Northern Rockies, Western Prairies Road Trip 2008

(I'm back-posting photos from Midwest road trips, partly inspired by an essay on the Midwest I found through Marginal Revolution. Here's a post about ice-fishing in Minnesota.) And if you're curious about why the population drops off west of the hundredth meridian, I think we figured it out here.)


In August of 2008 I jumped in my car and headed east from San Francisco, intending to correct some deficiencies in my experience of these United States - namely, some areas of the western prairies and especially the Black Hills. For many reasons the Black Hills were the surprise of the trip - with some pretty cool caves, and for being a transition area between prairies and western mountains (like Texas Hill Country is a transition between the Gulf Coast, the west, and the Rockies; like Morocco is a human transition zone.) But there were a lot of other interesting areas along the way that you don't normally get to see unless you make a point of seeing them. Given the primitive technology available to me at the time, please excuse the photo quality.


WYOMING

I think I've been to the Grand Tetons three times now and boy do they ever NOT get old. They're not a huge mountain range and the park itself is not massive like nearby Yellowstone, but for my money it's a hundred times better.








After that I headed east to Devil's Tower, which I had been by once before - in dense clouds and fog, in early winter, and not seen a bit of it. The cloth you see in one picture are Lakota prayer flags. Lakota ask people not to climb the Tower out of religious respect, but I'm conflicted about that. If Mormons asked us not to hike up hills in New York because one of them might be Cumorah Hill, would we be obligated to respect that?












SOUTH DAKOTA

The Black Hills are really cool. Highly recommended. You may even have some curious visitors to your car as you drive through certain areas. Though it's pictured here, Mount Rushmore is kind of underwhelming (I don't say that to try to be an edgy unpatriotic hipster, it just is. The Grand Canyon makes me feel like I live in a powerful country, not some actually-not-that-big guys' heads on a rock.) The nearby, ever-under-construction Crazy Horse Monument is only marginally more interesting; American's own Sagrada Familia Cathedral. I stopped for dinner in nearby Deadwood, and there were really not that many Sturgis rally types. Also, when driving in the Black Hills, one can tell that a lot of the other drivers are Midwesterners not accustomed to curvy roads and hills.
















I mean come on.

NEBRASKA

I wanted to see the Scotts Bluff area because of the Bluff (rock towers, cactus - not how I pictured any part of Nebraska) and the Oregon Trail and Pony Express.









Above, the trail up to the top of Scott's Bluff. Next two, vegetation in the area.







There is a Pony Express plaque on the old Wells-Fargo building in the Financial District of San Francisco. I and some other deviants have run the last leg of the Pony Express in the Bay Area, but unreconstructed miscreant Karl Meltzer went and did the whole thing. For my part, I was really quite content to drive back from Nebraska. Below you can see where the wagon ruts still haven't fully grown over.




Above: Carhenge, the Crown Jewel of Atlas Obscura. The wheels on the individual monoliths (autoliths?) still turn with minimal effort. Below: Kimball, Nebraska, the furthest east I have driven since moving to California.