. Then we visited the Mandan village area where we learned about 200 years of Mandan settlement in the area, which ended with a major smallpox outbreak in ~1780 which wiped out 80% of the population. Our tour guide in this area is a history student who comes back each summer to provide interpretive tours of the reconstructed village. The Mandan’s helped the Louis and Clark party as they wintered upriver of here in 1803.

We have learned so far a great deal about the history of the Indians and white settlers who came in the latter parts of the 1800’s. Good stuff.

Friday we drove north of Bismarck to see Hidatsa sites on the Knife River, including the village where Sakakawea lived. Good film at the NPS visitor center there giving us yet another story about how the Hidatsas lived. Summer houses In villages, winter houses closer to the river where the trees provided some weather protection, and their summer forays out into the prairie to hunt for buffalo. So now we are well educated.

Mounds & Indentations showing lodge locations

We visited a recreation of Fort Mandan, where Lewis & Clark spent their 1st winter in 1804, near the Mandan and Hidatsa villages. The original site has been destroyed by the river, but this replica was purported to be historically accurate.

Fort Mandan

Lewis & Clark???

Hot today, but getting hotter tomorrow, they say. That is probably OK as the next two days take us south into South Dakota and through the Badlands into Rapid City. Looking for cooler weather on Monday.