Why..Oh...Wyoming and The Dakotas

Wyoming, and a Little Bit of Montana again

Things to do in Wyoming

1. Visit Yellowstone

2. Own a ranch

3. Wear a knife on your belt

4. Drive fast so you can get the hell out

Jen and I accomplished two out of the four, and although wearing a knife on my belt is really tempting, I had to leave it to the professionals. Most everyone we came across in Wyoming had some sort of knife hanging off their belt. They ranged from little pocket knives to Crocodile Dundee “That’s not a knife” knives. Even the guy working at the auto parts store had a knife hanging at his side, just in case, because you never know what’s going to happen in Wyoming, so, you’d better be prepared.

Yellowstone was the highlight of Wyoming. We camped right outside of Yellowstone in a campground called Chief Joseph. The site was actually in Montana as we dipped really quickly into the state again. It was a cool campsite as it was only eight bucks and had a pretty sweet hand operated water pump. The water pump was part water spigot and part drinking fountain. It was a pretty sweet contraption and the water coming from the well tasted crazy good. As we cooked dinner a nice buffalo came close to the campground and gave us the stink eye as he slowly walked down the road. There was a moment when I thought we might have to bolt for the car, but the buffalo just kept on cruising down the road and left us alone. After waking up in the morning we headed back to Wyoming.

The rest of Wyoming consisted of a short stop in Cody, as we visited the library for some internet access. Other than the quick stop, we entered into the beginning of lets-freaking-drive-a-lot mode. Our whole trip up to this point has been flooded with nice stops and points of interest but as we entered into the heart of America, there is really not much to look at. We traded off driving shifts until we hit our next stop of Deadwood, South Dakota.

The Dakotas

We entered into Deadwood with high expectations of seeing dirty streets and prostitutes in the windows of buildings, just like in the TV show. Unfortunately, it's not the late 1800's anymore. Fortunately, the city has done a good job of keeping up with the history of the town and recovering the area to make it an interesting visit. I wish we had the time and money to do a tour with an actual guide, but the stop at the visitor’s center gave us enough info to set out on our own to discover the area.

We saw such hot spots as The Gem and Bullock’s hotel. We also came upon the place where the dead mans hand got its name. Good old Wild Bill Hickock was shot in Deadwood and they have the original building where he was shot, however, the place caught fire a while back and they moved all the remnants to a new location. Our dream of dirty streets was left in the dust as the streets were actually pretty clean, but we did however see prostitutes in the windows. The prostitutes were taunting the people in the street, however the girls in the windows were all mannequins.

We then stopped in a local casino, because they had a little car museum. It was more of a Hollywood car museum, since most of the autos and motorcycles were from movies and TV. They had Magnum PI's Ferrari and a couple of Evel Knievel's bikes. Herbie the Love Bug was there as well as Some James Bond Cars and memorabilia. It was pretty cool and unexpected and was a nice little escape from the hot streets.

We then walked up to Mt. Moriah Cemetery. The cemetery is set up so you can walk around and visit all the graves of the local cowboys and villains of the town's history. The walk was on a steep hill and it was starting to get hot and sticky, not to mention we hadn't eaten anything. These factors kept us from exploring too much of the cemetery, but we did see Wild Bill and Calamity Jane as she requested to be buried next to Wild Bill. Other notable graves included some of the important china men, the local preacher, and the town doctor. All of which were characters in the HBO show, which is damn good, unless you have a problem with profanity.

Jen and I traveled from America’s historic spot of notoriety to a spot that remembers America’s greatness, Mt. Rushmore. We made the drive up through the Black Hills which were spectacular. Spires of rock shot up from the forests and into the air. I had thought that geology like that only happened in Utah and desert areas of the likes. We crept around one of the final corners before the mountain face and noticed some people taking pictures behind us. Jen looked back and announced a false alarm as she saw nothing and we figured it must have been an animal of some sort.

We climbed the roads a little more and there it was in all its greatness. Unfortunately, they wanted ten bucks to park and walk up to visit. Now, before I hear everyone tell us that we should have gone up, we were pretty beat from driving and really just wanted to see it and not really explore the area. We found a couple of nice pullouts and snapped some pictures. The sculpture is massive. It really blew me away with its grand appearance. I didn't really expect to be impressed by Mt. Rushmore, but I was. I always thought it would be just like the pictures in all the history books I've read, but it was so much more than that.

Crazy Horse was next on our list of things to see. We stopped off in Hill City first though as we were starving. I had wanted to eat some buffalo for a while now, and as we pulled through the town we noticed a place called Bumpin Buffalo. We figured if any place had a buffalo burger it would be this one. We checked the menu and ordered one up. The meat was good. It was a lot leaner than I expected. I only wish the burger was not cooked as much as it was fairly dry. It had good flavor though. Save a cow, eat a buffalo.

