BLACK HILLS TO DEVIL'S TOWER

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Here you go Stacy...now you can't complain any more....

Day 21- Today we discovered that trucks stops are our friends. Today was extremely productive. Gil checked all Cleveland’s vitals. Kate did laundry. We checked our emails charged our phones, computer, camera batteries and showered. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot when you live in a camper. We also met some really friendly people who gave us some advice on some sweet places to visit in the Black Hills. Most importantly we discovered that you can camp in them for free… One man who we met said he had been living in the “hills” for the past 3 years. The one stipulation, is that you can’t camp somewhere for more than thirty days. So for the past 3 years, he and his wife moved every thirty days… They told us that they looked for fossils and that he had found a huge chunk of very rare amber. Apparently it contained air pockets so he donated it, so scientists could study the air inside. They gave us some more advice on the Black Hills and headed off. Maybe 2 minutes later the woman came back into the truck stop and said. “this is what we do” as she handed us two sweet looking fossils. Then she said that they were for us, a token from the hills and left. Of course that night we ended back at the Walmart.

Day 22- One of the guys we had met at the Truck stop the day before had given us a detailed map of the Black Hills, showing us al of the roads and where the private and pubic properties lay. Randomly as we stopped at Napa this morning, we pulls up and makes sure we are ok. Jeff, has a small shop in Rapid City and seeing us at the Napa, with Cleveland’s trunk open, he figured he would stop. We have been truly lucky on this trip so far to meet some of the people we have. All have truly gone above and beyond and have shown some true human kindness. It’s rare and refreshing.Taking the advice of the people we had met the previous day we headed into the Black Hills. They are pretty amazing. Upon recommendation we ventured to this small town called Rochford, there was a bar there that we just “had to check out” ( no hesitation on our end of course). The Moonshine Gulch Saloon had been described as being one hundred years old and it truly fit that description. The walls were covered and so was the ceiling. Pictures, signs, deer heads, tons of hats, dollars, business cards, underwear, bras, t-shirts, autographs, beer cans and bottles, etc… and of course dust covered everything. We ordered two beers and some fries and sat down. Needless to say we starting chatting to the other 3 people that were in there. We find out the town’s population was about 8 and I don’t think the guy was kidding. After lunch we headed on and drove through a few other recommended areas. We headed o the Crazy Horse Memorial to check it out. Now there are so many great things to see, but we are on a pretty strict budget, so we really have to pick and choose sometimes. So we drive up to the gates and ask about it. $10 each, that is basically our days budget. We are both not big museum people so paying $10 each to get a closer view of this unfinished carving that we can see from where we are paying isn’t in our plan. We politely say we would just like to turn around and they lady says to us, “but you have come such a long way… you’re not going to go in?” we explain the budget and she says, “well sometimes we give a ‘pass’ so I’m going to give it to you…” So in we go with our ticket that says “free”. The memorial itself is really cool, unfinished, but coo none the less. It’s absolutely huge. His head is 9 stories tall! The man who started it all was from Boston and dies several years ago, but his wife and 7 out of his 10 kids, keeps it all going. Honestly, we both looked at each other and wondered if in fact it would ever be complete. We drove into the middle of the Black Hills from one dirt road to another and found a nice place to park for the night. It was awesome, so quiet and peaceful all you could hear were the cows and coyotes… We agreed that we had never seen stars like we saw tonight. Sorry guys, not even in Haddam Neck. There were so many and right above where we were, you could see the Milky Way, and not like oh I think I see it, you could see it clearly and it’s beautiful.

Day 23- We spent today exploring the Black Hills and also Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park. Wind Cave National Park was pretty sweet. Our budget didn’t allow us to go into the caves, but we hiked around the grass land region above. We took a small hike and looked for cool rocks, fossils and animals. Of course Gil looked for a stream so he could pan for gold. We say some buffalo and prong horn deer on the hike as well. We drove through Custer State Park as well, this is where the Buffalo Round up will be on Monday. Just for reference it’s Thursday September 25th at this point. As we entered Custer we saw a huge herd of Buffalo, hundreds big and small. We continued through Custer and wound our way through the hills to Mt Rushmore. The drive there was amazing. Sharp turns, narrow roads, one way tunnels, make the trip a little hair raising but well worth it. Mt Rushmore is also incredibly cool. We could see it at a million different angles as we climbed, or actually as Cleveland climbed the hills. Now the good thing about going to the Crazy Horse Memorial first is that you learn all about Mt Rushmore in the process. The Crazy Horse Memorial was built basically to be bigger and better than Rushmore, so it’s museum is filled with all these facts about both, usually claiming Crazy Horse is better in one way or another. So of course after driving through the gates to the Rushmore Park entrance we saved our selves another ten bucks, got some great pictures and b lined it back into the Black Hills. Not too far from Rushmore, we found a quiet trail head, took a quick hike and stayed there for the night.

