CE3K
There is no that doubt I love Jurassic Park, but my favourite film by a country mile is Steven Spielbergs'
'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'
I flew out to Wyoming in 2017 to visit the location where the story was set and to visit a few other film locations in the vicinity: North By Northwest, Badlands, Deadwood, Calamity Jane, Dances With Wolves and other familiar movies.
Here is my 8 day blog of that amazing trip and a few snaps of the journey and the people and places I encountered.
I hope you enjoy them.
Day One
Sunday, 29th April 2017
Leaving the UK and heading for Minnesota.
Sue drove me down to LHR for the 13:00 flight to MSP in Minnesota. She’s put up with my fascination with Close Encounters since we met and patiently put up with my promises of going – and then never going.
So, after she bravely negotiated LHR’s one-way systems and ditching the ‘Booster Rocket’ in T3 parking, we dumped my luggage, grabbed a spot of lunch, said our goodbyes and off I went on the trip of a lifetime!
Departed LHR at 13:00 bound for MSP. Flew with Delta and paid for a bit more legroom and a better class of food/ drink/ ent. I probably didn’t need to as the leg room was really good and the food was excellent. I love flying – it’s a passion and I’m very lucky to fly a lot with my job so I’m used to aircraft food, but this was (ignoring business class trips) the best food I’ve ever had on a plane. The service was excellent too. Friendly crew and attentive but equally respectful if you were watching a movie or daydreaming out the window. The drinks were regularly dispensed and the movie / TV/ selection were excellent – watched Assassin’s Creed (regrettable) and Girl on a Train (not regrettable) amongst other things. Flight time was about 9hrs 10mins. I spent a lot of time watching the flight data screen which gives you info on where you are/ when you are etc. alt, ground speed, eta. I frikkin love all that shit.
Flying for me is a kind of therapy and a chance to escape into the clouds for a brief moment – literally – and always a window seat!. So my g/f would have gotten a load of back-dated messages on where I was at about 22:00 – when I touched down in Minneapolis – I’m thoughtful like that ha-ha. She was back home 100 miles away ten minutes before I took off and I flew over our town about 30 mins after that! heading north to Scotland en route to Greenland and then to Minnesota.
The guy sitting next to me was a seasoned traveller too. We exchanged niceties when we took off but that was it really. But on final approach we got talking about things to do in Minneapolis. He explained that I had enough time before my connection for Rapid City, to venture out to the Mall of America, or, much better, up to Minnehaha Park etc. So once I’d gotten my luggage onto the connecting flight I headed out of the Lindbergh Terminal and caught the Metro Blue Line transit train to Minnehaha Park, some 3 miles out of the airport.
It was about 16:30 local time – 22:30 GMT – so I was flagging a little and I still had to stay awake for another six hours before my connecting flight to Rapid City. But I thought hey, what the frik?, this is bucket list trip right?. Get your frikkin arse to the tourist site! So I arrived at the train stop and some locals pointed me in the right direction across the highway to the Minnehaha Park and Waterfall. The street sign was cool!. I mean, come on, I’m a solo Brit on an adventure to the Old West and the street signs say Hiawatha and Minnehaha??…what a great start!!
(It was actually quite cold and overcast in Minneapolis at that time of the afternoon so I was glad I’d packed my North Face jacket in my hand luggage/ ruck sack. I’d seen that it was snowing at Devils Tower the past week so I reluctantly took the jacket, but it turned out to be a god-send – more on that later in the trip.)
Upon entering the park you are immediately faced with a lovely old building that was the very first to be built by a pioneer called John Stevens in 16 something or other. It was originally a few miles away but it was moved to this safer location by a local heritage team and is a little museum in summer season. It was closed when I arrived but it’s a nice building to see as it’s so very different to older UK historical houses.
Heading around the park on the perimeter, side stepping a wedding party taking snaps in the gazebo, you come to a set of steps dropping away to the right. I could hear water falling somewhere so I took the steps and headed down to find out where. You’re confronted with this rather lovely waterfall – the famous Minnehaha Falls – to your left. They aren’t massive by any means but they are impressive as they fall into a classic plunge pool in a small horse shoe and then run downstream in a fast flowing river. Here are some pics.
(Side note: as a kid in 1979, my first ever album was a cassette version of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Incantations’. I was 13 and I initially hated it as it was about 90 minutes of repetitive prog rock around one or two chord progressions when I got it because I thought it had the single ‘Guilty’ on it. However, I grew to love it and I particularly liked the finale which was a vocal track built around H.W. Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha’ ( not a real person – more an amalgamation of Iroquois or Onondaga tribal legends from between the 14th and 17th Century – I’m not sure about the accuracy or even the geography of these poems, but as a kid, the lyrics, music and Maddy Prior’s vocals took me away to far off lands, and I thought it was pretty cool that all these years later, and by chance, not by design, that I’d here I was just off Hiawatha Avenue by Minnehaha Falls. Time to whip out the iPod classic and play the very same track by the very waterfalls themselves! Yes sir!. Thanks Mike – I finally got to hear the song and walk along the very river and waterfall I imagined as a little kid starting out on his musical life)
Minnehaha – Hiawatha’s fictional lover – equally was not a real girl either. Dang it! what the frik? It’s just a poem? Oh well, it’s a nice thought and it didn’t stop me taking a walk along the river banks downstream from the waterfall ( which is what her name means in Dakota language – laughing water) and playing the full 90 minutes of Incantations. The sun eventually came out and I wandered, slightly bloody knackered along the river banks to my next surprise encounter!
The falls upstream flow into the Minnehaha Creek, which is where I was walking, a very gentle creek lined with trees and not all that deep. High wooded cliffs on one side, low wooded hills on the other. But as the creek comes to an end it joins……wait for it………wait for it………..the frikkin Mississippi!
Yes, the real Mississippi, the one from the movies from waaaaay down south. Ha-ha, imagine that. I’m not three hours in America, not even got my connecting flight, let alone got to Rapid City or even close to Wyoming, and I’ve seen Minnehaha Waterfalls and the Mississippi River! So I whipped out the iPod again, shoved on ‘Moon River’ by Andy Williams and of course ‘Mississippi’ by Pussycat ha-ha. Classics the pair of them – not that ‘Moon River’ was written about the Mississippi of course, but the lyrics contain ‘Huckleberry friend’ so it’s good enough for me. This is my dream trip and I own the iPod. Johnny Mercer wrote the song as a way to express his ‘longing to expand his horizons- a love song to wanderlust” so I can’t think of a better song to accompany me on this very personal journey on a bright but chilly Minnesota evening. The whole trip turned out to be more about the journey than the destination, and was certainly about scratching that wanderlust itch for me.
But it was getting late and I was nervous about missing the connecting flight and after washing my hands and cooling my overexcited, heated and furrowed brow in the Mississippi – just to say ‘I’ve done it’
...and after taking a few pics of a scary-arsed damn up river, I headed back upstream on the other bank, said goodbye to the falls and moseyed up to the metro station across Hiawatha and Minnehaha streets (– classic!-) to get back to MSP in good time for my second flight. (local time 19:30 – GMT 01:30 – awake for 19hrs so far)
This is where I had another close encounter! I had about two hours to kill in MSP before boarding the second flight at 22:00 to Rapid City so I took stroll around the (bloody massive) airport’s many shops and eventually got dinner. Now I like plane food, it’s fun, varied and a lesson in space restriction and juggling to eat it all without dropping it on the floor, sliding it off the tray, pouring it into your co-passenger’s lap and generally wearing it, but eventually you need a decent better-quality meal.
McDonalds it was.
Now remember, we’re in America folks, so the meals are huge and take ages to eat even though technically it was 02:30 in the morning back at home and I’d been awake for 20 hours straight and had already kicked tourist arse around Minnehaha Park, I was frikkin starving. Call it what you will, long flight, excitement, airplane vs. hamburger, I’ll never know – it’s up there with the Marie Celeste and people who find Russell Brand amusing – we’ll just never know. But within ten minutes I was firmly ensconced in the lavatory. It was my worst nightmare – dream trip, great start, great planning, loads of time for connection- toilet. I could not believe it. They were actually calling folks to board over the toilet tannoy. I was beginning to panic – which made things worse. But a ray of humour shone through as I was sat contemplating what it would cost me to catch another flight the next morning when over the tannoy comes the ‘Theme from Bridges of Madison County’… ha-ha.
I’ll be honest here folks, yes it’s a tacky romantic movie, but I like it and so does the g/f. Plus I love the soundtrack – Johnny Hartmann is a genius and overlooked crooner. So I like to think that in my hour of need, and at a point of do or die, my g/f was with me in that far off distant bog, spurning me on to get the frik off the toilet, man up and catch that f*cking plane! All through the medium of music.
And that I did. I tackled the Dyson hand dryer which took several layers of epidermis off and nearly stole my bracelets, jumped on the connecting Delta flight to RAP – a little road weary, a little lighter, still frikkin hungry, and a little saddle sore.
It was a quiet uneventful flight, but god what a view! (I was frankly knackered by this stage as I’d been up and travelling for about 22 hrs. straight but I was still too tired to sleep on the plane)
It was dark when we took off and the night was clear, both up above and down below. Of course, this is heading to mid-west America so there was NOTHING to see below once we flew out of MSP…NOTHING…it dawned on me the distances between cities across this part of the US. Only from above can this be appreciated. But what I did get was a beautiful moon and star map out the starboard window. Absolutely stunning. It’s moments like that when they close the cabin lights out and you’re up there at 30,000ft, in the dark, cruising along, everyone is quiet or sleeping, and all there is are the sound of the jet engines throbbing through the fuselage and that view. It’s one of my favourite times. It’s a great moment to think about where you are and what you’re doing and where you’re heading. It was that moment when the size of the trip and the awesome adventure finally, truly, started to kick in. I was on a night flight to Rapid City, I’m really here, and I’m actually really doing this. Next stop: Devils Tower, Wyoming!
Err, not so fast Brit! I mentioned that the land below was vast and unlit and the departure from a very well lit and sprawling Minneapolis and St Pauls was spectacular, but to say it quickly disappeared to literally hundreds of miles of pitch black is no joke. I didn’t see a thing on the ground for close to 90 minutes. As we approached Rapid City, I expected a similar burst of urban lighting and strips of road lights guiding us in but what I saw was a tiny oasis of light in the distance and only when we started banking right on final approach did I realise just how small RAP airport was.
On landing, I found out just how small it was – it was tiny. I was off the plane, got my luggage and on the hotel shuttle in 20 minutes. Excellent!
I was still very excited and probably running on fumes but was glad after the travelling to finally be on the ground and headed to my hotel. I didn’t realise that the shuttle was not a dedicated HOJO shuttle – it was a multidrop bus that also dropped a local resident at her house – so it took about 45mins to get to the hotel which was only about ten mins away direct, but hey, the native American driver and the contractor sharing the ride were great entertainment with tales of reservation fights over an oil pipeline somewhere up north, and I got to see urban Rapid City at night so that was a bonus. Eventually checked into a lovely HOJO suite at 00:30 in the city. I phoned my g/f to let her know I had arrived safely and then hit the sack.
24hrs and no sleep – I slept for nine hours solid.
No that’s a lie :) I slept for 4 and a 1/2 hours because I was on UK body clock and couldn’t get to sleep, and by 06:30 I was wide awake and ready to rock!
Welcome to America!!
Day One Gallery
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Day Two: Sunday 30th April 2017.
A trusty mule and a mountain.
A leisurely swim in the HOJO pool was first on the list, no one else around and the hotel was virtually empty as it was Sunday so I had the pool to myself. There’s something a little surreal about floating in a pool listening to piped- in Brookes and Dunn. You just don’t get that in the UK ha-ha.
So a quick and large breakfast, during which, I get an email from the Black Hills Vacation website telling me my credit card has not gone through and I was not booked on the Tuesday 14:00 Minuteman ICBM Tour after all. What? No way, that’s been a boyhood dream to get close to an ICBM silo hidden in plain view (more on this story on Day Four folks) and I jumped on the hotel pc to book another tour with another card. No joy, the tour was booked up for that day. This was not good as I only had that one Tuesday to get that far east across South Dakota and I had a tight schedule to keep in order to see all the things on my list. I had to go get the hired car from the airport so this glitch would have to wait.
Now I ummed and ahhed for weeks about which car to rent whilst in the US. This is a once in a lifetime bucket list after all so why not push the boat out and rent a kick-arsed Dodge Charger or a Mustang convertible? Well…two things, first: they are damned expensive once you add CDW and Roadside Assistance, and second: it had been snowing the week before in Wyoming so did I really want to drive around in an expensive drop-top in two wheel drive in terrain I had never driven in before? No sir. So I opted for a Subaru Forester 4x4. I’ve not driven one before so I was slightly apprehensive as to what to expect but in all honesty, it was the perfect choice. (You’ll find out why in days three, five, seven and eight!)
So within minutes I found myself negotiating Highway 44, up onto H16 and then onto I90 to head west. (I drove the I90 back in ’95 from Seattle to Roslyn when I visited the location for ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Northern Exposure’ – I was a film location fan even back then!)
I had a mega plan of action in the UK with days, dates, locations, all that. But when I got to Rapid City, the shuttle driver the night before told me it was going to be unsettled for the next few days but a lot sunnier over near Devils Tower and then possibly snow!. I had not planned to go to the tower until the Monday, but I took his advice and shifted my plans around to hopefully see the tower on a classic sunny May day.
