bikes, GPS, history, MTB, national park, roadtrip, snow, travel, USA

Scottsbluff, first ride & Rocky Mtn NP (more snow)

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We got away from Alliance nice & early & headed for Scottsbluff, as I’d heard there was some biking nearby.  Previously, I couldn’t work out the references to Alliance being the heart of the Sand Hills as everything was flat.  Quickly we found the big sand dunes, they were covered in beach grasses & I was sure we should have been on the coast, not thousands of miles inland.  I saw something I haven’t seen for many months – a dairy farm with real dairy cows!  They still looked to be wintering & feeding close to the shed, nonetheless I’m claiming it.  With time to spare, we could afford to stop & look at random abandoned things.  The old motel is a steal – it’s got new-fangled electric heating after all.

Bypassing the town unintentionally, we headed for Scottsbluff National Monument – having no idea what it was, apart from some impressive looking bluffs.  As it turned out, this area was an important part of the Oregon Trail (not the computer game, the real deal).  Scottsbluff & the Mitchell Pass through it were about a third of the way into the trail from Missouri & marked the end of the so-called Great American Desert.  It must have been quite something to make it there after two or three months & realise there was still so much further to go.  We spent a little time in the Visitor Center learning a bit, then walked on the trail a while (it was muddy enough in places to walk over, must’ve been awful out of summer with a wagon) & then drove to the top for some good views.

The trailhead was not much of a drive from the Oregon Trail (although I’m not sure that those are related, I can’t imagine pioneers heading up into the Wildcat Hills to hit some singletrack). I’d only read brief details of this ride on a forum & knew it wasn’t that long & was on our path – perfect for my first ride of the summer (without a trace of snow, that is). It was still quite cool, but dry – my lungs didn’t appreciate the chill, but we got up the hill eventually. There wasn’t a lot of signage so I just went all over the place exploring – it was so good to be back on the bike. Most of the climbing wasn’t too steep & the trail was mostly wide, although there was this nasty bridge.

I did find this substantial picnic shelter that seemed over-designed for the number of people that visit it (I didn’t see a soul on my whole ride – on a Saturday afternoon).

Occasionally, I popped out of the trees & could see where I’d come from & get my bearings again.

It was another couple of hours to drive to Fort Collins – in our fifth state, Colorado. Although grey night last night, it’s a very nice town – lots of lovely old houses & big old trees. I would have been tempted to stay more than one night if we were not getting so sick of rain & cold after ten days. So this morning, we headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park (a little west) to see some wildlife & drive through to Grand Junction (west CO). The drive out took us through a great skinny canyon & by the time we got to the park it was very foggy. It turned out that the road through was still closed for the season, but we went as far as we could (about 2800m) & looked at the snow, thought it was cold & turned around.

Bits of the park were nice, it was a pity we couldn’t see the great views; we didn’t see any moose or anything else interesting, just more lupins (actually didn’t see any bloody lupins), elk & bighorn sheep. Thankfully we didn’t have to backtrack much due to the road closure, just head south to I-70. The road was tortuous & still pretty high up, it was evident that they (there were lots of scattered houses forming a nice mountain community) had had quite a few inches of snow in the last day or two.

Just before the interstate we went through some very western & old looking mining towns – Black Hawk (founded during the Pikes Peak gold rush) was the most impressive (I’d be more impressed if they hadn’t banned bikes from the streets).

We were soon on I-70 & climbed steadily to cross the Continental Divide. The tunnels through the divide sit at 3400m above sea level & are 2.7km long – it was quite a tunnel that we went through. From there it was mostly downhill (& quite steeply at times too) to Grand Junction at 1400m. The scenery changed dramatically from snow covered trees, to trees & the large ski-resort town of Vail (reminded me a bit of Canmore – lots of new housing that looks like it sits empty most of the year) & then we crossed the Colorado River for the first time. For a while, we were through open valley-bottom plains & then plunged in to tight twisty canyons with very impressive rock – even saw a few climbers on crags right next to the road. By now it was getting hot & the clothes we had on for the morning’s snow & fog were too much. When we rolled in to Grand Junction almost 600km later, we realised we’d gone from close to zero to thirty degrees Celsius in five hours. It sure is nice to be in shorts, T-shirt & flip-flops/jandals.

history, roadtrip, travel, USA, vehicles

Big heads & a big hole underground

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The plan to draw tourists to SW South Dakota with a huge sculpture carved in the mountains obviously worked. On the short drive south into the beautiful Black Hills, there were numerous leeching tourist operations.

This is more an example of the hills, not the awful tourist attractions

None of them appealed & we were at Mt Rushmore before ten o’clock. Finally, we had bright sunlight & a clear blue sky to view things by. Despite having seen images of the four presidents’ heads many times over, they were still a sight to marvel at close-up, carved out of the granite all the way up there. Especially all the discarded rock underneath, pocked with drill marks.

