Aloha all,
in the last 10 days, I almost got hung in Cheyenne, Joy (our RV) almost got blown away in a storm, we went horseback riding and visited state capitols, national parks and museums. I’ll tell you: If we keep this pace up, we’ll be either smart or dead at the end of this trip!
It’s not always what happened, but also what didn’t happen that makes history interesting. The Ames Brother Pyramid in Wyoming was built at the highest point of the transcontinental railroad. Clearly, this would be an important location for generations to come. So these brothers bribed congress to establish a town there and built themselves an oversized 60 feet pyramid as memorial. The nearby town of Sherman was thriving, so surely they thought they immortalized themselves on the top of the world. Well, the railroad was relocated a couple of decades later and the town totally disappeared. There are no tracks left, there is not a single structure besides the pyramid, there is not even a paved road to it. Instead of into the history books, the Ames brothers only made it into the “Just Palin weird” section of the “Eccentric America” book, which points out that “their giant size portraits are admired by no one and look out upon nothing”.
We love visiting state capitals. The capitol buildings are pretty much always a treasure trove of information about the history and current affairs of any state. Most states take great pride in making the state capitols very welcoming and informative places to show their state in the best light. Cheyenne, Wyoming is no exception. In fact, they take so much pride in it, that they are currently spending $300 million to restore it inside and out, basically only leaving a construction fence for us to look at. But Cheyenne was still a very worthwhile stop on our trip. We went on a historical trolley tour, visited the Wyoming State Museum and toured the historic Governor’s Mansion.
I don’t always remember the most important facts from these historical tours. From the Governor’s Mansion tour, I mostly remember what the tour guide pointed out at the gallery of portraits: With one single exception, all the Wyoming Governors - before Gillette invented the safety razor in the early 1900’s - had lots of facial hair. Every single Governor since then has been clean shaven. Coincidence? I think not!
It’s not always good to be dressed appropriately for certain occasions. Cheyenne has a free open air ‘gunslinger’ Wild West show. I was picked as a ‘volunteer’ in the show to show how not to dress for a gunfight. I guess shorts, Tevas and a Hawaii jacket are not considered appropriate attire here. I almost got hung, despite Sandra’s attempts to save me. Somehow they changed their mind at the last second and gave me a really nice cowboy hat instead. I still wear it proudly and very inappropriately with shorts and slippers. Being badly dressed not only got me the free hat, it was also good to be on stage, because from the audience, the amateur actors were really hard to understand. On stage, I got a lot more of their jokes since most of them were literally directed at me. We spent the night in Cheyenne at the Terry Bison Ranch. Ironically, the highlight there were not bison, but dromedary.
Most of the next day we spent at Fort Laramie, which is described as “the most important place in the westward expansion of the United States". For better or worse, without Fort Laramie, first the fur traders and later the settlers would have had a much harder time pushing west. If it were not for the National Park Service, Fort Laramie might have gone by the wayside just like Sherman. But since it is now a National Historical Site, it is well preserved and even reconstructed and they have a very informative audio tour. Our visit got interrupted by a storm, hail and a Tornado warning. Luckily, the Tornado never came and it just meant we had to spend more time in the historical saloon and the park ranger spent more time with us in the trading post since he did not want to get wet either.
Then we made it to Nebraska, our fist new state of this trip. I think we only have about 8 states left now, that we have not been to. Not sure whether we get to all of them on this trip, but I have no doubt we’ll get to all of them eventually. Nebraska welcomed us with a great campground with a very nice disc golf course. Scott Bluff, Nebraska was surprisingly enjoyable. We came here mostly for the namesake National Monument and for the “Chimney Rock” that marked the beginning of the ‘rocky mountainous' part of the journey for the settlers on the Oregon Trail. But we also enjoyed one of our nicest dinners here and got to watch “I, Claude Monet” at the historical Midwest Theater.
Fort Robinson is the comeback kid amongst all the forts. It has managed to stay relevant throughout the past two centuries. It started as a trading post, became the most important military fort when it got connected to the railroad instead of Fort Laramie and was the site where the Indian chief Crazy Horse surrendered and got killed. At one point they trained 20,000 horses for the cavalier here, later 10,000 dogs were trained here for the military. It also housed German prisoners of war, who seemed to appreciate these beautiful surroundings and the humane treatment compared to the horrors of WW II. After the Fort lost it’s military purpose, it became a research station for the FDA and then a state park.
Todays activities at Fort Robinson are as diverse as it's colorful history. My favorite part was the rodeo. This was a family affair. Maybe not the most skilled cowboy competitors or as the announcer said “you’ll find out soon enough why this is a free rodeo". In fact, it was less of a traditional rodeo and more of a ‘game night with horses’. Amongst other games, they played horseback musical chairs! We also visited the museum, went to a western style cookout, got a private horseback ride to the bluffs above the fort and a wagon tour through the fort.