CE3K fans will know that the scenes filmed at and around the tower were done over two weeks up to the 27th May in ’76, so I wanted to try to see the tower in the same light. It turned out to be the perfect decision so I’m glad I had a local person giving me advice.
Back at the airport, to type in ‘Devils Tower, Wyoming’ into the GPS as a final destination was, and I don’t care who reads this, an emotional moment for me. 30 plus years of loving the movie and wondering what the real place would be like in person, saving all the money, planning the trip, hauling my solo arse across to the Midwest from my little English village, it was quite something to see that keyed into the Nuvi for real and see that I had 120 miles to go. Just two hours or so before all those years of wishing were going to come true. I was really, really here, and I was really truly doing this. Yeehah!!
The drive on I90 was fun. I drive abroad a lot so it was not an issue driving on the right in a lefty car. I eventually passed by Spearfish, my hotel location for the next three nights and base of operations. I was getting used to the 4x4 so a lot of traffic was passing me and I couldn’t believe the size of some of the pickups that were hauling ass beside me. I didn’t realise the speed limit was higher than the UK in SD and WY so I was probably pissing a few folks off by hanging at 60, but I wanted to get to know the car first.
I crossed over into Wyoming with a big cheesy grin on my face I can tell you, the sign over on US14 which I’d only seen on Google maps was a sight to behold.
Eventually I started seeing road signs and adverts for Gillette and Devils Tower and which junction to take etc. It was hilarious.
You see, these names are famous and somewhat mythical to CE3K lovers, so seeing them in real life – as lame as this sounds - was surreal.
I wanted to take a picture but they were at points on I90 where I could not stop. Eventually the signs for Sundance started to appear and I knew I was getting close to the turn off for Highway 14 - the road to Devils Tower from I90. It was around midday and I was hungry and thirsty and I didn’t know what I’d get at Devils Tower or what was in Hulett etc., so I drove on past Vore Buffalo Jump and pulled into the Wyoming Visitor Centre for a quick break and some food.
It was shut. Frik! I was starving and needed a drink too and I forgot that it was a Sunday and also off-season so I had to do without. But I got out and had a stretch and walked around the closed centre. It was weird. It was a stunning blue sky day, no clouds and very warm, - shuttle guy was right - yet there was snow sliding off the roof of the visitor centre. Big blocks of it crashing to the ground – on a hot summer day?!. So I snapped a few pics and headed back onto I90 to get my impatient arse to Devils Tower! It really was a beautiful day to be driving across Wyoming, let alone on an adventure of a lifetime.
So I turned off at J185 and headed north along H14. 24 miles and half an hour to go.
The roads at this point start to take on a strangely familiar theme.
There are classic scenes in c3ek where Gillian and Roy take the station wagon through its paces and crash it thru barriers on h24 and go across country to evade the road blocks set up by the National Guard. It was amazing to be driving down the same roads and to see them basically identical to the movie. Of course, it’s impossible to locate the real locations as the film cameras change the focal depth and distances of the scene but this was all too familiar territory and it hadn’t changed in 40 years. Excellent.
The geography is very interesting around this part of the US. I90 was a long stretch across plains, literally plains like you see in old cowboy films but jutting out of the ground to the left and right for miles either side were massive rock formations, millions of year old, crazy angles and crazy colours, in particular a rusty ruddy red brown colour that would become a familiar sight through my week. The closest I’ve come to this in the UK are Iarge cliffs around Devon and Dorset where you can see three or four layers of stretching up wards. Out here and especially along h24 and h14 after Carlisle Junction were massive versions of this geological palette and it was hard keeping my eye on the road as it was so interesting and beautiful. It was another unexpected bonus to be had on this amazing trip across the Midwest and a hint of the geological wonder that lay ahead some 20 miles or so.
Another sight that really started to become noticeable was the little rows of post-boxes by the side of the road. Rows of 5 or 10 post boxes on a post by the road with not a house in sight, just like the famous movie scene where Roy has his first encounter with the aliens on the cross roads. There were lots of little houses, all made of wood, dotted long h14 and to be honest some of them were not in the best shape but they added a real sense of being in the true Midwest where life probably still is very hard and remote, punished by the sunshine at high altitude and then bleak snow in winter months. I wanted to stop and take a pic of one of the rows of post-boxes but I felt it was a bit rude so I decided to keep that memory for me I my head. I’d already linked my cell phone to the car stereo and when I left the Wyoming Visitor centre I put the soundtrack to CE$K on and it was playing as I drove along I24 and it was surreal I can tell you. To drive along these roads with that soundtrack on was a dream come true in of itself. As I said, it's very hilly in that area and you start to climb and drop on the road and the bends become sweeping and the roadside becomes more lined with trees and hills, just like the scene in the movie when Gill and Roy eventually get stopped and put into army vehicles by Apollo Creed.
And then,…..there it is. Almost right on cue with the album blasting out of the stereo. Devils Tower.
Now I’ll be totally honest here. I was a little underwhelmed. I pulled over to a layby and sat and stared. I was emotional to see it but slightly confused as it was bloody tiny! WHAT? Damn you Spielberg and your movie magic – taking this thimble and making it the size of a mountain! It was big yes, to say the least, but not as big as I was expecting and to make matters a little worse it was sat in a valley with three bigger mountains behind it that dwarfed it! I was pleased to see it but I was taken aback a little by how – not big- it was in real life.
I sat there and took it in and figured that hell, I was still here, that is Devils Tower and I’m really here so let’s suck it in and get down there.
It was at this point that I realised my complete idiocy and almost choked on my bottle of water.
I checked the fuel and caught the GPS mileage to destination= 13 miles to go.
Hang on? I was still 13 bloody miles away?! What? It was that big from 13 miles away? How big was it close up then? Ha-ha, my lack of knowledge of the countryside hit home in a big way. I was already at 4000 ft. above sea level! So I was up higher than Devils Tower and had to drop a long way into a valley, miles ahead, that would eventually bring me up to Devils Tower, and I mean UP TO as well. Donkey!
So I took off again, and cranked up the audio and prepared myself to come face to face with DT in about 15 minutes. Along the road, I saw perhaps 5 vehicles come past and no one in my rear view or up ahead. It was a hot clear blue day and almost no one else around for miles and miles.
As you descend into what I guess must be Belle Fourche valley, you wind around the hills and every so often you see DT for a moment up ahead and it becomes bigger and bigger, and as you drop right down to the valley floor it looms up, fast becoming the only object for miles around. Truly taking on its movie sized stature.
So eventually, there it is. Devils Tower, all 1267 ft. of it rising far above the Belle Fourche river and dominating the surrounding countryside like a geological monolith. There is a pull off on the left of H24 which is just south from the turn off to H110
This provides a fantastic view of the tower from about a mile and a half away and it really dawns on you how big this thing is. It’s massive and dwarves everything else around for miles.
About a hundred yards down from the pull off is where Gillian and Roy park the station wagon and first glimpse the tower. Just to the left of them is a little hillock that they climb up and the camera follows them up the hill and lifts above them revealing the mounting in all its glory. This is accessible from the pull off if you walk a hundred yards down from your car and climb the hillock. It’s just as dramatic as the movie scene I can testify.
I can also testifying to being a bit overwhelmed by it all as I was sitting in my 4x4 -I’ll happily admit it. ("You cry baby- you cry baby" ha-ha – Spielberg was right!) I’ve been told that the mountain has that effect on people and for lots of different reasons. I was certainly overwhelmed to be there and why not. This moment right here, at this famous spot, was something I'd dreamed of as a teenager and never thought I’d see. It really was a boyhood dream come true. I turned the music off in the car and sat there in awe. Literally speechless for about 10 minutes – that’s an achievement in of itself I can assure you!
It’s indescribable to be honest. It’s awesome, mythical, huge, beautiful, weird, ominous, gentle, sentient, and interesting, wondrous…..you get the picture. It’s all things to all people but to me it was simply stunning. I literally ‘couldn’t believe it was real’ - to quote Melinda Dillon.
I gathered my senses and rang my g/f back in the UK. She was over the moon for me and was so cool about me being overwhelmed by it and totally expected it for all the reasons above. Of course I’m overwhelmed. I’ve waited 30 years, just travelled 7451 miles- had 4.5 hrs. sleep in nearly 40 hrs. and hardly eaten, it’s my 50th birthday present and the 40th anniversary of the movie and I’m looking at Devils Tower right in front of me– of course I was emotional ha-ha – what the hell else would I be?!
So we hung up after congratulations and I took a few snaps but to be honest, I had something to do else and pronto……‘I had to get down there’ I was only a mile away and it was about 14:00 and I think I grinned for about the next seven hours non-stop. You hang a left a little way down the road onto H110 and this essentially is the driveway to the monument. It’s only half a mile long and there is an absolutely fantastic view of the mountain on your left. Jaw dropping stuff. I had to pull over and take a few snaps and vids.
(Note, about 4 years ago a friend of mine Oliver Sinden sent me a photo of his car parked right in the same place with the tower in the background as he knew I loved the place so much – that pic has been on my desk at work for years and I always wanted to replace it with one of my own – and today that little wish came true too)
For all you Ce3k fans, if there really was a landing strip built as per the movie then it would be under my feet. It amazed me once I had a better understanding of the compass and how the tower sat on the map, just how accurate Spielberg got the location correct down in Alabama. The runway with the blue landing lights would run from the mountain, right under my feet and away behind me towards Campstool Draw. Kudos to Spielberg / Alves for getting this right and it made my day to see the tower from the angle that we see it most in the movie. It really is real. I had to keep telling myself to calm down. – I hope you’re reading this and perhaps feeling a bit of the childlike wonder I was feeling in actually being there. As I write this it still hasn’t hit home that I’ve actually been there.
I’ll be honest with you again. I stood on the door sill with the door open and blasted the track ‘The Mountain’ on the car stereo and shot some video. There was no one around. I had the view to myself and it was epic! John Williams would have been proud – hopefully. I know I was.
Around the bend on the left is the Devils Tower Trading Post, which is essentially nirvana for fans of the tower and of the movie. It has every conceivable gift you can possibly imagine and more. As I said, it was off season and the roads were empty and so was the shop. It was surreal. (That word again) I was almost alone at this place, just two other vehicles in the big car park.
First things first – food and drink. I was running on adrenaline and it was catching up on me so I ram raided the chips and cookie stand and grabbed a bunch of water bottles and sat on the picnic table outside and got my shit together.
It’s about $15 to enter the park via a small booth and this is valid for four days so it’s well worth the money. The road stretches out ahead across the Belle Fourche River. A really beautiful bend in the river heads to the right, way below the tower, and the road follows it across the river and around the base of the tower in a climbing 2 mile spiral where it terminates at a large car park next to the Visitor Centre. It’s a very scenic drive and you go pas the prairie dog town where load of prairie dogs are scampering about and standing up to see what’s happening. (For UK readers, think of Meerkats with American accents).
It struck me that on my birthday in May, 1976, the very last day of filming took place back near the Trading Post back over the bridge (helicopters flying equipment up to the mountain towards dusk) and in between shots, Francois Truffaut sat with some local kids and watched the prairie dogs right where I was parked. What a day this was becoming!
As I said – it was a very quiet Sunday indeed and once I got off the I90 at Sundance I hardly saw anyone on the way to Devils Tower. I took a few snaps from the bottom of the tower in the car park near the camping site and then took the 2 mile drive up around the mountain. I had no idea of the road or what lay ahead. Not a clue. You go up with the mountain to your right so every so often you caught a glimpse of it thru the tall ponderosa pines which surround the mountains lower levels. It’s pretty much hidden from view when you’re driving on that road which is amazing when you consider how tall it is above the pines. I stopped at one layby behind another 4x4 to take a look as it looked fantastic in the afternoon sunshine which by now was lighting it from the west.
It was magnificent and me and the vehicle occupants took turns to take snaps like you do. The guy was about my age and his dad had come here about 40 years before but this guy had not come with him, but always promised himself that he’d come to see the tower one day. And here he was. I told him my own story and he was astounded that I’d come so far to see the tower but understood the attraction as he too had driven a long way from Kentucky as I recall. He was the first of many really nice people that I met on this trip who all dug the vibe of my journey pack to 1977 and totally got where I was coming from in making this crazy journey to live out a boyhood dream. More nice folks will crop up as my week unfolds but this travelling couple were a great start to my introduction to some downright awesome Americans (and crazy assed Dutch folk too!)
The road eventually winds up in a looped car park which was not very busy – probably gets mental in summer months – but for now it was almost vehicle free. So I parked up with zero problems.
The car park is literally at the base of the tower. On one side there is a small visitors Centre/ Shop, and on the other there is a small paved incline from the car park which takes you up thru the ever present pines (100ft tall I might add) to a paved walkway around the tower. Standing there in blazing sunlight at the foot of the tower proper, just at the perimeter of the boulder field is a memory I will never, ever, forget. The view of the tower with the sun lighting it up above the trees and the contrast of colours between the boulders, the trees and the sky is something that HAS to be seen to be believed. None of my cameras can capture what I saw that day and certainly not what I felt standing at the foot of this tremendous monolith. It was a sheer sense of wonder. I’m not religious at all, but you have to wonder sometimes don’t you – how beautiful is this planet?! How did that bloody great big rock get there and look as staggeringly awesome as it does. It’s the only one of its kind in the world. It brought a tear to my eye and a big bloody smile ha-ha. You simply have to go there and see it. It’s so much more than can be imagined.