We timed it well to join a ranger’s talk as we walked the short circuit beneath the sculpture. In all, the project was going for fourteen years (1927-1941) before the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, died – of these fourteen, they were only working for six as funding wasn’t always easy to come by. Astonishingly, ninety percent of the sculpting was done by dynamite & the finishing touches were mostly done with drills, chisels & jackhammers. It was a very interesting morning, especially the details of how the sculpture idea germinated, grew & was carried out – all the patriotism wasn’t too overbearing either.

After lunching in a turnout with a good view of Washington’s profile we continued through the Black Hills.

It sure was good to be back in forest & smelling the pines (although the pine beetle is a problem here, we saw extensive thinning work aiming to combat it). The Crazy Horse sculpture still has a long way to go, but it will be the world’s largest. Considering it’s been over sixty years to get his face done, it still seems rather pie-in-the-sky to me that the arm & pointing hand, his hair & the horse will be done any time remotely soon.

Unexpected delight for the day was a little detour west of Custer to Jewel Cave National Monument. Seeing it on the map I had no idea what it was, but nationally significant caves sounded like a good gamble. It turned out that it’s the second longest (not second largest) cave network in the world – so far they have found almost 250 km of caves & think that is only five to ten percent of the extent of it. Unfortunately we were half an hour late for a more extensive tour (I would have gladly given up time at Crazy Horse had I known), but got to get a small peak inside. From the Visitor Center we took an elevator (nuts, I know) two hundred feet down to what was a big cavern, but only a very small part of the system. Mapping has been going on for over forty years & is still going.

A small part of the worthless jewels that give the caves their name

We’re now in Nebraska after passing through south South Dakota & Wind Cave National Park (more bison roaming the grasslands). Nebraska started out much as I expected – flat. Not dead flat, but flat compared to the last few days. We just paid more than four dollars for gas for the first time & then continuing south we passed through some nice little hills; now it’s flat again & Valerie just spotted the first center pivot irrigator for some time. In this evening light, it’s looking very nice. The sandstone buildings in Hot Springs were nice too as we drove through.

Also, it seems that we are back in the land of the coal train. We passed four really long trains in about five minutes. One was 1.8 km long & another had 119 wagons. They looked pretty good in the setting sun, as far as coal trains go.

Tonight’s stop is Alliance – the smallest town we’ve been to yet.  The highlight so far (likely to remain so) has been Carhenge.  I’ve heard of the Cadillac Ranch down south further, but never of this place.  Simply there’s a whole lot of old car bodies painted stone colour & arranged in the ground & on top of each other to make a Stonehenge-esque arrangement.  It was delightfully nutty.

engineering, history, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA, vehicles

Wall Drug & Badlands

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With the weather still uninspiring, actually downright dreary, we reversed our intended loop & headed for the South Dakota Air & Space Museum. That would have been worth of pinning a tail on if most of the planes hadn’t been outside. Next door to Ellsworth Air Force Base, there was a very interesting exhibit on the Berlin Airlift there – SD seems proud of the role they played in it as half of the B29s came from Ellsworth. The museum was OK, in fact it was pretty good considering it was free. Outside in the rain there were plenty of planes. The best examples were the B-29 Superfortress & the B1-B. Despite getting damp & cold, it was neat that none of the planes were roped off, so you could wander right under them & have a good look – well, as good a look you could get before getting sick of the rain. Like all good air force museums there was a Huey – this always amuses me as the RNZAF is still flying these.

The signs to Wall Drug Store had started some hundreds of miles away in Billings, MT, & now they were increasing in regularity alongside I-90. Apparently the signs to this tourist attraction start even further east of Wall than they do west. The signs are now a bit of an institution & they sure do liven up the side of the interstate, after fifty miles I couldn’t wait to see what was there. I may have heard of this phenomenon somewhere, possible from one of Bill Bryson’s wonderful books, as the anticipation that was building seemed to be what should have been happening. From one drug store in the ‘30s, Wall Drug is now its own little mall of more than twenty stores (western wear, outdoor gear, jewelry, books, a huge café, shooting galleries & so on). There was quite a bit of local history displayed around the place – especially in delightfully pointless dead-end corridors. Although much of the wares were tat, we spent a good while there out of the rain – I was especially amused by the large T-Rex head that would come to life every twelve minutes at very high volume & send toddlers into hysterics.

On a side note of strange things you see on the back of semis on the interstate – how’s this for the dinkiest & most mobile bucket wheel you’ve ever seen?

We took a slight detour to go & check out a Minuteman site. This one was decommissioned, which is hardly a shock – there’s not much chance of tourist wandering in & checking out a live ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) underground site. There wasn’t a lot to see (a deep hole in the ground with a missile body in it), but at least we didn’t get shot for entering through the gate.

