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Published: August 24th 2006
The final carefully crafted expedition of the Summer of 2006 started off on the 10th of August from my homestead here in Bozeman. Off to a late start due to a compulsory tardy friend of ours, I started the first leg of a three leg journey that would take me from Sioux Falls, SD to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota and end at Devil's Tower in Wyoming.
Sioux Falls, SD: Bikes, Lakota, Weddings, and Lasers
The journey Eastward was fairly uneventful until we hit Sturgis South Dakota in the middle of the
Sturgis Motorcycle Ralley. I'm sure this phrase has been used before, but it's perhaps the most appropriate way to describe the city of Sturgis (and the surrounding 10 to 15 mile area around it) during this week, "Swarms of Flys, buzzing and driving everywhich way". There were hundreds, perhaps even in the thousands of bikers all over the highways, campgrounds, and streets of the Black Hills that weekend. So many motorcycles in this one area, I'm sure some or maybe even most of the patrons were what they call "weekend warriors" people who come out during their vacation to the ralley to dip into the personage of "Bad
Gary, Ian, and Myself
PreSioux Falls wedding.Ass Biker" or just your everyday motorcycle enthusiasts, but there is a definite faction of Biker Gangs that hang out at Sturgis during bike week as was evident after a
Shoot Out between the Outlaws and the Hell's Angels occured three short days before we drove thru.
With the roar of motorcycles behind us, we pulled into the Holiday Inn in Sioux Falls, SD late on the 10th. Now some people would say cramming six people into one hotel room is a little too much, but I say "PASHAW" to that and for the low cost of 94 dollars a night, who could say no. Shortly after settiling in we decided to contact the groom and go out to the local bars with him before the marriage the following day. Now Sioux Falls is the largest city in SD with a population of 123,000, but for the life of us, we couldn't find a bar within walking distance that we wanted to go to or at least one people could agree upon. So I decided to make the decision we had already walked past a billiards bar and a sports/cigar bar, and I said to myself the next bar I
see is the one we're going into. Well wouldn't you know it just happened to be the
Arrow Bar, very similar to the Bob Inn, except mostly filled with Lakota Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and African Americans and the sprinkiling of a caucasian here and there. There is a certain unspoken energy that comes along when you and nine other white people walk into a bar and have everyone stop and watch you enter the bar. It was a palpable feeling like a splinter entering into a finger, where the body realizes, "hey something is here that doesn't belong". Well with a smile and a nod (I was wearing my safari hat and a sheriff's badge) we walked to the bar and ordered to pitchers (myself and the groom don't drink, but the other eight helped finish it off). While at the bar I got into a nice conversation with some very old Native American man and though he was slurring his speech to the point of unintelligability I correctly guessed that he was trying to discover the name of some famed guitarist. I made out the words "seventies" and "bandana" and correctly guessed Jimi Hendrix, I've never seen a guy
more happy in my life to recieve the name of some guitarist. I excused myself from his wide toothless grin and mosied over to the pool table that somehow the groom, myself, the hippie, and the best man had obtained. On the way there I have observed the strangest vending machine in the world. It was by the bar and for two dollars you could push a button and the machine would vend you a "Mystery Beer", You would never know what you were going to get, but sure enough it would be alcoholic, I think that's a great idea, a machine that vends Mystery Liquid, you never know how old or what brand or how large of a can or bottle for that matter you would end up with. Now here comes the Racism part of the above title. The above mentioned hippie was drunk by this point and -come to find out- hungry. So after taking his shot at the pool table he wandered over to group of about four or five Lakota men and asked them in his most polite voice,
"Excuse me, can you tell me where the 24 hour Mexican Resturant is?"
"Why would you ask me something like that?"
"I just thought you were a local that's all."
"Well I'm not from around here."
Now clearly there was some miscommunication as the Lakota thought the hippie must have confused him for a Mexican and was asking because the color of his skin. I won't lie there was a moment there where I thought there was going to be a bar room brawl where we would have to carry our bloodied bodies out into the streets of SD followed by the bar as it ejected us like that pesky splinter stuck in it's finger. Well the hippie seemed to difuse the situation and we left the Arrow Bar shortly after our game of pool. After the Arrow Bar some of us (including the groom) decided to call it a night, but as an epilogue some people walked by the Arrow Bar later when it was closing and saw someone getting dragged across the sidewalk by their hair...sheeesh, now that's a rough bar.