Blah, blah….get on with it – we’ve still got six days to go and a shit load to pack in!
So off I went. I headed up the path to the right and ambled through the boulder field. I had the Posh camera and zoom with the tripod so I stopped here and there to take some classic shots of the mountain. Then I decided to ‘Roy it’ and climb up on to the boulders and evade EZ4 for a laugh. I did a few 4th wall gags for my girlfriend and then carried on up around the tower.
From the car park you can easily see on the right shoulder of the mounting the slippery slope that Roy and Gillian climb up. It's huge. But credit to Joe Alves and the modelling teams for rendering such a lifelike to-scale film set down in Alabama as it was identical to the real thing. Amazing, familiar as heck due to the movie but I still could not believe I was there. It was real and surreal at the same time!
There weren’t many people about so I had a good few occasions where no-one passed me for ten minutes. (This was to get way better on my next visit on the following Thursday – now THAT was a day to beat all days). I walked around the mountain taking it all in, the sights, the sounds, the animals, the different views of the columns stretching way up above me to the crumbling tower top.
You can really see why Carl Gottlieb suggested it to Joe Alves who in turn suggested it to Spielberg as a potential UFO contact site. It’s truly epic and truly spiritual and at the same time sheer frikkin awesome. The walk around the tower, all paved and immaculate, takes about an hour if you stop like I did and snapped half a gig of vids and pics. But the scenery is outstanding and the angles you see of the tower are unbelievable. For someone like me coming all that way it was truly more than I could ever have dreamed or imagined and at the same time it was EXACTLY like I had dreamed and imagined it to be.
I didn’t have any idea of the rules about being on the tower along, after dark, safety, animals and food etc. so as the sun began to set and the paths had less folks on them I decided to head back to the Subaru and call it a day. It was very difficult absorbing it all and I actually think – looking back- that I was a bit shocked – no doubt overtired from all the travelling and time zones and lack of sleep. I was also un sure about all my gear in the back of the 4x4 for hours with no one around – it’s the Londoner in me – you don’t leave a suitcase and a North Face jacket in the back of a car in view and then go off hiking ha-ha.
So I headed back down the mountain in beautiful springs' fading evening light, and drove the way I came in back along H24, back to I90 and back east some 60 miles to Spearfish and to my second hotel of the trip and home for 3 nights – the Super 8 Spearfish!
What an amazing day don’t you think?
Oh it gets better.
It gets a whole lot better.
Devils Tower, Wyoming
xxxxxx
Day Two Gallery
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Day Three
Monday May 1st 2017
Presidents, Crazy Horses and Snow.
As part of my pre-planning before I came out I spoke to my friend Corey in MN who told me about a good few interesting places that were in reasonable proximity to my hotels but in the opposite direction of where I had originally planned to go. Namely Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monuments but also Deadwood, Lead and Terry Peak – more on those later in the week.
So I added the first two into my firm diary for the beginning of the week. It was predicted to snow over Sundance and Devils Tower on the Monday thru Wednesday so I had already swapped the driving around to make the most of Devils Tower on the Sunday before it snowed me out. I didn’t know the Subaru very well so I was nervous about the unknown terrain in the snow.
So I packed some supplies in the wagon and headed out from the Super 8, headed east onto East Colorado Boulevard parallel to the I90 for a few miles then hung a right down the H85 to Deadwood.
Deadwood is about ten miles south east of Spearfish, really easy to get to but be warned there is a super steep hill on the way down into town and it ends abruptly, you really have to watch that speed!
Once you get through Deadwood there is a fork in the road heading to Lead up in the hills on the Can Am 473 or left to Custer on the 385. This is the road to Mount Rushmore area about 70 miles south and is remarkably scenic. That said, it was a very cold day and to be honest, the scenery as you leave Deadwood is quite depressing. Thousands of fallen trees lie on steep hills in between lone standing ones on either side of the road panning out for miles, looking like a hurricane has swept through and decimated the terrain. It’s either a result of a century of logging and habitation, or simply a hurricane has swept through. It was both sad and austere and I guess a prelude to my trip to Deadwood two days later.
But as you rack up the miles out of Deadwood it quickly becomes really beautiful and you find yourself on a lovely sweeping highway, at the wheel of a large automobile, driving past shut down shacks…..literally letting the day go by …….David Byrne must have passed through this way….because the age and condition of some of the roadside houses/ shacks/lean-to’s were the same as it ever was.
I couldn’t tell the abandoned ones from the lived in ones as no sooner as you drive past a derelict wooden structure than you catch a glimpse of a 50K USD pick-up the size of Iowa parked under the lean-too. It was weird and not for the first time did I wonder what the hell people did for a living in these remote parts of Dakota. The sun came out pretty soon after I left the drab hills of Deadwood and added a certain charm to the many ramshackle houses by the side of the highway. Every so often there would be a fantastic, gloriously expensive and huge homestead with wonderful wooden balcony’s, massive windows, carports and split level living set back from the road a ways. Really modern looking houses which would cost a fortune back in the UK. Someone was doing well in Deadwood, or was doing well out of people like me visiting Deadwood! Ha-ha.
The highway is lined with gorgeous pines and rocky outcrops and there is a famous cave system not far off the road but I never got to go as I wanted to get to Mt Rushmore just after lunch time.
About 35 miles out of Deadwood there is a great pull off by the side of Pactola Lake. The views from this point are spectacular down and across the man-made reservoir. Really beautiful panoramic scene with huge pines thickly stacked to the water’s edge sand wonderful craggy outcrops of rock jutting out of and into the water all around the vast lake. The air was cold due to the temperature but it was really clean air, you know the type that you can taste….and feel going into your lungs….excellent. Good place to grab a drink as for some reason the altitude really makes you thirsty. As you pull back out on the 385, there is Dam half way down past Pactola Lake. Now I am not keen on dams to be honest and wasn’t expecting this en route so it was with some trepidation that I headed across the top of the dam and headed on towards Custer by way of Hill City and Keystone.
Now, here’s a question readers; - why is it that when you’re on a really tall building or mountain or cliff, you get this weird urge to jump off? Even though you’re nowhere near the edge you still feel yourself edging closer to imminent death?? So why is it that when crossing a dam in a nice big 4x4 with power steering and awesome grip did I get the insidious feeling that my trusty mule was tugging to the side of the road waiting to buck me sideways down the wall into sub-zero water and to the bottom of the lake, thus ending a rather pleasant trip thus far?
I whipped the mule and got the hell off the dam and safely back within the confines of solid rock on either side of the wiiiiiiiiide road.
Now for road trippers following me on this jaunt to Mount Rushmore and perhaps thinking of doing the same trip on the same roads, there is an excellent pit stop for gas and supplies about 2o miles out from Mt Rushmore on the junction of US385 and US16 called the Country Inn Bar & Casino just outside Hill City. They were very reasonably priced considering the proximity to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monuments. Fuel was well prices too.
The Subaru was a great car and very comfortable and a joy to drive but as it was locked in permanent 4wd it tended to be a little thirsty. I was averaging 35mpg although a lot of that was on up and down highways and a steady 60mph in between towns. This may be really good mileage for a small 4x4 but my 5 series does 52 on average so I was keeping an eye on the gauge more than usual. But fuel is so cheap it’s not an issue. More from a – time to fill up again- point of view than anything.
About ten miles north-east of Mt Rushmore is a small town called Keystone, a small pass through town with a few shops and restaurant etc., but on the left as you pass around the towns S-bend, there is a place called Dahl’s Chainsaw Art. This is a great little place to stop at and check out the guy carving statues – some of them massive- out of trees. Really mesmerising to watch with a nice coffee and a bit of sunshine. Then back on the road to Rushmore.
It’s weird. As you amble along the Highway, which is quite sweeping, you can sense the altitude increase in your ears but you don’t quite realise how high you are above sea level. You’re actually climbing to 6000ft above sea level which is way higher than the highest peak in the UK. As you round a lovely uphill right-hander, you see the famous monument up ahead staring straight at you. Like Devils Tower it looks really small from this vantage point and similarly you feel a little let down as the tourist shots make it look towering and huge.
Fear not, for you are about two miles away and it’s still a long way off. There is a great parking spot for cool shots of the iconic monument right here although from recollection I can’t recall if it was entirely legal ha -ha…oh well….some quick snaps and I was back on the road.
You wind your way around the highway and eventually come to the turn-off for the parking area and viewing platform. It’s a really well organised multi storey parking lot, with a $15 entrance fee to the monument and car park. It was bloody freezing outside so I shoved the mule in an underground slot and headed off for the famous presidential monument. I was there on Monday May 1st so it was off season and not too busy. Sure there were a lot of people but nothing compared to what summer must be like with rammed car parks and queues to see the carving.
You are funnelled along a boulevard of granite pillars, upon which are dates for every state that was brought into the union which is quite interesting even for a non-American. But the centre piece is of course the monument. You leave the boulevard behind and walk out onto a massive open viewing are flanked by two carved granite blokes naming all the patrons who sponsored the mountain and keep the place going. It’s massive. It’s truly amazing to see in person. Not only because it’s unbelievable how they managed to do this so many years ago but also the fantastic details, right down to carved glasses on President Teddy Roosevelt. It’s about half mile away directly in front of the viewing platform and – on this day – there was plenty of room to take awesome snaps and set up a tripod to get some really good zoomed shots of the faces on the mountain. It’s quite something to see the claw marks in the carvings and to appreciate the sheer effort in shaving tons of granite off a mountain and bringing out the faces of four US presidents in such a clear way. It was truly awesome. No it’s not MASSIVE! But it’s still huge and inspiring and begs a closer look.
It was, as I say, damned cold and even with a puffa coat the size of France on it was not exactly toasty, so I packed the cameras away and took a hike along the dedicated walkaway on the left of the Amphitheatre and headed p to the mountain to get a closer look,
It was only when you get really close the base of the monument that you really see the detail and markings of the workers who clawed these faces out of pure granite back in 1927. It’s impressive to say the least. Unfortunately because of the recent and forecasted snow the wooden walkway was closed off past the monument's base so I couldn’t get some afternoon sunshine shots on the faces, but with a little modification I was able to highlight the ones I did take and I got some really cool pictures of this famous monument and its famous faces. There’s a great walkway at the bottom of the faces and underneath each President there is a bit of history behind each person and what made them contenders for the monument. (plus a few mountain sheep providing questionable entertainment for all) I’m British so my American history is 101 level and whatever I saw on TV as a kid - just kidding- I know quite a lot but I found this place very interesting and informative and I wished the season was in full swing so that I could have visited the museums and exhibits to learn a lot more about the monument and the history of its famous faces.
There was snow piled up by the walkway and it was getting a little overcast so I headed back to the mule and moseyed on out the trail to the next stop: Crazy Horse Monument about 17 miles from Rushmore on the way to Custer. There was not much else to do as the museum and gift shop were closed due to the season not being in full swing but to be honest, I’m glad I went to the US this week than later in the year as I could imagine crazy tourist mayhem at a place like this.
So I GPS’d the mule and headed out.
Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He fought the U.S. Federal government to defend the way of life of the Lakota people. His most famous action was at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25–26 June 1876).
You enter the Monument area via a mile-long impressive avenue which leads in a straight line to the monument. Or rather the memorial is about a mile away from where you park and from where the museum and shops are. It’s ridiculously huge. Literally dwarfing Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore is four faces, each of which is about 60ft tall. Crazy Horses face is 80 ft. tall and that’s on top of a body which in turn is on top of a horse! So image the scale of that!
You have to imagine it because….wait for it…….wait……….it’s not finished!. Not even close! The whole thing is privately funded and almost no visible progress has been made since 1998 when the face of Crazy Horse was finished. The entire thing gets no financial help from official organisations and is paid for by tourists and donations.
In comparison to the Rushmore monument this place was, for me, sadly, the lesser of the two and the progress made since it started all those years ago is almost invisible to the untrained eye. Such is the scale of the monument and the scope of the work involved. Yes there is a huge face now visible and prominent on the rock face – and yes, it’s much bigger than the faces on Rushmore but that’s pretty much it as far as the sculpture is concerned. The weather was turning a lot more hostile even as I parked the mule and I witnessed two bikers getting ready to head off when it began sleeting down like a bustard. They got hammered to the tarmac and just sat there in wet weather gear taking it on the chin. Me? I sat in my car wondering what the point of paying another $4USD to get on a bus an get a bit closer to the monument which is about a mile away. I decided I would be better off taking the zoom out and seeing if I could snap a decent pic from where I was.
On a more positive side, there is a fantastic museum and associated workshops to visit and I spent a good few hours learning about the Native American way of life, the hardships, the closeness of the families and above all, the impact they had on the continent, and the devastating impact invaders had on their way of life. As a Brit I know what I know and most of that is through NATGEO mags and Readers Digests from many moons ago. I’m not ignorant to the plight of the first nations but I didn’t realise just how much they and my ancestors affected each other. Mainly the terrible wrongs we perpetrated on them in the 19th century at the height of the land wars and other disagreements. There is a fantastic museum on a lower floor of one of the Native American buildings which is dedicated to the story of the buffalo in the 19th century. I was in there for an hour and it’s absorbing and interesting but ultimately incredibly sad. I had no idea on the figures involved in the Buffalo trade and the massive effect it had on Indian way of life and in such a short amount of time. Tragic is the word that comes to mind.