Finally, we made it to the national park of the day – Badlands. Driving across the prairie grassland, I had some idea what to expect having been to the Canadian Badlands a few months ago. But not covered in snow, these were so much more beautiful with the ground just disappearing from the edge of the grassland all of a sudden where it has eroded over many years. In many places it was easy to identify numerous different strata.

First the drive through was above the spectacle, then we dropped down & drove through the bottom for a while before rising again to follow the north rim. There were some quite pointy spires just sticking up from the top of various buttes. The sights would be even more spectacular in decent light or a clear twilight; alas, these are the only photos I have to show you.

In other exciting news, as we got back close to Rapid City it stopped raining! The sun even made an appearance this evening, so hopefully there is less dodging precipitation tomorrow. That ends the first week of the trip, it’s rained, it’s snowed, we’ve done a shade over three-thousand kilometers & three states & one province (plus four National Parks). I’m still undecided whether having company, not having to eat at restaurants alone, having someone to talk to or share companionable silence with (something I’m good at) is better or not than independence, doing what you want when you want, not waiting or have someone waiting for you & being forced to talk to strangers more. Time will tell I suppose.

roadtrip, travel, USA

Cowboys & coal

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Our brief wander around Main St, Sheridan (Wyoming), while looking for dinner was enough for us to want to come & check it out while shops were open.  Checked out of the motel this morning, we went & had a closer look.  The first store that was open that looked like it stocked American made cowboy boots that Valerie wanted was Kings – & what a store.  With a relatively small frontage, it just kept getting bigger & bigger the more you explored.  If the main shop wasn’t filled with enough western paraphernalia (which it was), you crossed the alley out the back to the rope workshop.  There were scores of saddles, stirrups & all sorts of other things that were also very expensive.  Along the walls of course there were many trophy heads, I expected to see the North American ones – I didn’t expect to see heads of many of the animals I saw in Africa eighteen months ago: Cape buffalo, impala, antelope, zebra &, strangest of all, a stuffed giraffe.

I got chatting to one of the guys working on the ropes – there were so many coils hanging up on racks.  Most of their sales go to professional cowboys that work on the rodeo circuit & working farms.  Naturally, coils of rope were a whole lot more complicated than they seem & Mike was happy to chat as he worked.  Through yet another door was the museum part of the shop (it’s not many shops I’ve been in that have museums attached).  This place was staggering, along with many more (& I mean hundreds) antique saddles, there were rifles, pistols, carriages, a really impressive collection of old handtools & even a pair of trousers John Wayne wore in Red River.  I know quite a few people that would have been even more impressed than I was – & that’s saying something, it was a crazy place.

Valerie having bought herself a pair of boots, we were back out on to Main St. Sheridan is a really nice little town & there were all sorts of sculptures up & down the street. The one that caused me to double-take last night when driving past was this rhino – completely out of place in small town west-USA.

Parts of the structures surrounding Main St were also quite nice.

We were aiming for Rapid City in SW South Dakota & preferring to stay off the interstate as much as possible, we headed east on Route 14 through a rural area.  This was well worth it as we went through some more spectacular farmland that was surrounded by hills & the beginnings of mesa & buttes.  Clearmont was reputed to have 125 people living there, but we think we saw more turkeys roaming the streets than that.  Near the railroad there were a number of grain silos like this.

As the valley started to open up in to larger plains tiny little industrial facilities near the side of the road seemed to pop up.  I was guessing something to do with petrochemicals as we’d seen a few derricks in Montana.  Apparently they are wells for extracting coal-bed methane & there are over seven thousand of these little plants contributing to what is the third largest source of natural gas for the USA.  Further down the road it became apparent that we would start to see why there are so many huge trains running around the tracks in this part of the world.  We’ve tried counting wagons, but usually end up losing count at 130.  The Powder River Basin through which we were driving is the largest coal mining region in the USA – satisfying about two-fifths of the country’s coal appetite.  We lunched in Gillette, a mining town which is the least inspiring & interesting place we’ve been to yet.

With no other sensible option we were back on I-90 east to & over the Black Hills.  It was so odd to see forests of trees as we went over (apparently how the hills got their name – they look black from afar, compared to the bare plains).  Leaving the red interstate of Wyoming we were on to less well maintained roads in South Dakota.  As well as bumpy, they’ve but thin grooves about an inch apart down the entire road.  For some reason, this makes the Outback  feel as though the tires are slightly deflated & oval.  You wobble all over the place & it’s a scaled back feeling of being in a plane going through turbulence – you get pushed every which way with no rhyme or reason.  Here in Rapid City we have scored our nicest room yet for the cheapest price ($40) – this interweb thingy sure is a handy invention, if you can be bothered to be slightly organised.  Tomorrow we are off to the Badlands (another National Park) & hopefully a missile site & an air & space museum.

Biking to go places, going places to bike.