The following day was the day of the wedding of Benjamin and Cyndi Haaland. It was a beautiful ceremony with a beautiful reception. Both the groom and the bride
looked wonderful and they had teal punch at their wedding, how can you go wrong with teal punch? You can't, plain and simple. They also had some nice mints there and a delicious meal. Later that evening we went to the actual Sioux Falls and watched a Laser Light show they have EVERY NIGHT during the summer about pioneers and the founding of Sioux Falls the city. It wasn't too bad, and for the price who can compalin. They had some crazy laser light music show at the end of their story and the falls were illuminated for the rest of the evening as we walked around the park back to the hotel. I thought that the evening was pretty much done and I would go back to my room and relax and do some reading, but I was wrong. Come to find out there was another wedding being celebrated in the Holiday Inn on the top floor and I ended up running into the Best Man of that wedding in the elevator. He invited me up to the top floor to join in the festivities and who am I to refuse. So myself and two other guys from the
previous wedding decide to go up and dance (me still in my Safari Hat and Sheriff's badge -not conspicuous at all). Well I congratulate the bride on the dance floor and start dancing to grease. I see the bridge leave the dance floor and than shortly afterwards a guard starts approaching. I quickly got the hint and the Groomsman apologized as the bride didn't know us and didn't want us there. I felt horrible and so did he for inviting us. I left with many apologies and went back to the room just in time to join a group of people going to IHOP where I drowned my sorrows and ended my Sioux Falls adventure in a deep fried Banana Cheesecake Chimichanga and some Chicken Fingers.
Ely, Minnesota: Paddiling, Portaging, Pirating, and a smidge of Art's, Craft's and Cliff Jumping
The morning of the 13th I said goodbye to the crew that I headed east with and went back to the Sioux Falls and walked for quite a bit before I was picked up by Jon Wixson and Trevor Olsen for the continuation of our eastward journey towards Northern Minnesota from the Great Plains to the Forest and lakes
of Minnesota, it's quite a change. One thing about Minnesota is how much it reminded Jon (from New Hampshire) and I (from Maine) of New England. The climates are very similar and besides the accent (don't you know), they could be one and the same. You could almost imagine (no waves though) that Superior was the ocean. That first night we stopped in Duluth, Minnesota and it is such a pretty little city on the coast of Lake Superior. Stayed the evening with Trevor's Grandma Chamberlain and than had breakfast with his Grandma Olsen, both top notch ladies. So much in fact, that I gave the sheriffs badge to Granny Olsen for her top notchiness. After breakfast we went down to the lake and took in its large fresh watery air. Now if you listen to your Gordon Lightfoot, you'll know that the Edmond Fitzgerald wrecked out on Lake Superior and the Army Corp of Engineers had a museum with a nice little exhibit on the wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald.
After paying our respects we headed on up north to Ely, Minnesota to meet Tom Wells and his father for our canoing adventure out in the Boundary Waters.