Make sure you have a chat with Mike upstairs, a Lakota native and also the museum information guy. He’s brilliant and very self-deprecating about the whole history but equally impressed with anyone who bothers to ask questions about the Indian side of events. He’s also hilarious and we laughed about the old movies, new movies, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and blazing saddles. What a great guy. Check him out. He made the trip to Crazy Horse worth the while. The main museum itself is chock full of amazing artefacts and pictures, photos and exhibits on the Indian way of life in the surrounding hills and beyond. I loved it. I won’t say much else as you should go there yourself. I’m not a huge fan of native American history but I felt much more informed by the time I left and it gave me a much deeper understanding of the places I had been and was to visit in days to come. Isn’t that what museums are for?
During the time I had parked the car and wandered around the museum it had gone from clear and sunny to grey, colder and threatening. As I was browsing the shop, there was a whiteout – the likes of which I’d never seen in my life before. It obliterated the view across to the Crazy Horse Monument in seconds and the whole populace stood in awe of the powerful winds driving heavy snow across the buildings and car parks. I was at once amazing and at the same time actually a little unsteadying.
I was reminded of the good choice I made with the car. A drop-top mustang would have been cool as hell, but for sheer safety and protection, the 4x4 was by far the winning choice…this weather sealed the deal…
And then….in ten minutes…..it was gone……..golden sunshine cascaded thru the shop windows, a huge rainbow bridged the ravine below and the snow was almost a memory….unbelievable!
It was clear enough to venture to the other satellite buildings that house all kinds of Native Indian related stuff and info about the sculptor and his family behind the construction of the massive monument. (I think one of the daughters of the original sculptor served me in the shop…) So I headed for the restrooms and stumbled on the best part of the visit. The block that houses the toilets is also home to thousands of original historical photographs of all that I had seen or heard before. Wall after wall of American Midwest history seen through a lens and featuring famous battles, people, places and events. It was a great way to step back in time and see what the period was like for all sorts of nations trying to rub shoulders with each other in very hard and very hostile conditions.
I decided that the tour up to the monument was not really required as apart from the face there was little other progress and I had captured enough shots from within the viewing area to save the memory of being there.
I bid farewell to the monument with the hope that they acquire the funding to finish the work in a few years so that perhaps in my lifetime there is a fantastic location to go back to and look upon with wonder, just as I did with Devils Tower and Mount Rushmore. Maybe one day.
The snow had moved on to another mountain somewhere and I headed back out on the roads with a little trepidation and slightly less speed ha-ha. It’s a lovely part of South Dakota and the trees with snow on were really something to behold. You can have all the massive monuments you like, but there is no substitute for a natural landscape stretching out for miles in early summer. I hit the HY and headed back up to Spearfish the same way I came. I had intended to head over to Spearfish Canyon via Custer and see what the fuss was about, but for some reason the GPS took me back to the Pactola Dam and up through Deadwood and back up the 385. No matter, it got me back to my hotel in one piece in about 2 hours, perhaps less, and just in good time for a really good dinner at Appleby’s across the interstate – highly recommended – really good food.
All in all a very scenic day and a really lovely drive through South Dakota to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse with a total variation in the weather from blazing sun to heavy snow, grey fog to spring showers. I guess Neil Finn has been here too.
Day three, done and dusted, and another couple of famous US landmarks ticked off the bucket list.
Note: If you want any tips or advice on driving from Devils Tower to Mount Rushmore or any other part of this crazy week, please feel free to ask….happy to share my tips and tricks. (Main one is carry lots of drinks…for some reason the altitude – for this Brit anyway - was affecting my thirst a lot and I spent more on water/ fruit juice and sodas than food! – can’t imagine how it is in July and Aug!!!!)
Day Three Gallery
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Day Four
Tuesday 3rd May 2017.
Bombers, Bombs, Buttes and Badlands!
Before I set out on this trip I mentioned to a colleague who lives in Minneapolis that I was coming over to SD to visit DT. He was amazed that a Brit was coming all that way to the Midwest as it was a long haul even by US tourist standards, let alone just to see a mountain in remote Wyoming. He told me all about Deadwood, Mt Rushmore, and Terry Peak etc. and was very knowledgeable on things to do and where to stay that were close to Devils Tower. In fact it’s safe to say that most of what I achieved on my trip was based around his suggestions and real life examples around distances, drive times, safety, hotel suggestions etc.
I already had an itinerary on what to do and what I wanted to fit in but as with all best laid plans, something comes along out of the blue, that screw them up ha-ha.
I had already swapped my week around to cater for the weather warnings about Wyoming when I landed in Rapid City on the Saturday night. This meant moving my visit to the Minuteman II Visitor Centre and ICBM Launch Facility to the Monday 1s May. What I didn’t know until I got to Rapid was that my online ticket had failed to be authorised and I couldn’t join the 10:00 tour. I got this email when I stopped for gas just outside Rapid en-route. Cut a long story short, no dice, I couldn’t get my card to work from the hotel to book again, or do it over the phone as they were shut and I was already half way there.
Shit.
The location of the ICBM Visitors Centre was about 120 miles from my hotel in Spearfish so I figured maybe I could jump on the 14:00 tour. The ICBM nuclear missile silo tour would have to wait for a few years!
So I’m driving past Rapid City just looking for somewhere to get some breakfast and I remembered that there was a Space and Air Museum close by and figured I had enough time to stop off and have a quick look and snap some planes. As luck would have it I was on the right side of Rapid (east) and saw signs for Ellsworth Air force base and pulled over to see where the museum was.
It’s literally right next door to the entrance of Ellsworth AFB. To get there you literally drive through suburbia on Liberty Boulevard. You’re thinking you’ve taken a wrong turn as it’s plonked in the middle of Box Elder, a small city tagged onto Rapid. The AFB is at the end of the road and the Museum is right next to it. You can’t miss it as there are old planes in open view next to the car park. The car park was empty aside from a large 4x4 and a guy standing on his runner with a massive zoom pointed up in the sky. I was a little wary of leaving my own 4x4 alone in a massive car park with no one else around so I sat and watched him for a bit to make sure he was cool.
His (as it turned out) wife got out and started pointing excitedly up in the sky and he swung his camera up and got to it.
I wound my window down to see what the heck she was flustered about at 09:00 on a very cold grey morning.
Circling very low above me was a smooth, sleek, massive jet. But no ordinary jet. It was a ‘Bone’ - A baddass Rockwell Lancer ‘B-1B’ Long range Bomber.
To see one of these mighty planes in the UK is rare but not impossible. So to see one practicing low level flying over its home field is bloody awesome.
I’m not a huge plane fan but I’ll make an exception for anything that can essentially poof me out of existence ha-ha.
The guy across the car park was high-fiving his wife and giving me the thumbs up at the impromptu display with a massive grin.
After a bitterly cold introduction it turns out he and his wife were Dutch and their road trip had gone bad when their RV had broken down outside Rapid. So they were wasting time, ( like me ), waiting for it to be fixed and rented a 4x4 to mooch about in and ended up here.
What are the chances eh? Ellsworth AFB in remote Dakota, freezing cold morning, not a soul around and here is a lone Brit and a stranded Dutch couple. You can’t make this shit up folks.
So we spent the next hour snapping museum planes and waiting for the Bone to take off again.
It was about ¼ mile away on the tarmac so we could see it being prepped for another take off. We hung around under the wing of the B52 Stratofortess, zoom lenses lock and loaded and eventually it taxied and took off. Bloody hell, what a roar, afterburners on and cruising down the run way. What a beautiful sight. Shame it was so far away as my zoom was on full tilt, but still, what an amazing thing to see so unexpectedly.
I popped into the museum to see what it was all about and was amazed to see it was like the Tardis, It was massive! Hangar after hangar of South Dakotan flying history from year dot to modern day. Loads of exhibits, missiles, planes, artefacts etc. Really cool stuff. I won’t spoil it for folks wanting to go but I can say it was very thorough and really interesting. Some amazing displays such as cruise missiles, planes, simulators and such like. It was a cold May morning so the place wasn’t busy but I can imagine it being crazy in summer months.
So off I went and re-joined the I90 heading east to tour the ICBM sites and take a trip through Badlands before u-turning and heading back to Spearfish in the evening.
I stopped off at Wall Drug, an apparently famous little town on I90 which turned out to be a small tourist trap with a bunch of shops off a main street. I grabbed lunch and bought a few souvenirs. It’s probably heaving in summer months as you can buy ever type of tourist gift from Sturgis Bike Rally tees to Blackhills mugs and everything in between. The prices were pretty good too. It’s right by the rail lines and some massive grain silos which make for an interesting backdrop for photographers and as it was quiet I went for a solitary walk around the silos and rail tracks. Probably illegal but no one said anything.
There was not much else to do there as I was saving my cash for a truly memorable souvenir of this amazing trip so I grabbed some hay fever meds, kicked the Japanese mule and hit the road east again.
My destination was the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site about 100 miles out of Rapid City. As I was driving east I recalled that I’d heard stories from my mum as a kid. Tales of secret silos in the middle of fields containing massive nuclear missiles ready to take off at a minutes warning and poof the Russians out of existence. She told me they could be at the bottom of the garden or in the farm behind our house: the ground would open up and an almighty rocket would lift off and we’d have about 3 minutes until we saw a Russian one heading back! Of course as a kid I figure she was just kidding, but for years I had an uneasy sensation that she might be right and at any moment a missile would launch out of the corn fields surrounding our house ad we all be ducking and covering. Ha-ha, little did I know she was telling the truth. Albeit it perhaps not in the UK.
In fact, I didn’t know she was dead accurate until 2016 when I was planning this road trip. My colleague from work told me about the NMHS and suggested it would be a great place to see en route to Badlands which were literally close by.
Finding out that there really were secret missile silos containing 80ft high ICMBs dotted around the farmlands and villages of South Dakota was a real surprise so I absolutely put them on my hit list of destinations. A quick Google showed me that they were indeed on the route to Badlands National Park so I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and whip them both out in a day.
What I didn’t factor in was how shit I was feeling that morning and the need to stop at Wall Drug to get some meds. This delayed my drive to the main visitor centre which was a shame as it was the one where you could go underground and sit exactly where the guy with the key sat every day, every night, waiting for that call for him / her to insert that key and launch nuclear destruction on Russia. COOL! Yes sir! Sign me up for THAT tour!
Alas it was obvious I was not going to make it as I was way behind schedule what with the stop-off at Ellsworth as well.
As I was thinking of those tales from long ago I caught, literally out the corner of my eye a tiny sign saying what I thought was Delta9.
I knew that Delta 9 was the name of the silo that had the missile inside and you could visit as part of the tour but I couldn’t understand why there was a sign in the road saying Delta 9 when the GPS said I had 15 miles to go. But curiosity killed my cat and I hit the next junction, (121) turned around and kept my eyes peeled for this imaginary signpost some 5 miles back along the 90.
And there it was, on Jct 116, a small sign saying Delta 9 with an arrow pointing south. So I figured what the hell, it’s a small detour on a road trip, how bad can it be?
So turned left onto 239th Street and then left onto 195th Avenue. Now when I say ‘avenue’ I do not mean 5th or Shaftesbury…I mean a dirt track. There were no trees lining this ‘avenue’ no sir. This was a dirt track heading off to god knows where.
Sure enough, about half a mile down the dirt track was indeed Delta 9 Missile Silo.
By pure luck I’d seen the one small sign on the interstate for another place I’d always wanted to see in real life!
aaaaaaaand...... it was closed.
What!!?.
I pulled the mule onto a verge behind one other solitary car and pondered what to do next. There were two ladies from Sweden or Denmark standing by the gate to the silo and they were equally disappointed in finding this place locked and closed.
I sat in the car planning the GPS route to Badlands when another car pulled up at the gate and a tourist guy got out. Then a guy in NP uniform got out too and walked up to the gate and started explaining to the guy what was beyond the gate.
He asked if we were interested in going in with him and seeing the silo and missile as he was giving this guy a tour of the facility?
Are you shitting me? Does a bear ………ah you know the drill.
So we tagged along and the NP guide gave us the 411 on the whole set up, the history, the missile, the silo, the launch facility further down the road. He was great, 100% enthusiastic and totally into the whole thing which made for an enthralling half an hour. Which was good because it was bloody freezing. Snow was on its way.
The first thing that hits you as you enter the gates to the compound, which is about the size of half a UK football pitch, perhaps smaller, is the simplicity of the whole thing. There were over 1000 of these silos dotted around the Dakotas and in each one sat a 60ft rocket with a nuclear warhead strapped to the hood, patiently waiting for some guy to push a button a few miles away and then wham, the cover of the silo would blow off in 1/3 second and up it went delivering ELE destruction. And here it was, sitting in a quiet field off a dirt track in the middle of nowhere. You’d never know it was here. Literally hidden in plain view. The setup is very simple, launch tube, blast doors, maintenance room and manhole for the engineers to maintain and prep the missile.
The NP guide gave us a very detailed explanation of the three or four ‘objects’ we could see and answered a lot of questions about what it was like to live next to one of these and how come no one knew they were here. Turned out everyone in the area knew about them for years but came to live with them being there and thankfully never seeing one launch, so they were pretty much ignored for 30 years by farmers and landowners. When the Gov. signed the SALT agreement in 1990, the silos were emptied, missiles decommissioned and removed and the patch of land including the silo was returned to the farmers. They used them for storage, housing, dumping grounds, water butts, all sorts really. I mean what you do with an 80ft concrete shaft in the middle of nowhere. 1000 of them?