Day 24- Gil wants to pan for Gold. The first time Gil took Kate to Haddam Neck, all he wanted to do was explore the river and pan for Gold. Kate hates panning for gold. But, we are in the Black Hills, and he’s so excited, so Kate gives in. We drove to a place called Hill City in the heart of the Black Hills. Population is about 780 people and the Mickelson Bike trail runs right through it. We’re going to get on that trail and find the stream that we have located on our Black Hills map and pan for gold. We biked for maybe a half hour and all the places where the stream intersected the trail were private property. So we keep biking and biking. Well… it turns out Kate is not a biker, in fact she is a massive complainer. So Gil now has to give in (to Kate’s whining) and they head back to Hill City with no gold at all. We waked around town and hung out a bit. We come to find out that the Hill City Rangers have their homecoming football game tonight. There are kids running all over the town in bright green and yellow. Little John Deere’s everywhere the eye can see. So we decide why the hell not, let’s go the game. Well apparently the Hill City Ranger’s are an amazing foot ball team. When we left at half time the score was 30-something to zero and the other team hadn’t done anything worth watching. So we went back to Cleveland and as inconspicuously as we could camped on the main street in Hill City.

Day 25- We broke 3,000 miles today. We drove from Hill City back to Rapid City for the big demolition derby this afternoon. We had seen the signs when we had first arrived in Rapid City about the derby. Since neither of us have been to one before, we decided that it was a must. Best twenty dollars we have spent thus far. I know our mums are probably embarrassed that their kids would rather pay to see a demolition derby than a national monument, but this is something that is very much a part American culture, and much more entertaining than a museum about a guy who hasn’t even finished carving the mountain. It lasted for hours. There were four different heats with six cars in each. The two people who kept their cars running the longest, advance to the final round the others move to a consolation round. There are two consolation heats, so the 2 winners from each of there move into the final. So the final is 12 cars basically ramming into each other. From what we gathered there weren’t many rules. Everyone had a flag taped onto the car and if your car died you had to rip down the flag to signal you were out. There was also some rule about staying in once place for too long and then the only real rule was that you can’t crash into the driver’s side door. We can’t even begin to describe the cars or the horrible noises they made, the mud flying everywhere and the crowd that surrounded us. You will just have to see the pictures. If you haven’t been, you should go, it’s actually amazing that cars this beat up can do anything. It was a fun afternoon and we returned of course to the Walmart.

Day 26- It’s Sunday and there’s an art’s festival in Custer State Park as part of the Buffalo Round up. Also there’s a chili cook-off which we are most interested in because it’s cheap, something to do and lunch all in one. The place was packed with all different vendors from the areas and surrounding states. It was pretty cool. The chili cook off was pretty great. For 3 dollars you got a spoon, napkin, golden bean and tasting cup and there were about 25 different booths all with different chili. Now most people got there own tasting cup, but we decided it would be much better to split one and just go up to each one a few times. Our plan worked perfectly, and we manipulated the most possible chili, crackers, tortilla chips and cheese out of the situation as we could. We are good at being frugal. We have been told at this point that we can’t camp in Custer, yet should be here by 6am for the round-up. So we decided to at least spend the afternoon driving and hiking through Custer before we head out. Well we saw a sign for French Creek and you know what Gil thought…GOLD. So we hiked out a little ways only to find a dried up stream with lots of mica, but not gold. On our way out however, we found out two things. French Creek was the original source of gold that had created the gold rush and two, and this trail head you could camp…amazing. So we set up shop and camped in Custer State Park for the night only about a mile or so away from where we needed to be in the morning…perfect.

Day 27- Buffalo Round Up Day. We had set an alarm for 6:15am so we could get down to where we needed to be before too many of the estimated 12,000 other people would show up. We could hear the cars going by and Gil jumped up and said, “I think we should get up, there’s a stream of cars going by.” We realized that it was 6:45 and our alarm had not gone off. But thanks to Kate ripping a huge gash in the canvas the night before, Gil could see the cars and hear them loud and clear. So the buffalo round up was pretty cool. Basically the corral about 1500 buffalos and herd them across some fields into the corrals. It’s supposed to be like the old days with all the cowboys on horses. It was a little disappointing to be honest because there were so many people and so many pushy people trying to get to the front of the viewing area. But all and all it was pretty cool and there were a few exciting moments where a Buffalo would run out of line and then others would follow. But we really could only tell this was happening by the sounds of the crowd, and then play by plays from people in front of us. Once all the buffalo were safely in the corrals we headed out to Wyoming. We headed north to Devil’s Tower, which is absolutely amazing. It’s this huge magma pile that was under the earth’s surface 50 million years ago. Slowly the surface of the earth eroded away, about 1 mile and a half of it, to expose this huge mound. It looks like it’s made of different coloumns of stone. The Native Americans believe that it’s a sacred place, so as you hike a long the bottom, you see all these rags hanging in the trees; some kind of wish or offering to the spirits. Additionally you can see in the pictures how it’s almost completely vertical, but yet we saw two groups of people climbing up to the top. We headed out to find a Walmart for the night.

So we are now heading out to YellowStone and Grand Teton Parks...We will do our best to try and update when we get back to civilization....

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