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Published: August 14th 2008
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Devil's Tower
Remember "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"? It was filmed here. The rock is the leftover magma core of an ancient volcano. What's hot: Devil’s Tower
What's not: Hog Heaven
Travel lesson of the day: Vegetarians are not appreciated in the Hamburger Nation.
Odometer reading: 6,053 in the morning, 6,429 at night
from Kathy:
Herds of antelope play in the fields along the highway beyond Gillette, WY (I call them ‘cantaloupe’ to irritate the kids).
We drive.
Small oil wells pump.
Coal cars line the endless train tracks. I hope I remembered to turn off the unnecessary electronics in the house before I left.
What is the difference between oil and propane and natural gas?
Blueberries and huckleberries are advertised everywhere in these August places and I wonder about my berry plants back home.
We are on the way to Devil’s Tower National Monument and there are five Christian churches hovering along the route.
Sunflowers volunteer in prodigious quantities along these highways.
On this very rural Route WY 14, there are signs for Internet access.
As I exclaim yet another eye-popping vista, JJ says, exasperated: “Mom, they’re pine trees. Mom, we even have pine trees in our own backyard.”
Devil’s Tower, filming
Easy Rider
All they wanted was to be free ... site of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, looms larger and larger as we drive.
Scott says, “Mom, let’s get one thing clear right now. We are NOT hiking.”
We see a Wyoming State Police car tending to the driving habits of a Canadian on Rural Route 14. (Recall Paul’s fall from never-got-a-ticket grace in Wyoming on the outgoing part of the trip?)
We pull into the Crook County Saloon and Dining Emporium, where the salad section of the menu provides this message:
“Okay, if you must … but you’d be better off feeding your veggies to a cow and ordering a burger.”
Welcome to Hamburger Nation.
The friendly waiter tells us the only two driving tickets he’s ever gotten in his life have been from the Wyoming State Police.
There are probably 20 Harley cycles in the parking lot of the Crook County Saloon. There is a sign saying, “Welcome Bikers.” We ask him what's up with the hogs. The friendly waiter tells us it is Bike Week.
Bike Week? What is that? And does that explain why we see so many motorcycles along the road?
Fourteen miles
Fins
Wonder if they make him go faster? later, at the Devil’s Tower visitor center parking lot, there are two more busloads of Boy Scouts in Class A uniforms. JJ shakes his head one more time and wonders if they’ve haven’t heard of Class B. He says of his own troop 51, Old Saybrook, “We weren’t high class Boy Scouts, just Boy Scouts with high class intentions.”
I’m not sure how the Troop 51 leaders would feel about that assessment, but I love his play on words. He means well by it.
But the Boy Scouts are a minor presence compared to the several hundred bikers and their machines that sparkle in this bright sun—the entrance to the park is a regular “Welcome Bikers” festival. I observe five bikers sitting on a park bench—hands folded over giant bellies in exactly the same repose. They could have been Buddhas or they could have been beer drinkers. I’ll never know (but I have my suspicions...). It would have made a great photograph, I tell the kids--but it might have been my last.
On the other side of the parking lot, people wearing
Bikers for Christ t-shirts are getting organized for the next push on their drive towards
Crook County Saloon
Welcome to Steak Country. Bike Week in Sturgis, SD.
Thus we learned of another cultural phenom; our education continued.
Sturgis, SD
Toto, we’re passing hundreds of motorcycles. Harley choppers are rumbling and roaring as middle-aged men sit behind high-pitched handlebars, many of them with (mostly) middle-aged women hugging them from the back seat. Toto, this isn’t Kansas either! It’s the noisy road to Sturgis, SD, where the 68th annual bike rally is taking place, home of the Motorcycle Museum and Hall of Fame.
Paul says, "Floonia needs a Hall of Fame."
As we get closer to Sturgis, the roar becomes almost deafening. There are signs for campgrounds and girlie bars.
I later learned from the rally Web site that this rally started in 1937, but apparently motorcyclists are not serious historians or writers—they offer few details. The only other items of interest on this site include a list of fines and incarcerations for various legal violations in Sturgis and a list of beauty contests, including Miss Buffalo Chip.
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