The alarm I’d set to wake me up to see the sun rise over the Tetons did its job, but the mountains were still asleep under a thick blanket of cloud, so I tucked back in for a few more minutes shut-eye. That was almost a week ago! Since leaving the Tetons we’ve crossed half of America, and still have a couple of days to go before Thunder Bay. The Grand Teton Range is on the far western side of Wyoming – the last we see of the Rockies as we head east. The rest of Wyoming, at least the centre section that we drove across, is just empty grassland and ranches.
[Friday 18th] We spent the night in Casper, one of the larger towns in the state, so that Rose could go to “the west’s leading ranch outfitters” to buy some cowboy boots. Even though they had the biggest selection we’ve ever seen, nothing had that special feel so we left empty handed.
The next day took us to the edge of Wyoming – open, empty land covered in sweet yellow clover grass, as though the hills had been dusted with yellow powder. It’s a lot hotter out here than in the mountains. As soon as we crossed over the state border into South Dakota, we climbed into the Black Hills, where it cooled down quickly. The Black Hills are full of history – Indian sacred grounds and hunting lands, and of course the subsequent clashes with the settlers once gold was found here in the 19th century. We drove through the town of Custer (of Custer’s Last Stand) and past Mt. Rushmore, into Custer State Park where we planned to stay the night. Driving through the park we ended up on a tight, winding mountain road with tunnels and “pig tail” bridges – it turns out that this road was built in the early 20th century purely as an engineering challenge.
Not planning ahead, being naïve travellers, means that when we come across interesting things it’s much more of a surprise. So far we’ve not really been planning anything, other than a general trend towards the north and east. Yeah, we may have missed things along the way, but we don’t want to be just jumping from one tourist spot to the next.
As the sun disappeared we found the last available camp site in the park, and cooked up some chilli and rice. At about midnight we were woken by an amazing storm – huge lighting flashes and booming thunder. And then hail hammering down on the roof of the van, so hard I was expecting to find dents all over it in the morning.
[Saturday 19th] On Saturday we bimbled around the wildlife loop in the state park, seeing more buffalo, plenty of deer and a prairie dog town. I’d seen that there were some mountain bike trails in the Black Hills, and I was desperate to get out on the bike again. But without any internet connection and pretty poor information from the visitor centre, I had to take my chances and head off on a hiking trail – up to Cathedral Spires. Turned out to be a fun hour. Hot! Heading back towards the Crazy Horse memorial we passed Sylvan Lake which looked too tempting to pass by without a quick paddle, so we popped the kayaks in, powered across the lake, and had a swim.
Late afternoon we wandered around the Crazy Horse visitor centre. The memorial is of one of the Lakota Indian chiefs – as a response to the building of the Mt. Rushmore memorial which commemorates the first four American presidents, “so that the white man knows that the Red man had great leaders too”. It’s a huge undertaking, started in the forties, to sculpt a whole mountain into a statue of the chief riding a horse – the biggest sculpture in the world.
As the evening set in, we grabbed a bite to eat in Custer and then carried on east out to the Badlands National Park. The park campground as described in our National Parks book is “primitive” – it’s just a ring of grass in the middle of the grassland, with a couple of long drop toilets and a bunch of picnic tables under sun shades. Not a single tree, which makes it completely different from every other campground we’ve been to. Still mosquitoes though … how do they survive out here?!
Chatted late into the night with a bunch of other young travellers – one guy from San Francisco heading to Harvard in Boston to spend a few years studying architecture, a young couple driving around the US for a couple of months, almost the same route as us but in reverse – again from the bay area in California, two brothers from Florida headed for college in Missoula, Montana, and a girl from Iowa who was taking a weekend break from her job as a National Park environmental worker in Minnesota. Normally the US and Canadian campgrounds are quite anti-social; everyone has their own pitch with table and fire ring, a good distance apart to give some privacy. It means you don’t really get to meet people, which is a shame. Here you could pitch up anywhere you wanted, no fire rings, and shared tables. Everyone had been travelling for days and was keen for conversation with a new bunch of people.
[Sunday 20th] Explored the Badlands in the morning, in the searing heat. Not a breath of wind, and 100-plus degrees made it sweaty, sticky work. The only way to get a breeze, or any shade, was to get moving in the van with the windows all open, so we didn’t dawdle. Sheltering from the sun, sweltering and sweating in our plastic van seats, we slithered across the rest of South Dakota – miles and miles of empty grasslands, turning into wheat fields, and then corn fields further east.
Everything here is geared towards farming. The fields are huge, but there seem to be separate farmhouses every few miles, so the farms themselves can’t be that big. It’s all very well kept, with perfectly mown road verges (I suppose they have the equipment and the time!), neat barns and grain silos, and huge immaculate lawns in front of every house. And of course each property proudly flies the stars and stripes outside. On and on and on. It’s given me a chance to catch up with learning Spanish – I bought some bigger speakers and wired one up to the radio so that it’s a bit easier to hear while we’re blasting along with the windows down.
My other goal for the summer, to learn the Ukelele, hasn’t been progressing so well. I’ve got three basic chords dialled, but that was a month ago and not much has happened since. The same three notes strummed over and over again isn’t the best soundtrack to a summer evening in a remote campsite, especially when we have neighbours.
Just before leaving South Dakota we found a motel for the night, in Watertown, where we had a wonderfully refreshing shower, and caught up with emails. We’d thought that we’d get internet on our phones in the USA, but we’ve not actually had data reception since we left Washington weeks ago (which is one reason why I’ve only been able to update the blog every few days, at coffee shops). The states we’ve been through appear not to have any T-Mobile coverage – we can get other networks, but it turns out that using data on other networks is deemed “domestic roaming” and there’s a 50Mb data limit which we burnt through pretty quickly. Rubbish. But not really a problem. The National Geographic Adventure Atlas of USA and Canada (thanks mum!) has been our only guide – a really good one, with campgrounds and points of interest.
[Monday 21st] We stayed at the motel for most of the morning, spending time online, researching future trips and getting various online jobs done – things like recording a change of address with the California DMV so that I can then renew the boat’s biannual registration. And ordering some electric fans to get some air moving in the van at night! We’ll get them delivered to a town ahead of us, and pick them up on the way back from Canada.
Road tripping is actually really time consuming. I’d thought that we’d get much more time to do things other than drive, but that’s not been the case at all. To cover 10,000 miles in 3 months we need to average over 100 miles a day, and with a few rest days that quickly goes up for the days we’re driving. We’d originally planned 6,000 miles in total, but after 6 weeks we’ve already covered 5,400 miles. The van’s running well. Needed to top up with oil today, but otherwise all A-OK. So glad to have a fridge on board; means we can keep food fresh, have cool drinks during the day, and cold(ish) beers in the evening.
Right now we’re driving through St. Cloud in Minnesota – still stinkin’ hot – gotta go, my turn at the wheel is coming up.
Road and Ocean 