Western States Day One: To Keystone!

First stop: Rushmore MN

Trying not to overspend too terribly, we packed some picnic supplies for our traveling lunches. On day one, we were able to get enough driving in before lunchtime to make it to the sleepy, western MN prairie town of Rushmore. OK, believe it or not - I never even made the Rushmore, MN: Mount Rushmore connection until this moment. In any event, it was time to eat and we wanted to eat in a park. We saw the little hamlet of Rushmore (pop 342) a few miles off I-90 and sought out the town park, which was a lovely little time-out-of-place, complete with metal slides, teeter-totters (the real kind) and a ballfield with an awesome old-fashioned scoring system (where you'd hang numbers on pegs under each inning).

They don't make em like this any more.

Being a city boy, I am always struck by the deafening quiet of the still places of the world, when I get out of my car in the middle of nowhere. Actually, I don't know if it's because the silence of those places and the ambient sounds of my city are that different, or if it's just because I usually experience those quiet moments shortly after a number of hours of interstate travel with its accompanying compact car travel noise. I imagine it's a little of both; but in any event, daytime solitude is a little tough to come by where I come from, and it was remarkably peaceful on that hot summer day in the shade, in the country, with the sonorous rising and falling chirr of cicadas. In moments like that, I risk losing myself and thinking "I could live here. This could be all I need." Which is not true, of course, But it's sure a nice chance of pace.

Into The West

After that, it was back into the car and off through a number of uneventful miles broken only by the heralding of change of states (MN to SD). Each new state was an adventure for the kids, with them only having experienced, in their memory, MN and IA (Lucy traveled to KS when she was one, but whatever).

Also notable: The crossing of the Missouri. The crossing could be notable for anyone at any time, but it was particularly so for me, having recently finished William Least-Heat Moon's River Horse, about the author's journey by water from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in which the Missouri River played a major part. As a geographer by both hobby and partly by trade, the river is also significant to me as one of the primary distinctions between our notions of East and West in this country. One might suggest the true distinction between East vs. West is really a function of rainfall - but if that is the case then it only bolster's the river's case, as it is strikingly evident how amazingly GREEN the land is rolling on down to the eastern shores of that great river and how amazingly BROWN it is rising into The West on the other side. Green to brown. Plants to pasture. Growing to grazing. The trip was one running "teachable moment" for my kids where geography was concerned, but I made particular note of that sort of dry, broken pasture land as we encountered it, so foreign is it we Eastern Minnesotans with our lakes, woods, and river valleys. And, as I've documented in the past, though I share almost nothing, politically, with ranchers, I have a place for pasture in my heart. That damned Kansas thing.

In any event, I should not suggest there is no cropland in the West, of course. Where the cows are not, there is generally wheat. And wheat, and wheat, and hay. Lots of hay. And also - and it dawned on me at the time that (it being mid-to-late August and all) we might be traveling during a singularly perfect time of the year for it, but....SUNFLOWERS! In full bloom!!! Field after field in south central South Dakota.

I'm just wasting space, here. This doesn't capture it at all.

I can't imagine being a sunflower farmer at harvest time and being unhappy. It was one of the more cheery scenes I've ever personally beheld. Many sunflower fields, and on both sides. Good, thing, too - for I was to soon feel a chill that would strike me deep and near to the heart. Out of sunflowers and past some more hay, a mere hour or two later, we passed right under the shadow of....Weathertop. Holy shit!

Amon Sul of the Northern Kingdom of Arnor, where once dwelt one of the Seven Palantir of old.

The Badlands

This section won't actually be all that long. Up until a few days before we left, we'd considered camping night one in the Sage Creek Campground in the Badlands. Partly out of desire to save money, but also to expose my kids to an amazing environment that was home to one of my top five favorite camping experiences of all times (Fall of 1997 with Gibbons). It was Rosie's desire to see Mount Rushmore, both of our kids' interest in having a hotel swimming pool experience and, perhaps, my own interest in the Firehouse Brewpub of Rapid City that resulted in a change of plans. Anyway, we made time for a mere swing-through of the scenic route. I could share lots of pictures of cool rock & soil formations, but better pictures than the ones I took could certainly be found elsewhere on Google. I'll simply share one image of Lucy, considering the vastest open space she has experienced this side of Lake Superior.

"This is worth getting to the hotel 45 minutes late for!"

Firehouse Brewery

The scenic detour through the Bandlands is not short. Upon emerging, we were in a serious race against the setting of the sun that rivaled the harrowing carriage chase in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Ultimately, we reached the Firehouse while the last glowing rays of the sun were touching rooftops and I had a curiously large flight of beers (eight samples of maybe five ounces each). I downed the samples in and around a rather large order of nachos (in a world where a man can expect to get four or five measly mozzarella sticks for $7, curiously gigantic heaps of nachos for no more than $10 is a comforting, consistent, and countervailing force). I then decided it would be a fitting end to the meal to also have a full pint of their IPA selection. Though I very responsibly asked Sharon to take the wheel to wind us southward through the Black Hills to the tiny tourist trap (and home of our night's lodging) of Keystone. But only looking back now do I tally that beer total to see I had drunk somewhere around 56 ounces of beer...