Great Westward Push Day 7 (Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2002 —Rapid City, S.D. to Gillette, Wyo.): Stone Carvings, Buffalo, and Very Long Trains
Cold this morning! Where yesterday I ditched my long-sleever and sweater for the T-shirt, today I do the opposite.
Gas, tires, and Denny’s — if there’s a more perfect morning, I haven’t found it. Denny’s is on Disk Drive — heh.
I note that regular unleaded is only 85 octane! What? I therefore buy Plus (88 octane), knowing that the car’s manual calls for at least 87, and not feeling inclined to under-treat the car 2000+ miles from home. The tires are fine; I put a little air in.
Actually, I have a bit of an experience with the tires that makes me think about the people of the capital-w West. As I’m fiddling with the air hose at the Exxon station, some dude comes up to me and says, “You’ve got to hit the button to start the air machine. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen drain their tires and drive away.”
Now, that was helpful. Somehow, I expected all the people west of the Mississippi to be baseball-cap-wearing, cigarette-smoking and tobacco-chewing (sure, simultaneously), pickup-truck-driving, pistol-packing, malt-liquor-swilling hicks, ready to declare me a Yankee sissy and commence beating up on me the minute I did the slightest thing that suggested I found even one thing about this way of life a little unusual. Indeed, this morning a rerun of “Mama’s Family” was playing on TV. But everyone I’ve interacted with so far has been quite nice, if in a Christian sort of way.
Values out here are different. Ranching is a principal occupation; off the shoulders of I-90, fences stretch into the distance, every single square inch claimed by someone. Radio and TV ads talk about front-end loaders, snowmobiles, that kind of thing. And there are casinos everywhere. One I saw in Pierre said, on a sign, “We Cash Payroll Checks.” What? What? What? (I say that a lot, it seems.)
I drive through what could purport to be downtown Rapid City and then head on to Mount Rushmore. I have to pay $8 for parking (my National Parks pass is just so much useless scrip here). However, the monument is pretty nifty. I take many pictures.
As I sit in the Mount Rushmore theater, waiting for the short orientation film to start (hey, I came all the way here; I may as well see it), I think about the motel marquees I’ve seen. They all say things like “Biggest rooms!” “Cleanest rooms!” “Jacuzzi, HBO, etc.!” “Free breakfast!” “AARP and AAA discounts!” None of them say “Cheapest rooms!” “Don’t pay for what you don’t need!” “Just the basics!”
I am ready for lunch and, after getting my father a souvenir Mount Rushmore T-shirt, the only souvenir I have yet bought for anyone, including myself (my dad actually came here and got one himself a couple of years ago, but claims it’s too small), I go to the cafeteria. I get the “sculptor’s spaghetti special” for $5.99, which includes a soda, a small salad, a dinner roll, and such an enormous plate of spaghetti and meatballs that a rather large woman standing behind me in line cracks, “Gonna eat that all?” As I’m leaving Mount Rushmore a little while later, she sees me again and yells, “Ate all that spaghetti?” It takes me a moment to recognize this person and parse what she’s saying, but then I shoot back: “Not even close!”
I drive to Custer State Park via the scenic Iron Mountain Road, which is really something. There are several “pigtail bridges”; the road suddenly curves in on itself and vaults you over a tight switchback to a bridge over the road surface you were just driving on. And then there are stone tunnels, wide enough for only one car (and just barely that). This is slow, but very worthy, going
At the Custer entrance station, an older man takes my fee and gives me a map on which he has highlighted a route for me to take. So I drive it. There are a few drops as I go, but most of the time it’s just cloudy. Luckily, nothing gets in the way of my seeing an extraordinary set of wildlife — some donkey-type things (see how sophisticated I am about wildlife?), antelope, goats, prairie dogs, and, the big kicker of them all, bison, genuine buffalo, which wander lazily from one side of the road to the next, right in front of my car. Cool!
I drive the wildlife loop road in Custer, then up 87, the scenic Needles Highway, seeing the odd rock formations as I go, encountering more twisty turns and narrow tunnels. At a scenic overlook, a man in a green Jeep Grand Cherokee with New York plates address me as I stop to take a picture. He’s leaving, getting into his car, but he says, speaking with a thick New York accent as he shakes his head, “Absolutely incredible, isn’t it?” I nod solemnly.
I am very tired, and the weather is turning poor, and it’s about 4:30, but I soldier on to the Crazy Horse monument, turning off of 87 north to 89 south, and then back up a few miles on 16. Crazy Horse is under construction, as it has been for decades, but is very impressive; the head is as big as the four heads on Mount Rushmore. This will be something to see when (if) it’s done.
I realize, as I peruse North American Indian things on display at the Crazy Horse visitor center, that I know next to nothing about this kind of culture, and what I do know comes mostly from Dances With Wolves. My education is woefully incomplete.
There are some snow flakes while I’m looking out the windows of the visitor center at the sculpture.
Back on the road, it’s raining. I notice a deer on the side of the road; we make eye contact, or so it seems. Fortunately, the deer also twigs, if at the last moment, that its running out into the middle of the road would have unfortunate consequences for us both, and it dashes back into the forest.
I pass into Wyoming, another new state for me. There is a sign that says “Heavy Truck Traffic.” A lot of trucks around? Or just some really heavy ones?
I pass a deer standing in the eastbound lane (I’m on 16 west), another close call. In the town of Upton, if it is a town, I nearly run down what I think is a pig, shambling and disgusting, but it really is a dog, the mangiest and filthiest I have ever seen.
At 6:50 I hit 2400 miles. This is the first twilight/night driving I’ve done.
I pass several ridiculously long freight trains, each of which must be over a mile in length. I’ve heard of these, but have never seen them. Ominous.
I rejoin I-90 and continue heading west. I am suddenly reminded of the scene in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, where Pee-wee hitches a ride with Large Marge, the trucker. The sky looks the same, dark and looming and threatening, not quite night, still bright enough — red enough — to see odd things, like two huge tornadoes/smoke plumes in the distance. (I drive past them after many miles; they are two huge smokestacks spewing forth who-knows-what.)
This has got to be the Great American Road, I write.
I hit 90 miles an hour for the first time.
On a hill, I see a nodding oil pump.
I reach the Motel 6 in Gillette, Wyoming, at 7:30. I’m glad I ended up deciding to stay in Gillette rather than Sheridan, further down I-90, because it’s late, and I’m tired, and even though I had a pretty full day I didn’t get to see Wind Cave or Jewel Cave National Parks or Devils Tower National Monument, which were all on my list as “tentative.”
Dinner is fish sticks from Long John Silver’s.
My cell phone, surprisingly, rings; it’s my friend (and producer) Leah. We chat. I then later chat with my friend Sara, my Midwest Field Operative, out of Kansas City, who’ll be joining the Push’s final, eastern segment, which she calls the Great Westward Pull and I call the Great Eastward Push. Depends on your perspective, I guess!
Miles today: 219.1
Total miles: 2449.3
Noteworthy CDs: James Taylor (who I have playing nearly all day), The Who (esp. “Miles and Miles,” which is playing as I drive on 16 west, with nothing around except rolling hills and mile-long freight trains)