So we took a bunch of snaps of this eerie and silent throwback to days of imminent worldwide nuclear destruction and left the silo to stand sentinel across the vast cold, windy plains of South Dakota. The sun was at an annoying angle and the cloud cover was low and grey so even with a polarised lens I couldn’t get a decent shot of the missile sitting in the launch tube below us through the blue safety glass. But it was still cool leaning over the glass peering down at the top of a Minute Man II nuclear weapon (obviously not a working one!) as these were the stuff of myth and legend and of my childhood. It’s not every day you get close to a truly iconic bit of American defence machinery and one so intimately linked to worldwide global destruction. Awesome!
Note: there are 103 of these bad boys still on active duty dotted around Dakota as part of the SAG out of Ellsworth. If North Korea tried to pull a fast one on US territory, I think they’d be screwed!
I had no idea that these silos were all around me and I’d been driving past them for days without a clue. The locations of the silos can be seen on this map. Roxanne, the manager of the hotel told me there was one 1.5 miles away from my hotel on East Colorado Boulevard. I stopped off en route the next day and sure enough, there was another long since derelict missile silo not 100 meters from a well-established farm.
Unbelievable, My Mum was right. They really were hidden in plain sight right next to houses and farms.
So a dusty departure back out to I90 and eastward to Badlands about 20 miles ahead.
Now, I’ve been to a good many countries in my 50 years and seen a lot of weird places, but nothing prepared me for the next three hours’ drive. I’d heard of the Badlands NP growing up as I, like a lot of kids, fell in love with dinosaurs and read that a lot of them, oceanic ones anyway, had been discovered in Badlands in South Dakota and Montana . What I didn’t know was what it looked like. I deliberately stayed away from Google maps and street view as part of my preparation for this trip, except to locate the hotels so I had no idea what to expect as I hacked across the CanAm to Jct 131and right onto the 240 southbound.
First thing you come up to is the North-eastern Park entrance about 3 miles down the road. $15 gets you entrance to the park and it’s worth every cent, trust me.
So I paid the fee, chatted a while to the lady in the kiosk who was interested in my accent and why I was out there on my own, took her advice on the route to take and where NOT to walk and of I went on a magical mystery tour. I still had no idea what or who lay ahead.
The ‘who’ was easy. No one. It was May 2nd and off season so I saw about 6 cars in the next three hours and about the same amount of people. The weather was not good, still grey and overcast and only the occasional shaft of sunlight slanting randomly across the vista as the sun began to descend in the west,
Just inside the park there is a parking area for hikers with info on trailheads to take so I took this opportunity to survey the first bizarre view in front of me.
It was kind of cross between a giant termite hill and a lunar landscape. It was difficult to judge the height and distance of these great big mounds of white chalk? Limestone? Ancient seabed sediment at any rate. This was because they were all the same colour: a washed out grey that surrounded me and towered above me. It literally must be what some of the moon is like. I whipped out the tripod and did some selfie work just to try to capture the scale against a human as there was nothing nearby that would help a viewer understand the sizes and scope of the rocks and cliffs around me. I can’t say I did a good job but you get the picture.
Because of the weather (cold, imminent rain) I was sceptical about going in to the Badlands alone with no phone signal and no one knowing where I was and then it dawned on me why the NP guide was asking me questions. I guess the make a note of solo travellers just in case they go AWOL. But still, it was perhaps a wise choice to pass the trailheads up and just enjoy the drive through these hillocks for a few miles before turning north and heading across to Belle Fourche, some 130 miles west.
I wound my way into the park and the road takes a decidedly varied turn and so does the view!
Within about ten minutes the road ascends a low hill and then swoops down around a long bend and spread out before you is the true reason why this place has such a famous and unique vibe. The valley drops away for miles and miles and all there is to see is this vast – and I mean that – vast epic landscape of arroyos, creeks, hills, peaks, ditches and valleys, in all sorts of weird configurations and incredible colours. Everything was layered in greys to pinks to yellow to green like some bizarre huge sand sculpture, except this one was 380 square miles in size and sometimes as high as 2645ft! It was without a doubt the weirdest place I have ever seen on this planet, and I’ve been to Hinckley. Twice!
The natives called this place Badlands as nothing grows out here, and they were essentially right. It’s got all the marking of a desolate, lonely, somewhat creepy place and yet it was stunningly beautiful. Crap for making a living in 1876 but awesome if you were a tour guide.
I stopped here and there and took a few dramatic shots, again with either me or the mule in shot to give it some scale. It was simply too big to grasp in a photo. You needed a sense of scale to really bring it home to a photo.
I was lucky on some parts of the road as the sun came out briefly and I just stopped and shot some pics / vids with the sun touching some of the peaks to give the pics a little drama but also to show off some of the amazing and frankly bizarre colours. It truly is an amazing place that a photo on google can’t bring you. You have to go there and see if for yourself
I drove through the park in about 90 mins because, like the other six or so cars, I kept seeing different views to take in and get out and climb on. It was like another planet but with a cool road to drive on.
It’s about 35 miles to the exit and as you leave the park behind you you’re confronted with a fantastic widescreen vista out of a western movie. Which is good, because this exact location, on your left as you depart Badlands heading north, is one of the prairie locations used in the movie ‘Dances With Wolves’
I came to America to get some space, some peace, some scope and some big, big skies. I found it out here on the prairies of South Dakota. It really was like being on the set of a movie. I highly recommend coming out here and experiencing the place first hand. It’s a heck of a state.
And so, back to Spearfish and a decent meal at Appleby’s just off the freeway – great value restaurant with massive portions of food and a bunch of TV’s to watch. I got to the hotel at 22:30. Checked in with Sue back in the UK and then hit the sack big-time. I was loving this trip!
Join me in the morning for more fun and Calamity!!
Day Four Gallery
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Day Five
Wednesday 3nd May.
Costner, Calamity, Cosmos and Canyons.
Wednesday turned out to be a very wet and cold day indeed. The weather forecast tuned out to be 100% accurate for that area of South Dakota. Grey skies and only about 10 degrees centigrade so it was with a thankful heart that I had made it to Devils Tower on the Monday and swapped the itinerary about. So I checked out of the Super8 in Spearfish, said my goodbye’s to the incredibly helpful Roxanne and her staff and found my way back on to H85 heading south to Deadwood some ten miles away. En-route I stopped to take a quick look at one of the decommissioned Nuclear Silos, same as the one at Delta 9 way over east on the I90. It was literally about a mile from the hotel tucked in between a couple of houses on the side of the road. It amazed me that these really were hidden in plain view and no one batted an eye lid living next to a massive silent nuclear weapon in these parts. I wondered if the UK had done the same thing and how people would react to finding out all these years later.
It was raining and the mule needed warming up a lot. I couldn’t believe the different weather I was seeing here: 83deg on Devils Tower, 37deg and snow on Crazy Horse. Rain and cold here on the I85.
I took my time in the bad weather, next stop: Deadwood!
Deadwood: I’d heard of this place when I was a little kid from movies and books and probably from the Doris Day film 'Calamity Jane' which featured the famous Deadwood Stage song as well as the much more famous ‘Whip Crack Away’ tune. But I had largely forgotten about it until I saw adverts for a TV series way back in the early ’02 - ‘03. I didn’t have sky TV so I never saw it. I only recall it had Ian McShane in it who we used to go and watch making ‘Lovejoy’ which was filmed once or twice in our own village and surrounding villages way back in the 80’s.
Once again, Corey, my friend who lives in Minneapolis and holidays in these very hills in the snowy season, told me about Deadwood and how important and influential it was to the surrounding countryside and its place in the history books as being next to the second largest gold mine in the western hemisphere. As well as being a totally lawless town with some of the most famous western inhabitants this side of the James Gang.
Before I flew out, I bought the series on DVD and immersed myself in Deadwood of 1876, and realised I’d missed out on one of the best TV series ever written. Fantastic attention to detail and fantastically foul language along with political underscores rivalling that of a roman play. Brilliant stuff and full of famous and infamous characters brought to life per the real version of events, not the pretty Doris Day, all sweetness and light version – oh no….this was based entirely on fact and it made for hilarious, uncomfortable and somewhat complex viewing. I love it! So I couldn’t wait to get there and see this place for real and walk the streets of Deadwood and cuss every SOB who done look it me wrong! Yeehah!!..
Don’t get me wrong, obviously it wouldn’t look like a scene from ‘Back to the Future III, but it was still going to be cool actually being in the place where so much American history was made and disseminated, and by so many classic characters.
But just before you begin to enter the city limits on a very steep hill that winds its way past hotels and casinos from the top of the black hills, there is another famous film related location that I really wanted to visit.
Tatanka; Story of the Buffalo, is a monument and exhibition to the plight of the Buffalo hunting that took place in the last years of the nineteen century and the devastating effect it had on the native Americans to whom the buffalo played an integral part of their lives for hundreds of years.
It’s a bit tricky to get into the place as it’s on the opposite side of the road as you come into Deadwood and it’s not immediately easy to see as your too busy watching the hill and traffic ahead. But if you pull over to the gravel area just as you see the massive DEADWOOD sign on your right, which is about ten feet wide and quite low to the ground, this areas is a great place to safely turn around and climb out of the city and Tatanka is easier to pull into on your right almost at the top of the hill.
The one-way road swings around into a car park. I bet it gets chaotic in summer months but today it was 09:00 in the morning on a very, very wet and cold day. It was actually snowing when I finally parked and the place looked deserted.
But being the tenacious Brit that I am, I piled on the North Face puffa coat, grabbed my woolly hat (I came out here prepared as heck – thanks to the Devils Tower National Monument staff advising me just before I flew out.) and trudged up to the visitors centre.
It was dark and apparently empty and I was about to snuck away when the door opened and a friendly face asked if I wanted to come in from the snow.
I was the only person there and as it was off season I got a solo guided tour of the whole place by this kind lady who also took care of my back pack full of camera gear. I had seen a bit about the Buffalo hunting when I was at Crazy Horse two days prior and knew about the terrible consequences to the population but this place was just as fascinating as it drilled way deeper on the aspects of life in the Midwest for the Indians and how much they depended on the buffalo for so much of their daily livelihood.
Film fans will know that nearly all of the Oscar laden epic ‘Dances with Wolves’ was filmed very close by. But what they may not know is that Kevin Costner, after immersing himself in the story of John Dunbar and the lives of the Dakota tribes, was moved so much by the tragedy of how we immigrants hunted the buffalo and thereby starved the local tribes to death, that he paid for this exhibit and museum to be a permanent reminder to the events and impact all those years ago when the British and French nearly wiped out the Buffalo herds for their fur and meat.
So the museum is also chock a block with artefacts from Dances with Wolves such as clothing, tools, props etc. Bargain for this film fan.
If you haven’t seen 'Dances With Wolves'' then you’re missing out on one of the best ‘western’s' ever made and if you want to see what South Dakota it’s like without coming here, then watch it as it features almost 100% on-location footage of the surrounding South Dakotas. The monument is a massive life sized statue of Native Americans herding Buffalo over a hill, in bronze. It’s brilliantly sculpted and then cleverly embedded in the ground via cantilevered supports to make it look very real and powerful. By the time I came out of the exhibit hall and into the fresh air to walk around the sculpture the weather had eased off considerably, still very cold but brighter and no snow!
So I snapped a few pics of the sculpture and read all the plinths and learned more about the monument and how it came to be made and Costner’s involvement in its production etc.
It must look awesome in the right light – late sunset on a blue sky day, but today it looked a bit drab as the bronze didn’t pop out against the grass and grey skies…oh well…as long as it’s sunny for when I go back to Devils Tower I wasn’t that bothered. Plus it meant I had to grab some excellent morning coffee!
So I went back inside to warm up and mother of god! It was crammed full of tourists!
Nah…just kidding, there were just two older folks from Kansas motor homing around the country in retirement style.
There was also someone else perched over a laptop, eyeing me briefly as I bust through the freezing doors into the centre. It was like a western movie when someone walks into the saloon and everyone stops what they’re doing and stares him out.
This person was a rather imposing looking Native American but he went straight back to his laptoppery. The American folks stared cautiously as this bearded stranger wearing duck down stood taking his portable duvet off and shaking his camera obscura’s dry.
‘What do I do to get a hot drink around here’ I asked the tour guide and as soon as I opened my British gob, the mood settled and everyone was peaceable again – no gunfights at the so-so corral today folks!
I was just in time for the morning’s lecture from Billy – the aforementioned native American- whom despite his imposing stature could not have been nicer or more knowledgeable. I won’t say what he presented as it would be unfair to steal the thunder but it was a good 45 mins of insightful and entertaining facts and figures of life from the Dakotan Indian point of view back in the 1850s to the 2000’s.
I can tell you that it was actually quite humbling and thought provoking. I’m not American but I know persecution and tyranny when I see it. I went to school in Essex.
It was very much like the movie Avatar but without CGI or blue skinned folks rising around on banshees…but the story was very familiar. Pesky immigrants find gold and fur, wage war on the locals to clear the way for stripping, locals get a bit pissed off, have a few fights, take a few wins from the immigrants, immigrants totally overpower the locals and take everything including their food and livelihood leaving the locals with nowhere to go and nothing to eat. Immigrants take gold and everything else including the land. Natives die. Classic tactic.