We made it to The Crazy Horse Monument, which is still under construction due to it having hang-ups with finances and such. I was surprised to find out that it was not a federal or national project. The monument was privately funded and fell into trouble when the original artist died. We took some pictures from the road and decided to move on. I hope the monument gets moving as the model for the completed work looks amazing and the little amount of cuts that are in the rock look great as well.

We picked up some lodging and campground info earlier on the trip and saw an ad for an interesting looking campground. Jen called them up and we were surprised to learn that it was only twenty bucks, and it had showers and wifi. This was good news as we needed some time to relax a little bit.

We arrived early in the afternoon to be greeted by the day manager, Shirley. For some reason she got a kick out of giving me a hard time. She asked if we had a preference for a site, and I asked for one with some shade. This prompted her to look up from her reservation book and glare at me, and then she proceeded to roll her eyes. It was all in good fun though. I started to give her a hard time back and that’s when she met her match. I beat her down mentally until she caved in and gave us a sweet campsite. The beat down I gave her was fictional, as she was a sweet lady with a lot of sass. She ended up giving us the Dino site, which was really nice.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the campground was called Bedrock and it was Flintstones themed. The restrooms and all other buildings were decked out to look like Flintstone houses and such. We lucked out since the Dino site was off by itself, hence there would be no kids near us. We also got to have a statue of Dino roughly fifty feet from our tent, which is a definite plus.

The Flintstone Campground was great. We took a dip on the pool and pretty much just relaxed for the rest of the day. After all the driving we had done recently, it felt really nice to just lounge around. If you are anywhere in the area of Custer South Dakota and need a campsite, definitely check out the Flintstones.

The next morning we packed up and went to say our goodbye's to Shirley. She showed us a picture of the campground as it stood in the 60's, which was before it was Flintstone themed. There were a lot of Volkswagens and other hippie paraphernalia. We had a good time bantering with her. If more people were like Shirley, there would be a lot less crappy people on the planet and probably a lot more happiness.

From Bedrock, we took off on our second leg of the lets-freaking-drive-a-lot part of the trip. Mother Nature had other plans for us as she unleashed the wind on is. It was crazy as it felt like it could take us off the road. In fact, if I let go of the wheel the car would pull pretty hard to the right due to the wind gusts. It was rather scary and really annoying and exhausting. When you add the hilliness of the road, it was much like a really shaky boat ride. Jen did not enjoy this part of the drive. In fact, she didn’t enjoy it so much, that she began getting car sick. She never did puke, but she sure looked as if she was going to.

We hit the main freeway across South Dakota and instantaneously I saw tons of signs advertising for a store called Wall Drug. Just about every mile for thirty or so miles there was at least one sign for the place. Jen's sickness was just the excuse for us to check the place out, as she could get out of the car and we could buy some Dramamine.

Wall Drug was crazy. The place was so damn big it had entrances labeled one through four so you could find your way back out the way you had come in. The place started as a simple pharmacy that offered free ice water to travelers during the depression. Wall Drug is now a huge gift shop/restaurant/bakery/pharmacy/attractions/museum that still gives out free ice water. The place was packed full of so many people, you would have thought someone was giving away money. It was actually a lot of fun walking around in the mecca of a store that it is. They even had an animatronic T-Rex that would shoot up and scare little kids every ten or fifteen minutes. We left Wall Drug with some Dramamine, post cards, a bumper sticker, and a belly full of cheap pizza. It was a nice pit stop on our day of unending driving.

We hauled ass through the rest of South Dakota and we hit some really nice thunderstorms. It was probably the hardest rain I had seen in a long time. Jen was feeling better after the medicine and she took over driving. Soon after she started to drive the rain worsened and the visibility dropped to almost nothing. She kept driving and then complained that water from my slightly opened window was splashing on her leg. Come to find out, that water had somehow found its way into the car and started to drip from around the door on the inside. It dripped a little more and she pulled off the road so we could get a towel and figure out the situation. As soon as the car came to a stop the drips became a steady flow of water for a good couple of seconds and then it stopped. We mopped up the water and so far we have never seen the leak again. Our next stop along the highway was in Mitchell, South Dakota, where the Corn Palace stands. The Corn Palace was a cool thing to look at, and that’s about it. The art was really cool and the mock ups were interesting to look at, but in the end it was just a building covered in colored corn. This was the last exciting thing, including driving through North Dakota, that would happen to us until we hit Minnesota.

Random Facts

Number of Wall Drug Signs = 38, from when we started counting

Days of Rain = 3

Most hours driven in one day = about 8 hours

States we spent less than 24 hours in = 1