Weather, Weather Everywhere and not a Site to See!

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Tonight we are writing our blog from the safely and comfort of our very own motel room - complete with Wi Fi. Carl’s comment for the day…
“12 months ago I didn’t care about Wi Fi, now it is a major requirement for any hotel!”

Statistics

Starting Destination: Chadron State Park, Nebraska
Ending Destination: Keystone, South Dakota
Miles Driven: 126
Percentage of Miles driven in Fog: 60-70%! (MISSING)

The theme for today was definitely “The Weather!” We woke up to the plop, plop, plop of raindrops on the roof of the pickup thinking we were glad we trialed sleeping in the back of the truck rather than putting up the tent (picture left is of our campsite). We then listened to the rain bucket down for 30 minutes, before it eased enough for us to repack the truck in the rain (only one of us got wet) and continue our journey. We were feeling nowhere near as clever as we had the day before when we managed to skirt the thunderstorm. Unfortunately the weather followed us for most of the day…

In which Carl and Maria attempt to outsmart the weather!

The first order of the day was the fill up the truck—in the midst of our back-track adventure from yesterday we had missed the fact that the gas gauge was reading dangerously low for a location where the distance between gas stations can be 50 miles… So we thought we wouldn’t push our luck and skipped the scenic drive (before the weather we had thought this would make a great morning bike ride) and proceeded directly into Chadron.

We continued our trek north on Highway 385 into South Dakota, passing several interesting road side signs along the way… The one left intrigued Carl who wondered whether “Peanut Butter and Jelly” was in jeopardy of being replaced by something else?... Our first stop was Hot Springs, a ‘resort’ town nestled into a river valley. Even in the times before white-man this area was renowned for the multitude of warm to hot mineral springs that had restorative properties. Maria was interested in the red sandstone that formed the structure of many of the buildings and Carl had his first animal sighting for the day!


Wind Cave National Park was our next stop - our thinking being that whatever the weather, the caves would be unaffected! The cave was pretty spectacular - not the stalactites and stalagmites most commonly associated with caves, but a lot of boxwork. Boxwork is the “official” term for the unique rock formations that can be seen through out the cave. The term was coined by the 16 year old who was the first to map the cave extensively at the end of the 19th century. You can’t see the detail well in the photo (left), but I think the park ranger had a pretty good visual analogy… Imagine that you have mortared together sugar cubes in a big lump. If you submerge the lump in water then the sugar will dissolve leaving behind the mortar… In some cases part of the lump breaks off and the cube like structure of the mortar is visible. Our trek through the cave covered only ¼ mile of the over 121 mile of the cave that have currently been mapped—the experts predict that this is only about 10%!o(MISSING)f the cave. The Park Ranger mentioned that a team of cavers could spend 8 hours in the cave an only map ¼ mile because of the detailed measurements and documentation that is required - it’s a pity that GPS doesn’t work underground!



Unfortunately our weather strategy didn’t quite work as we came up out of the cave to find that the weather was worse. Fog had definitely set in!! This meant that we missed much of the macro-scenery—the tree-lined ridges and lakes, unique rock formations, and endless blue sky (we think!). However, the weather didn’t prevent us from viewing some of the micro scenery, namely the animals. We managed sightings of many different species… From the Mule Deer munching on crab apples in Hot Springs City Park, the prairie dog towns (yes, Maria finally got to see the source of several of Carl’s adventures), Buffalo (left) and turkey in Wind Cave National Park to the White Tail deer and Pronghorn Antelope in Custer State Park. The two highlights were: (1) Stopping by the side of the road in a fog bank (because we missed the scenic lookout) to eat lunch and finding when the fog lifted that we were joined by two Pronghorn Antelope who had not realized that we were there—they were off in a flash when they figured out that we were there! (2) Opening the motel door to make a mad dash to the truck (we had forgotten to record the mileage) only to find 9 Mule Deer searching for acorns from the Oak tree in the middle of the parking lot.

Attempting to see the Monuments

From the Wind Cave we continued North through Custer State Park and into the town of Custer where we saw some pretty intriguing Buffalo… 30 life sized statues were placed strategically around the town connected by blue painted hoof prints, each was painted to reflect a theme or idea of the artist - one even had artwork inspired by Australian Aboriginal Dot Painting, an omen perhaps? Then came the million dollar question—continue on or call it a night and hope that tomorrow’s weather forecast of partly cloudy was correct… We decided to continue on! Our next stop was the Crazy Horse Monument (left). It is amazing what the vision and perseverance of one man can accomplish. The monument was started in 1939 and to quote Carl “It hasn’t changed much since I was last here in the 1980’s.” But the construction (or controlled demolition) is totally privately funded and in reality much progress has been made, it is just that there is so much more to go!! Briefly - the sculptor (Korczak Ziolkowski) was approached by the Lakota Indians after WW2 to create a monument, he toiled alone for much of the first 10 years alone making a mere ‘dent’ in the landscape but progressed much faster as funds were donated and his family grew. Today, much of his family still work on the monument and accomplished a major milestone with the completion of the face in 1998. As you can see left, there is much more to accomplish… More detail can be found at Crazy Horse

After Crazy Horse we attempted to push our luck and see Mount Rushmore… But it was not to be. When we got to the other side of the mountain the fog got so thick that you could barely see 20 feet in front of the truck. So we proceeded into Keystone in search of accommodation - thinking that something warm and dry was the order of the day. There would be plenty of future opportunities to camp out! So we searched for a motel with Wi Fi… Along the way encountering the Wild West flavor of the town’s main street complete with the (hopefully mock) gunfighters!!

Progress to Date

So… we are 3 days into our trip and we are thinking that we have gotten some of the kinks ironed out of our “systems.” We have tested the truck loading and unloading procedure (including in the rain), trialed sleeping in the back of the truck, managed to create, upload and post blogs, also to receive comments and messages (Thank you all) and even test out the camp stove—even if it was just from the safety of our hotel room! We hope that you are enjoying the trip so far…

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Comments

[Paul Cox]

this is really cool, keep up the good work.