Billy was remarkably unbiased in his depictions of the above so it was not all doom and gloom. It was fascinating. The phrase ‘Red Indian’ has been in use for many years. It originated when the first immigrants/ settlers saw the local Indians and called them that because they had red skins. In fact the Indians weren’t all that different in skin tone than the white man but being a clever bunch of folks had worked out that if they covered their skin in the red dirt that forms part of the geological Midwest, it protects them from sunburn. They washed it off but by then it was too late. Red Skins it was. Cool eh?
So after asking about 450 questions about the history of the place and Indian life, I bid my farewells to Billy and the team, saddled up the defrosted mule and moseyed back down the hill to the city of …
Deadwood! Yehaa!
Warning: rather colourful language ahead - but entirely in keeping with tradition and common language of 1876 in these here parts….now read the rest of my goldarn awesome diary! Ha!
After watching so many episodes of the political, and at times, hard to understand sex/swear fest titular TV drama, I was stoked to be entering a city so steeped in mythology and fact. A city so famous that it even held the grave sites of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok!
Roll me in the mud and call me a turd!……where do I get started!
Well, you know when you get so jazzed about something or someone and then you meet them and well……it’s a bit of a let-down? A bit like the last Bond film.
Well, in my whole week of madassed location hopping and sight-seeing, I’ll admit that Deadwood was nothing like I expected.
I guess everyone has to make a living and much like 1876, you do what you can with what you have, and modern day Deadwood has done that by capitalising on the gambling and eating this little dirt pit started out famous for in its founding years.
Once you’ve negotiated the roller-coaster hill that sweeps into town and braked hard to join the H14 from H85 you come around a gentle curve where you swing a right onto what is the main Deadwood street. Almost every shop is geared to parting you with your hard earned dollars in one way or another. It’s like Blackpool minus the sea….or the tower…..or the illuminations……or the pleasure beach……or the…….
But, undeterred, I put the mule into the local muletistory car-park (expensive - $15 per three hours) and headed off in search of outlaws, guns, loose women and high stakes winnings….and dinner after a cold start up on the hill tops.
Deadwood is 100% engineered to take your money and has no shame in doing so and for that I actually liked it. Sure it’s a tourist trap– so is Vegas- but it’s likable if you know that it’s going to be a part of your trip. So I went in the various gambling halls, restaurant and venues and soaked up the atmosphere of false hope, false fronts and falsely loose women! Sweet Jesus is nothing real around here!?? Threw a few dollars into the money pits and lost every one but hey, I could say I actually gambled in Deadwood….COOL!
The high stakes were a slight misnomer…in as much as there were steaks higher up in the second floor restaurants, so I searched out the Mineral Palace and settled in for a well-earned hot meal.
Why the Mineral Palace?, well, it stands on the site of the original Gem Theatre operated by ‘Mr C*cksucker’ himself, Al Swearengen!
http://www.mineralpalace.com/history/
So after travelling around 7,500 miles to visit the true Midwest and take in a few boyhood – and adulthood - bucket list locations, what better meal to be served as the ‘dish of the day’ in a classic Old Fashioned Deadwood, frontier town to beat all frontier towns steakhouse????
Curry.
Curry!?
Yes folks, the irony was not lost and despite the plethora of choices on the menu, I plumped for the dish of the day: Curry.
And why might you ask? Well, it’s a little known fact that although steak was available out here in the Midwest in Deadwood’s heyday, it was expensive and hard to keep from spoiling in the staggering heat of summer so most of the gold miners who based out of the town ate meat covered in various sauces to hide the rancid smell. It was cheap, plentiful and there were all manner of spices and sauces to throw in the pot due to the amazing variation of immigrants staking claims to a gold mine within spitting distance of another one.
I sat there by the window looking down at the almost empty main street below. It was early May and not the season for tourists just yet so there were not a lot of folks I could happily shout loud obscenities at, or better still REALLY LOUD OBSECINTIES at from my balcony just like Al Swearengen or Calamity Jane did, yes folks, (sorry to burst your Doris Day virginal singing sweetie image) – Jane was, in fact, and in reality, a foul mouthed, dirty, drunken part time prostitute – so drab and foul-mouthed that she was almost always mistaken for a man.), - but she had the Wi-Fi password so I let her off – more on Jane later folks – she had a redeeming quality that was to put her into the history books for a much more agreeable reason.
So I scoffed my very good Curry a ’la Deadwood, swore at the waitress and manager in true Deadwood style and headed for the bogs. Now, just like Crazy Horse, for some reason I seem to stumble on awesome photographs on the way to the bogs and this place was no exception.
On the walls down the hall were hundreds of period photos of Deadwood and surrounding cities. Fantastic pics of real life in the Midwest and of Deadwoods early days. What a terrible place to eke out a living. People literally carving out a home in the dirt – I mean literally digging a hole in the bank of the ‘road’ and staking a claim on it and living cheek by jowl with all sorts of nationalities and cultures. All for the opportunity to strike it rich. Gold was indeed there and often literally found within a stone’s throw of where some lucky sap had put his tent up, but with the gold came the rush, and with the rush came the miscreants, the murders, the desperate and the thieves. These photos are of all these types of people and their surroundings.
It’s worth eating here just to see these amazing photos and go back in time to the beginnings of the city in 1876 and all the infamous inhabitants and visitors that made this place so notorious. Don’t forget your eating on the very same spot that Al Swearengen built his famous Gem Theatre on in 1876/77 and it became the most profitable and popular entertainment venue in the whole Midwest – mainly for prize fights and prostitution. Ah the good old days before Xbox eh.
So out into the empty main street I went on the search for the Mount Moriah Cemetery which holds the graves of Martha Jane Canary AKA ‘Calamity Jane’ and William ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok.
Main Street is a somewhat forlorn affair but I figured it must come alive at night and much more so in summer when the tourist season kicks in and the place is buzzing....again, not dissimilar to Blackpool.
The lower facades of the street are glamorous and enticing with every conceivable ploy to get you inside to eat or drink or better still….gamble. I’ve never really gambled so I threw a few dollars at the machines and certainly down the drain just to say I did it and carried on in search of a somewhat more peaceful and rewarding return for my hard earned pesos:- Mt Moriah Cemetery
In the end, courtesy of a really helpful state trooper, I located the Cemetery about a mile out of town up a very VERY steep hill. I actually ended up going back to the muletistory, saddling up and driving to the cemetery and I’m glad I did. It was heck of a climb if you’re walking.
I’ll say this, the houses on the street up to Mount Moriah are really pretty and make for a good spot to take some historical architecture photos, but by heck they must curse the weather when it snows. It’s possibly the steepest suburban street I’ve ever seen. I mean literally, toboggan tastic! But a nightmare for kids walking to school. I don’t know how they must do it. It begs to be skateboarded, rollerbladed, ski ’id down trust me.
When you get to the top of Lincoln Avenue, via Van Buren, you arrive at Mt Moriah Cemetery.
There is a little parking spot opposite a small shop which is filled with all manner of Deadwood related merch and stuffed to the walls with books and tales of the Cemetery’s inhabitants. There is a donation box for visitors to go into the cemetery and its’ worth it for the lovely views up there alone, let alone the famous residents.
There are plenty of websites dedicated to this place so I won’t drag the day out by yammering on about the location other than to say that it’s got wonderful views of Deadwood far below you and the surrounding Black Hills far off in the distance. It’s a lovely place and the tall pines certainly add to the peaceful and tranquil location. A well-chosen spot for a final resting place if ever there was one.
It’s very easy to find the graves of Bill and Jane as they are only a short walk into this massive place, and both are right next to each other. I’m not massively knowledgeable about either persona and to tell the truth I pretty much got most of that from quickly ginning up on them before I flew out to the US. I saw the TV series and read up on them from Wikipedia but I certainly knew of them since child hood. I mean how hasn’t heard of these two Midwest legends…I was as surprised as anyone that they were, as was Deadwood and the Homestake Mine, a mere 70 miles or so from Devils Tower and only ten miles from my second hotel in Spearfish.
The graves are clearly much improved on their original conditions – probably as they generate so much trade for the town far below and also because they are as equally famous as they were when they were alive.
But this is not a morbid day out to see some graves, no sir! this is just another stop on the trip of a lifetime out here in the Midwest and a chance to hit a tourist spot in the middle of bad weather days, calm down a bit and take it easy, and hopefully get some nice scenery and a bit of rest before heading back over to Devils Tower tomorrow for what was planned to be the day of days!
There is one other person I wanted to pay respects to and he is perhaps more influential to the entire area than Jane and Bill combined. Seth Bullock is legendary in these parts, not just for his exploits in and around Deadwood but more so for literally creating the town of Belle Fourche (where my final hotel resides and end destination for today’s trip….can you see the tight planning I made to fit all this in? genius I tells ya …genius!
Seth Bullock – one time Sheriff of Deadwood in the 1870’s - made his money from a hardware store co-run with his business partner Sol Star. They made enough money to purchase land about 80 miles north of the town on the fork of the Cheyenne and Belle Fourche rivers and eventually Bullock named the growing town ‘Belle Fourche’.
Bullock convinced the fledgling railroads to build a stop in his town in return for free use of the land and it eventually became the nation’s biggest cattle station and literally millions of cattle were transported through the city to the rest of the US.
Seth Bullock became lifelong friends with Theodore Roosevelt, long before he became a US President and his grave is strategically located nearly a kilometre away from the main cemetery up a step sloped path into the hills above.
It’s located so that Bullocks grave faces Mount Roosevelt, such was his admiration and friendship with the President to be. It’s a really steep climb and perhaps not best for those of an older persuasion and certainly not for the disabled. Not just because it’s a steep climb for 750 metres, but because it’s essentially a forest trail.
The climb is worth it though as the view across the hills for miles around are spectacular and the setting is very peaceful and serene. There is plenty of wildlife up there with a bench to sit on and take it all in. You’re surrounded by tall pines and although it was very cold when I was there the trees create a wind break and you realise looking out that you’re actually very high up in the hills and way above the town below.
The trail is not supported on one side and it drops away hundreds of feet to the bottom so you do need to be quite careful traversing the trail and to keep kids in grabbing distance if you have any. But you do see lots of chipmunks jittering about so it isn’t all bad!! They’re a lot of fun to watch in the rocks and trees.
I was only half way through the week and I was beginning to feel the grip of exhaustion kicking in and I sat on my own on the bench for a good 40 mins, I think I fell asleep as it was so quiet and I saw no one in the cemetery so far. It’s a very nice spot if can you make the climb.
Bullocks family grave is suitable huge and you can walk around it but really there is nothing else up there but the lovely views and that’s it.
So I wound my way back down through the trees, back through the empty cemetery, out the massive wrought iron gates to the patient Subaru mule and tallied back down to the main road and on to my final destination for the day.
It was 16:00 and I was running out of time but my destination lay only a few miles away so I kicked the mule and climbed out of Deadwood to the City of Lead and the mighty…
Homestake Mine!
Lead (pronounced Leed) is a small town just outside Deadwood. It’s petty non-descript in as much as it’s a sidewinding town on either side of the road which itself leads up a very steep hill that eventually heads up to Terry Peak Winter Ski resort.
However, this is as deceptive a road as there could be. I was looking for the fabled Homestake Gold Mine. This mine yielded 40 troy million ounces of gold and silver or 1,240,000kgs between around 1878 and 2000, making it the second largest gold mine in the western hemisphere and the most successful.
So I was looking for the entrance to see if I could have a look around and take a few snaps, maybe pan for some gold in a tourist fashion – typical Deadwood stuff. Upon reaching the middle of town I swung left and headed even further up to the main entrance to the Mine on……..street….I got to the top and found the main gate but it was closed to the public as I was so late arriving from Deadwood. I sat pondering my options and eventually asked a local if there was anything else to see nearby of interest. He told me to turn around and take a look- with a wry grin on his face.
I figured he was perhaps trying to figure out my accent. Nope. He was basically laughing at me.
Here’s why.
On my eagerness to locate the mine before it shut I had be concentrating on the road and the climb up the hills to the main gate. Only upon turning around and facing back down the hill did I see what the old boy was laughing at.
As you come back down the hill to the main road again, before you is a fantastic view of the Homestake Mine. Once the second largest gold mine in the western hemisphere, the remains of which dominates the surrounding countryside. It literally is gargantuan and at the same time almost a work of art in its simple but immense spiralling layout that leads the eye down below the horizon.
No Google map or photo can truly do this scene justice, you have so see it with your own eyes to grasp the scale of the place in comparison to surrounding trees or buildings or vehicles. It’s already above the horizon as it was originally hills but as soon as a lucky couple of guys found gold in them thar hills….literally poking out of a stream wall, the rest of South Dakota and just about every person on the planet with a shovel and an eye for riches, rushed to the site and began digging deeper and deeper into the SD hillside.
As machinery got better the hole went deeper and eventually they went underground to eke out the deposits of gold, silver and ore. It changed the face of the town and the landscape forever and todays pit is a monument to the greed, hard work, shite conditions and sheer willpower of the men women and children who worked this place for over a hundred years until it eventually gave out and was shut down in around 2000. Since 1964, it once again began serving as a place of cutting edged discovery and anticipation, of wonder and of awe….not ore.