Ely is definitely a one street town, it's a tiny little place with 3000 people and something like six bars or something like that (it was told to me by the Waitress at Sir G's -an Itallian resturant we dined at later that trip). I have never seen so many large lakes and woods in one area in my life, there was a lot of portaging to move all our gear from one lake to another, but by the end of the day we were at Knife Lake with camp all set up and ready to go. The first night we spent out on the lake with our canoes on a completely calm lake under an amazingly clear sky and watched it fall as the perseid meteors burned up in the atmosphere. It was amazing. The water was so reflective one could have watched the sky by looking into the lake. This was the last evening of such nice weather. The following day the clouds rolled in and the winds picked up, the bugs came out and started to bite (not as bad as I thought) and I didn't mind donating my yearly blood to the insect kingdom. It was
amazing how fortunate we were because no matter how overcast it was, it only rained while we were sleeping, that second night there was an AMAZING lightning storm. The peals of thunder went on for five seconds at a time, the sky lit up amazingly and it was an awe inspiring event. The next day we went out in search of cliffs to jump off from. The good news is we found them three miles away from camp. The bad news is that Jon, responding to the call of nature, decided to crap on a bees nest. At first he thought a horsefly had bit him in the ass, but come to find out after the six more stings he realized they were bees, so in the middle of his buisness, he ran thru the woods pantless in a mad attempt to get away from the stinging swarm, that was pissed off after being shit on (I don't blame them do you). Another popular event was the pirate battles we would have with our canoes, rowing at full speed towards one another and attempting to capsize or take over the other canoe, I righteous good time if there ever was
one. A little known fact about upside down submerged canoes, not only are they heavy, but they are technically transformed into Sea Pigs -large aquatic green friendly floatation creatures that have an amazing appetitte for all things creamy. Finally, while out there we decided to build a table out of some fir logs and some birch bark, as you can see it came out very well and was definitely a nice card/dinner table. The boundary waters are also teaming with life. I had the pleasure to see many many Loons, a beaver, a Moose and her Calf, and two wolves...it was definitely a nice relaxing experience, but all things come to an end as did this trip. On Saturday the 19th of August we left the boundary waters and started our LONG trek back west later than usual, we left Ely at 4:00PM and were hell bent on being at Devil's Tower the next morning...if only we had done the math.
Devil's Tower, Wyoming: Exhuastion, Overpowers, Miles of Asphalt, and Dog Rock
Here's the set up, Distance from Ely, Minnesota to Devil's Tower National Monument:
956.05 miles Average Speed Traveled (including state highways and backroads):
66 Mph Formula for
Boulder Field
To grap the size of these Boulder's Jon is smack dab in the middle of this picture. Calculating Time to travel from one place to another:
Time=Distance / Speed If we had done the math before we go to Fargo, North Dakota we would have discovered that it would take us roughly 14.5 hours to get from Ely to Devil's Tower. We knew it was going to be long, but not that long. We had been up since 6am that morning and didn't get any restful sleep the whole rest of the way. We drove in shifts. John drove from Ely to Fargo, I drove across ND, and Trevor Drove fifty miles outside of Devil's Tower, where John picked up the change. I got about 1.5 hours of sleep in a car (which car sleep is not equal to bed sleep in any way shape or form, I figure 2 hours of car sleep is roughly 1 hour of bed sleep) before we were awoken by the sun coming over Devil's Tower. Now one would ask, why the hell did you HAVE to be at Devil's Tower by Sunday morning? This is because Trevor was meeting some people to climb the tower that morning. Yep, Trevor climbed Devil's tower on perhaps four hours of car sleep
(roughly two hours of bed sleep). Totally insane. So at 6:30 we wake up and meet Trevor's climbing buddies and Jon and I take a leisurely stroll around the Tower to wake up. The tower has such a presence that it is easy to see why the surrounding tribes of the area hold this place sacred and since the tribes are different the Tower has many different names (Bear Lodge, The House of the Grizzly, Devil's Tower, etc...) so one of the climbers decided to dub it with his own name for it, Dog Rock. Why, I can't say, but some how it reminds him of a dog's snout, so hence he has called it dog rock and it kind of stuck on our exhausted and impressionable minds. So I decided to grab the first driving shift to the interstate, where I realized that I was in no condition to drive. I pulled over and asked John to take over (he had more sleep in him than I did) and I tried to stay awake to be a good co-pilot, but my body denied what my mind wanted and I sunk into the depths of slumber, only to break the
surface every hour or so to mumble incoherently amongst the narcoleptic waves "Where are we? Are you OK?" before the waves broke over me and dragged me back into their depths. The next time I awoke was in Sherriden Wyoming when Jon pulled into a rest area because he too was exhausted and we napped in the shade of a tree until a couple hours later we felt ready to brave the road yet again. The rest of the trip back wasn't nearly as exciting, but probably much safer and I was more than anxious to get home and wash off seven days of sweat and oil from my body and to crawl into bed and sleep the much needed rest of the gods. As an epilogue, Trevor made it to the top of Devil's Tower (though he did fall asleep in one of the cracks of the rocks for a little bit) and has made it home safely.
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Roger
non-member comment
you are the man
Look like a great trip.