From my new favorite state park we drove to South Dakota, where “Joy” got her official license plates. South Dakota is a very friendly state for out of state RVers. They let us use our Hawaii drivers license, our Hawaii address and they don’t ever require us to come back here to renew the registration or for any inspections. Visiting the DMV here was a pleasant, 20 minute affair and we walked out with our new Mount Rushmore plates. What a difference to 10 years ago when it took over 2 months and way too much favors to ask of Kelly to finally get our Colorado plates.
When you visit this many interesting places, there is never enough time to do in-depth research about where you want to visit or what you are going to see there. That’s why we love National Park Service sites, since you already know it’s going to be worthwhile and well organized, no matter what it is. So we went to the Wind Cave National Park without even knowing whether it’s an actual cave. (After all, there are no diamonds at Diamond Head and no pearls at Pearl Harbor…) Wind Cave turns out is an actual cave and it actually can be windy in parts. We’ve been to a lot of caves already, but this one is special. Or, according to the scientific description of the local geologists: “really weird”. As you can see on the pictures below, the layout of the cave is just as intricate as the “box work” formations it’s known for. And to top it all off, there was a campfire ranger program about bats at the campground. Just like at Disney, they even had bats fly over us right at the beginning of the program. Did you know there are over 1,000 bat species around the world and they can have a wingspan of over 5 feet? Fun Birthday!
The Black Hills of South Dakota are beautiful this time of the year. But of course, human can’t leave good enough alone. So they first carved Mount Rushmore into the rocky peaks of the Black Hills and then somebody realized that the native people of the area should be honored in a similar way. I personally feel that both Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is still being carved, enhance the beauty of this area even more. We had been to Mount Rushmore before, but since our 1993 visit, the facilities have been completely redone. Most visitors (including us in 1993) spend an hour or two at Mount Rushmore. This time, we spent all day here, including five different ranger talks and ranger walks and a very patriotic evening program in the new huge amphitheater. One program was about why these four presidents were chosen: Washington for founding the country (obvious choice), Jefferson for expanding the country (Louisiana purchase), Lincoln for preserving the country (civil war, abolishing slavery) and Theodor Roosevelt for developing and preserving the country (eg. the Panama Canal and all his land preservation efforts). Mount Rushmore is where I’d like to go when we get our dual citizenship, as long as they leave it with just the four presidents up there...
Mount Rushmore was originally conceived to draw tourists to the Black Hills and boy did that work out well! This one site gets 2.5 million visitors annually, more than the whole island of Maui! There are many businesses today that profit from this crazy idea about 100 years ago to carve 60 foot tall faces into the mountains. One of them is the “National Presidential Wax Museum” and as amateur scholars of American presidential history, of course we had to go there. They display very realistic looking wax versions of all presidents in historical settings. I post a picture of some early presidents below. Mostly because this museum is one of the few places where I preferred Trump over Obama. Trump looked scarily realistic while Obama was almost unrecognizable, maybe because he was the only one where they had to use a different color of wax.
I can see how the Badlands got their name. If you are traversing the continent in a wagon, these formations were obviously very bad. However, by now the interstate goes around them and there are very scenic roads and hiking trails right through them, so I think they should be re-named "The Goodlands". We got to camp right on a ridge overlooking these good badlands. What a view to wake up to!
How old a historical site is has nothing to do with how interesting it is. Case in point: The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. This is the visitor center for the only one remaining of 150 missile silos that used to be placed throughout the South Dakota plains. A few decades ago, there were still missiles in them, ready to destroy the world if the Soviets had attacked. There is a great museum about the Cold War here. It is scary how close to a nuclear war the world has been a few times. Also scary that there are still nuclear missiles not just at other sites in the US, but around the world. I guess the strategy of 'Mutual Assured Destruction' still works.
We thought Cheyenne was a pretty relaxed town for a state capital. That was before we had been to Pierre, the capital of South Dakota. They have a beautiful capitol building with a great self guided tour and a great museum about the state’s history and also a very nice laundromat. And they definitely take the prize for most relaxed capital. When they elected Pierre to be state capital, I am sure they expected the town to boom. But to this day only 14,000 people live here. Apparently, the lack of rain, the cold winter and the remote location kept this town from becoming anything, except the political center of South Dakota. Where else can you be within less than half a mile of the state capitol and still be surrounded by grassland? And where else can you drive up in an RV and basically park right at the steps of the capitol?
I promise before to tell you also about the not so great experiences on our trip. Two nights ago, we got caught in a thunderstorm. We awoke when Joy started shaking violently, with heavy rain and even hail. According to the severe weather warning, the storm had gusts of up to 60mph. Apparently, we were not even in the heart of it, so maybe we only got 50mph winds, but it felt like 80. Glad to report that it caused no serious damage and now we enjoy any bad weather since it hopefully will not get that bad again. These storms seem to be somewhat commonplace on the northern plains. If this is their summer weather, we don’t want to find out what winters are like. We’ll be way further south by the fall and back in sunny Hawaii for the winter…as we said: The best of Both Worlds!
Aloha from South Dakota,
Chris & Sandra