In the time it’s taken you to read these eleven words… about 50,000 neutrinos have passed through your body, undetected and you haven’t felt a thing. I bet until you read this you didn’t even know they existed. A neutrino is a subatomic particle that is very similar to an electron, but has no electrical charge and a very small mass, which might even be zero. Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe. but they are incredibly difficult to detect, or, as Frederick Reines, an American physicist would say, "...the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being". Sort of like x rays or gamma rays but to our best knowledge – harmless.
However they are understood to be the only ‘object’ that can truly pass thru another physical object and continue penetrating past it for thousands of feet without causing any damage- unlike x-rays and gamma rays. They can pass literally pass thru solid objects. They can pass though through the whole planet untroubled. They do this all day and we don’t notice thing.
In order to study these amazing objects, you need a place far from the sun and impregnable from any other noise or beams or solar interference. Somewhere bloody deep and covered in millions of tons of rock to block everything out.
Welcome to Homestake Mine aka Sanford Lab Underground Research Facility
On July 10, 2007, the mine was selected by the National Science Foundation as the location for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL)
It is now operated as the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). Yes folks today, the mine lives on as a state of the art research lab dedicated to all sorts of experiments where total separation from interference, primarily from the sun is critical. So the 5000ft deep mine shafts serve perfectly as laboratories for about a thousand employees and scientist all hoping to discover the next Higgs Boson or microwave or atomic particle. What better place to study and capture neutrinos than far underground?
Back to the surface and back to me and the mule navigating the hill whilst at the same time dumbstruck at the view ahead, we hit the main road and directly opposite is the Sanford Labs’ Homestake Visitors centre. This is a modern facility showcasing the work going on under your very feet to discover more about the neutrino and its buddies. The view from the car park is awe inspiring. You can see way down into the mine and you can spot some vehicles on the far side that give an idea of the size of the place.
True gold rush stuff here. The centre has exhibitions and wall displays, interactive stuff for adult and kids - I won’t spoil it in case you go there) – but it’s very interesting and quite unlike anything I’ve seen in this field as it’s not every day you actually get anywhere near this type of facility.
For me this was a highlight of the trip as I was not expecting this at all, I thought I’d find Homestake and see a few touristy sales places offering gold panning for a few bucks – and fair enough – everyone has to make living right and there isn’t much around here apart from Deadwood. But it’s great to see this little town reinventing itself as literally the world’s foremost deep neutrino laboratory. Fantastic end to what was really a bit of a fill-in day between visits to much more well-known attractions. It just goes to show how much South Dakota has to offer
So as time was marching on I grabbed a nice coffee from the local Gas station, fed the mule with some grade ‘A’ fossils, and hit the road for my third hotel of the week some 50 miles north up in Belle Fourche.
My friend Corey, who winter holidays in these here parts, told me about Spearfish Canyon Trail and that it’s a hell of a nice drive back to Spearfish from which I can then continue on to Belle Fourch. Fortunately the road out of Lead takes me right up past Terry Mountain Ski Resort – Corey’s’ holiday destination – and then way back down again to the valley floor past lots or roadside diners and bars, all of which looked really nice but weren’t open in early May, so on we went.
The road peels off right and signposts tell you you're on the Spearfish Canyon Trail. Again, like sooooooo many things in this crazy week-----I know right ---it’s only Wednesday folks - this road defies description in writing or photos or video. You have to see it through your own windshield.
It’s beautiful. The sunlight that evening was at the perfect tilt from the west and lit up the valley on one side like a watercolour painting and I had no choice but to crack open the Eric Johnson CD ‘EJ’ and let the acoustic guitar mastery set the musical tone for this natural wonder of a drive. The road follows the bottom of a very deep and steep sided ravine for about………….. miles or so and winds back and forth through ponderosa pines that clamour up the sides of the cliff faces.
Here is a short dash cam of the drive which only vaguely captures the beauty of the place
The sunlight dappled on the hills and took it from dark and drizzly one minute to glinting sparkles the next. Kevin Costner filmed one of the final scenes of Dances with Wolves in this very canyon. You can park the car and walk about two miles in to the canyon proper and see the exact location he filmed the winter waterfall scene with himself and Stands with a Fist traipsing through the snowy mountain side.
I was way too hungry to check it out so I left if for my 60th birthday and kept trucking through the canyon. It was a lovely drive and I hardly saw another vehicle apart from at Bridal Veil Falls which is a pretty waterfall coming out of the ravine edge high above you and looked ethereal in the fading sunlight. Eventually you come to the end and hit Spearfish city from where I headed up to my hotel in the quiet town of Belle Fourch.
Another great day in the Midwest of American with some truly iconic (albeit long dead) Americans and some truly iconic locations and views.
I have to admit though, I was pushing it to the limit with cramming stuff into each day but I was not going to waste a single hour or get back to the UK wishing I had not wasted time here and there or lollygagging at some tourist trap or lazing in bed etc. I would sleep on the flights home!
But I was beginning to feel the time zone and lack of sleep slowly catching up with me and the buzz of being over there amidst these incredible locations, so I set upon getting to my hotel and getting a comparatively early night ready for tomorrow’s hopefully epic day and night on Devils Tower.
Now…cast your mind back to my first day in the US, swimming in the hotel pool to piped-in Brookes and Dunn?? Well my hasty packing of wet trunks and leaving them in my suitcase was soon to catch me up! No sooner had I checked in to the AmericInn and started to make myself at home in the suite (which was gorgeous by the way) than my swimming shorts started to permeate the room with bad vibes! I had to wash all my smalls and my trunks to get rid of the obnoxious smell and then blow dry them all dry before morning. I eventually finished at 02:00 in the morning and probably kept the neighbour’s awake wondering how much f…hair did I have? Ha-ha.
And so ended my day. I was absolutely LOVING this trip but shit was I knackered!
Night all. See you in the morning for what was to become one of the best days in my life……
Glen.
Day Five Gallery
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Day Six
Thursday, May 4th.... be with you....
Devils Tower at night.
Another early start for me that morning which was a miracle considering the night I’d had blow -drying my clothes after the damp swimming trunk fiasco…ha-ha. Classic!
Ever since watching CE3K, and seeing that scene where the shooting star goes over Devils Tower, I always wondered what I must be like to be there at night and see all those stars. Well that was the plan for today, go to Devils Tower, set up the tripod, and see if I can capture some night shots of the mountain and perhaps see a shooting star in the sky. Maybe get a sense of what it would be like to be on the mountain at night with no one around and pitch black skies. I had no idea if this was even allowed on the mount but I decided to go there a bit later in the day, hang around until dusk and see what I could get away with. But first I thought I’d see a bit of Belle Fourche, Seth Bullock’s city and the famous cattle town from all those western movies!
I found out when I was planning this trip that Belle is very near the Geographical Cent of the US , in as much as if you balanced the whole of the US – all its states – on a pin, then the perfect centre would be Belle Fourche…or very close in any measure. So I added this landmark onto the day’s agenda and figured I could kill that bird before lunch then head over to DT ready for an evening of long exposure photography.
Little did I realise what a frikkin awesome day and night I was about to have!
But first things first.
The night before I had arrived at the AmericInn quite late from my drive back across SD from Badlands
So I told Stacey and the breakfast team at the hotel of my proposal – who thought it was a killer idea! and asked for directions – they were about 2 miles away and en-route to the Centre of the US which was perfect.
I explained the wet boxers hanging over the bathroom shower rail – apologised to the cleaner - fed the mule. and headed north! This was gonna be an awesome day.
I found the tattoo joint easily as Belle is pretty much a one road town, but they were closed until 11:00 so figured what the heck, do the Centre of the US bit first, then come back, book a tat for the next day or Sat, and then head west to DT ready for the evening trip.
This was where I made my first wrong step with driving.
The guide books tell how the Centre of the US as about 16 miles north of Belle on Old Highway 85 – literally drive about 8 miles up the old highway and there is a barn on your left and the marker is on the right in the middle of a field. There is a US flag marking the precise spot.
Now there is a really nice monument in the centre of Belle with all sorts of flags and plinths announcing the centre of the US !!!
But it’s not the real centre, it more for tourists and less hard-core folks to take a few ‘I’ve be there, yay!’ type snaps. Brakes on pal, not me, no sir…I travelled 7500 miles to the Midwest and by luck my hotel is right on top of the centre of the us?? Hell no, I’m finding that damned marker and standing on it! No tourist trap for me this time buddy, I’ve seen Deadwood and I ain’t falling for that again. Cockshuckers!
So I tried to find it in my GPS –ha-ha- no chance, it’s not findable with GPS.. Or at least not with mine anyway. But I figured how hard can it be? after all I was a white van man in London! – I don’t need no stinking GPS! I’ll use my eyes. Old School.
So I drove north through Belle and took the Old Highway 85 on my left and started scanning for a barn in the field on my right. I didn’t see and thing for miles and miles, plenty of traffic passing by but no barn or flag in a field. Eventually after about 20 miles I saw a sign saying Wyoming and Montana.
MONTANA? Jesus how far was this marker? I thought it was in South Dakota?
It was.
I wasn’t.
So I stopped by the side of the highway ( I was on the 212 folks – not H85 at all) very confused as to how I must have drove straight past the only damned barn on a highway for miles and missed the only damned flag as well! Totally wrong highway fool! I was heading north-west to Montana, not north into South Dakota.
So I turned around and headed back to Belle as it was getting close to 11:00 and I wanted to book an appt at the tat place if I could. Centre of the US will have to wait for another day! (Seriously, you’ll laugh when you see my mistake – see you on day 8 for the full story)
So I park outside of Dark Arts and go in and it’s just opened. Now remember her readers, I ain’t got a clue on what to say, or what to pay, let alone what kind of design I wanted, so I asked the guy behind the counter what we could do and when we could do it. To say the guy was accommodating is an understatement.
Cut a long story short, it was Thirty Thursday, that means on hour under the needle was just thirty bucks, and to make it even better, he had a slot right there and then. I told him I wanted a Devils Tower tattoo on my right arm, something truly unique and better yet, something from about as close to the tower as I could get. I’m not kidding, we settled on the design and I strapped in for the needle. I had the funniest two hours of the week with this guy. He was funny, talented, precise with the needle and full of anecdotes about tattoos, Belle Fourche, politics, the Dakotas, you name it.
I can honestly say that I met some of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life in that week- so annoying that I don’t recall his name as I’d name check him on here as a thank you. I can’t even find them on the internet – but if this is ever read by anyone who knows the guy, then pass on my regards – awesome work my man and a pleasure doing business with you!
As you can see from my pic – he did an awesome job on the tatt and I now have a permanent reminder of what I did, where I went and when, and actually had it done in Belle Fourche!. So a false start with the driving but a great start with the souvenirs. Thursday is getting better folks!
Talking of great starts – quick mention of the hotel.
I stayed at the Americinn in south Belle Fourche, check out my Trip Advisor for my stay – Greg and Stacey and their team were absolutely lovely, they listened to my bonkers explanations about coming to the Midwest and they whole Devils Tower thing and were genuinely excited for me to be there and doing what I was doing. They were amazed I had fit so much into five days already but they were very helpful with directions and advice and the hotel was one of the best I’ve ever stayed in and I travel A LOT!
So, back to the trip…..where was I?, oh yeah - it was a scorching cloudless sky again and I had my freshly minted tattoo under wraps, a tank full of gas and 50 miles to Devils Tower….Hit it!
Serendipity played a massive part in my trip. Call it luck, call it fate, call it good planning and good advice but my hotel was right on the junction of the I34/ I24 which took you 50 miles west past Hulett, straight past the entrance to Devils Tower. About 50 miles.
So I hit the road again: cameras, tripod, zoom lenses, and tattoos all packed and ready for what I hoped would be a pretty cool evening on the mountain snapping stars and silhouettes.
The I34/WY24 is a really nice easy-going interstate, lovely to drive on with sweeping curves taking you past rural homesteads and tiny – very tiny- clusters of houses with the post-boxes in a row. A classic Midwest road and all the better for the beautiful weather on that day. The geography and geology is something to behold out here and I never got used to the amazing formations that appear on the side of the roads.
The section between Aladdin and Hulett is stunning. Massive rust brown gashes of rock and silt tower above you and away into the plains. (The oldest rocks visible in Devils Tower National Monument were laid down in a shallow sea during the Triassic period, 225 to 195 million years ago. This dark red sandstone and maroon siltstone, interbedded with shale, can be seen along the Belle Fourche River. Oxidation of iron minerals causes the redness of the rocks. This rock layer is known as the Spearfish Formation.)
Huge Ponderosa pines tower into the distance on hills that stretch off for miles. There is a fantastic sweeping descent on WY24 just past the Bear Lodge campsite heading west that offers gorgeous views of the valleys below and the plains on either side. A truly beautiful road to drive on and take in the scenery so unique to WY and SD. I love this road.
Now I’m going to raise this as it was an unexpected occurrence and yes, it’s in the guide books as a warning - but not as much I came to think it needed to be. Maybe because they don’t expect tourists to travel these back routes or roads so here is some really good advice to RV or Car renters. Get full CDW. There is hardly any traffic to be hit by. But traffic ain’t your problem out there:-
Wildlife is!
So I’m amblin’ along taking it easy, admiring the view from my ice cold mule, and I spot something in the road a ways ahead. A tyre? A jacket? A rucksack? Nope. A turtle. Yes folks, a massive brown turtle. Now I’m from Leicestershire in England and you can take it from me: we don’t do turtles in roads. Usually they are confined to pet shops or Jeremy Kyle guests. Sitting in the middle of the M1? No.
This was an Alligator Snapping Turtle, common across Wyoming as it turns out and quite a frequent traveller on the highway, but more across them than along them. This thing was BIG.
It was just sitting there, looking around with a big yawn on its face like I was interrupting its sleep. (how ironic that ‘encounter’ would be in about 11 hours’ time – you’ll see later folks) So I drove past slowly and marvelled at this big beast lumbering across the highway in the middle of nowhere. Surreal.
I eventually arrived at the little town of Hulett, Wyoming. Hulett is one of those towns mentioned in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (I think – or maybe it’s just years of knowing the location inside out) that had some nonsensical draw to me, so I made a point of pulling over and taking a few snaps.
Amazingly there is an ultra-modern Best Western hotel on the edge of town which was out of my price range when I was booking my hotels and looking back, I’m glad I didn’t make the stretch as Hulett is miles from anywhere and it would’ve been limiting for getting around. Belle Fourche was ideal for my purposes. So I ditched the Scooby and went off in search of food and drink. It must have been the altitude as I was permanently thirsty. Hulett is a very small town sitting about 10 miles NE from Devils Tower on H24. It’s literally straddled across a classic main road with low rise wooden fronted shops and hotels.
It reminded me of Radiator Springs in the Pixar movie 'Cars'. That’s not a bad thing; it was exactly what I was looking for to capture the true mid-west as I thought it might be. I reminded me of the scene at the rail yard in Ce3k and had clearly not changed much in many years. I liked it because it was what I had imagined a small, Midwestern town to look like. On the way to it from Belle Fourche I passed some very, very small little villages dotted along or set back from the road and often they were very run down and weather beaten outposts which looked like they were clinging on to life out here. I often wondered what the owners did for a living. Perhaps ranch hands or something similar.
There was a large sign post on the roadside east of Hulett that declared the area as where General Custer and his army started looking for gold in the surrounding hills. There were about 1000 of his men spread about the locale all looking for the gold that had been discovered close by. I wondered how many of the little villages or Hulett were descendant of this band of army/ gold miners. It’s possible!
I pulled in to grab lunch and have a look around to see what was what. To be fair it was not a long stay, as there really want much to see. Bu they did have a great little minimart on the main drag heading south. I picked up a load of water and chips etc. For some reason I was drinking like fish out there, maybe the altitude or humidity, but it was a thirsty week. I snapped some pics of the main street and buildings.
It was a beautiful clear blue sky day and the two looked lovely in the light. In summer the town gets way more crowded due to the bike rally and I think it probably earns a lot of revenue in this period. I didn’t exactly bring much to the game on my visit; I bought a couple of cool tee shirts and some food and then picked up the road out of town and headed to Devils Tower.
This time from the north.
Street view is a fantastic thing no doubt but trust me, nothing makes up for the reality of seeing DT rise up on the flat plains ahead of you, disappear round the bend then rises up against the skyline in full no 3D. It’s beautiful and austere and dominates the landscape.
I filmed the short bit of road heading up to the turn off for DT to capture the view. It really is quite awesome to see this huge monolith rising up to your right as you drive along the highway. I don’t think I will ever get over that view.
I mentioned it before, but since seeing CE3k I had always loved that scene where a shooting star hacks across the night sky above DT only for it to really be a crafty alien craft demonstrating its abilities and how it can hide in plain view….perhaps for thousands of years and I always wondered what it must be like to see a shooting star above DT in real life.
SO my main plan for today’s visit was to stay long enough for the sun to go down, set up the posh camera on the tripod and see if I could, with all my collective photography knowledge ( basic at best) see if I could capture DT at night with the star behind it.
On the way up to the tower I stopped at the Trading Post, They get a special mention here. The main dude that ran it showed me a great spot for photos at the back of the shop on a grassy area used for picnics…it’s also where the web cam is sort of pointed at. So I stood there, texted my girlfriend at home who jumped on the web cam and woah! She could see me live at DT with the tower in the back ground!
He was a great guy and let me loose checking out number plates for the right combination out of hundreds hanging up in the store. He left me have a close look at the CE3K display they had under a counter. They had loads of stuff, books, toys, vids, collectibles, sweets, games….all CE3K related. It was very cool. The shop itself has literally tonnes of DT stuff. I bought loads of stuff and could’ve bought more! Ha-ha...it was like a gold mine.
So I whipped the by now much dirtier 4x4 up to the visitor’s car park at the base of the boulder field below the tower and took a walk around it again. It was about 17:00 at this point and again the weather was stunning. Blue skies and clear for miles. I took a little more time on the trail this time as I didn’t have my life in suitcases stored in the trunk or a hotel to find and book into etc. Plus I was deliberately waiting for the sun to go down so I was in no rush. I was still overwhelmed at being there again.
Four very busy days had passed with incredible experiences and surprises but still nothing compared to be standing on a massive boulder in beautiful sunlight with DT behind me and Wyoming stretching out for miles around in every direction. It was a wondrous afternoon and it really is true that the tower has an almost spiritual effect on people. I saw and heard a lot of people joking about shedding a reluctant tear or feeling very emotional just to be near this massive rock. I felt it too.
Say what you will, we’re all moved by different things, but this rock, this place, well….I guess you have to go there. You’ll know what I mean.
So I found myself walking around the base of DT in summer sun light through the pines and quite a lot less people that the Sunday before. I guess it was early season and a week day so it was very quiet. Perhaps ten cars in the car park? I took some stunning shots of the mountain which seem to change colour every ten steps I took. If anyone is interested, the bottom part of the massive columns closest to walkers/ hikers is a grey flecked colour but the further up it takes on a feint yellow colour due to the lichen on the rocks…so colour wise it is mostly grey/yellow when you are there. Around the back of the tower, which is actually the side you see in the movies, which I think is slightly north-north east, everyone disappeared leaving only me for about 40 minutes. I guess they had all vacated the tower and headed back to their cars.
This left me alone on the back of the mountain. I sat on a bench, sat there in giant silence looking up at this beautiful formation and marvelling at how, for a brief moment in time, the fates had me sat on DT, alone. The mountain was all mine. Not a soul or sound for 45 mins. I watched the sun through the trees, the squirrels scampering about and listened to far-off grunts and snorts of some unseen but obviously quite large creature. It was one of many moments in this week that I simply had no words and will never find any to describe it. I filmed myself sitting there to look back on in years to come, just to prove that I was there, alone on Devils Tower.
After about an hour it had gotten significantly darker so I whipped out the iPod and watched bits of the movie. Far out! It was actually a little unnerving sitting on the dark side of the moon watching the film but it had to be done! I wasn’t sure what was out there in the trees so I picked up the trail and headed back to the car for about 19:30. The visitor centre was shut and I think there were about three people left in the car park so I took a load of snaps, put the seat back in Scooby the mule and tried to get a bit of sleep ahead of hopefully an evening of night shots.
I admit that by this time of the trip I was feeling the weight of the time-zones and travelling catching up with me, and I could tell I was starting to come down from the adrenaline rush that had kept me going almost non- stop for 5 days. Also, anyone with a tattoo will know that sometimes when you have a two hour + session you do become tired afterwards, probably for the muscle shock or just the adrenaline of getting it done. Ironically I find tattoos send me to sleep. I’ve done that three times, fallen asleep in the middle of a tattoo- I find them therapeutic and calming so go figure. However, no sooner had I drifted off in the car than a huge bus cranked into the car park, thrashing my sleep to bits and destroying my chances of a nap before a snap!
Out get about 20 people, mainly women and they proceed to congregate in the little amphitheatre in the centre of the car park and chat. Out of the closed Visitors Centre strolls a National Parks Warden and starts talking to the gathered crowd.
Ladies and Gentleman : introducing Devin Cherry.
Devin is from Kentucky and was spending the summer as a NP guide on DT. By day he is a geology teacher. Call me mad but how frikkin lucky is that? I’m sat almost alone in my car 7,500 miles away from home, wondering how or even IF I’m allowed to stay up on Devils Tower, Wyoming, thinking ‘do I need to let someone know I’m up here’? when a truck load of tourists turn up just as it’s getting dark and in the middle is a NP tour guide/ geology teacher. Hah!
So I wandered over to Devin and asked sheepishly about being allowed to hang around after dark and take a few sneaky snaps and then go home.
His face was a picture …’dude, it’s open all night and you can do what you want, take a hike around it in the dark, take snaps all night, whatever, you just can’t camp/sleep up here, but it’s open 24/7’’ So I told him what I was planning to do with the night exposures/ star field backdrop stuff and he practically laughed out loud. ‘ you gotta let me help you with that, I can tell you how to set your camera up, where to stand etc,’
He then explained that he was here to do a non-public near-dark tour of the tower for the Wyoming Welcome Centres, of whom the 20 folks next to us were all part of , dotted across Wyoming. This was a tour for tour guides and would I like to tag along?
‘No’ , I said, ‘I have much better things to do’.
Did I hell!...I locked the Scooby, slyly idled up to the tail end of the tour quicker than a UFO crossing state lines and not paying the toll!
So of we went, 30 Wyoming Visitor Centre workers, me and a couple of campers who were also late down off the mountain. We set off around the base of the tower and Devin began interacting with the crowd and throwing all sorts of geological facts and figures to the clamouring masses. They loved it. I loved it. I thought ‘wow, lucky sod gets to do this for a living!’ So we toured the same route I did about two hours earlier and to be honest, he added a whole new spin on the place.
Pointing out geologic areas of interest, using a green laser to show us strategic formations, and other stuff. We took about an hour to circumnavigate the tower and probably half way round it really started to get dark and some of us used torches to scan ahead.
I can confirm that it is bloody awesome to see this place in the dark as yes, it’s very VERY dark, but it’s so clear that you can eventually see quite some distance. I was tagging along at the back trying to get my new camera to work so every so often I was alone in deep dark on DT, again, one of the moments that will stay with me for a very long time and a blog such as this will help me remember and share that moment.
So we wound our way back down to the car park and folks got back on the bus and headed home across the state. It was about 21:30 by now and Devin suggested I give it another hour before it got truly dark and the stars would be fully visible in the sky. The sun had set an hour before but there was residual light so I took his advice and mucked about with my gear.
We chatted about the gear and he was also a CE3K fan so we were buzzing about the fact that not a lot of people we had met really knew the movie which was incredible to us considering the impact of the film and the famous music from it. The two campers were also hanging around to take a few night snaps when Devin suddenly came up with an awesome idea. ‘‘what say I get some telescopes out and we spot the stars as its now getting really dark’’?
‘’Does a bear shit in the woods just behind the tower? Of course…so go get em’ and I’ll wait here’’ says I!
Er…no….you see Devin was not talking about your average telescopes from PC world, no these things required two men to lift them and a computer to calibrate them as they were self-propelled and auto star tracking!
I was impressed, this evening was getting better and better and all of it was just blind luck and good timing. Devin was a star. But ….may I introduce two more stars….Kathy and Annie: two Camping Cooks from Kansas!
It was about 22:30 and I really had to eat, so did Devin as it turned out. The girls offered to go get some sandwiches if we set up the three large telescopes and Devin showed them how to use them. Deal! See ya! So off they went down the mountain.
And then there were two.
Devin if you’re reading this you’ll probably laugh. I told him my boyhood dream of coming here and seeing the tower and how far I’d come to do it. And now here I was at 23:00, in the shadow of Devils Tower, Wyoming, surrounded by miles of dark silent land, a star filled sky and only one other human to prove I was there. It was quite literally friggin’ awesome!
We both just stood there grinning. Looking up at the ever present laccolith. Swear to god it was like being in the movie: ‘we’re the only ones – the only ones’
After our moment of film fan reverie we set about setting up the telescopes and I can tell you now, one of them looked like R2D2! Which was appropriate considering it was May the 4th.
About half an hour later the girls arrived with what one can only describe as door stops. Where the hell they found the ingredients to make decent sandwiches at 23:00 on Devils Tower in a camp site god only knows! They disappeared quicker than a UFO crossing state …oh bollocks; I’ve used that one already.
Anyway, we all took turns to look through the amazing telescopes and Devin carried on in full NP mode giving us a midnight lesson in astronomy and how to take night photos with our collective gear. I had four cameras so he was a good guy to have on a dark mountain.
I took myself off to be alone with the mountain. I liked the telescopes but I wanted to take it all in as I knew this kind of experience can’t be bought and would never, in my lifetime, be repeated. The mountain itself was lit by a very bright moon and the stars were massively visible right across the sky so it was a fantastic view and once again, it was overwhelming to be there in those circumstances.
I just sat on the car park floor, in the dark, and took it all in. It was surreal, spiritual, mesmerising and above all …my time…my moment…me and the mountain. One of the girls saw a shooting star over the rear of the mountain and I saw one overhead and we all saw one in the south of the sky. The wish came true. Cue clapping ha-ha.
It was at this point Devin took out his laser and showed us constellations as it was truly dark and we could follow the green light into the sky. We also took the opportunity to write our names in laser on Devils Tower and photograph them with long exposures. I mean COME ON! How cool is THAT!
I tried to photo my name but it was difficult getting the aperture, exposure length and ISO set to truly see what we saw…but we could see it and it was a great way to round off an utterly brilliant and spontaneous night. The green dots below are laser traces which is all the camera could pick up. But we could see it with the naked eye. Great fun.
I took out my phone, loaded the scene from the movie where the mother ship comes over the mountain and held the phone up to match the mountain and we watched it for real…. Awesome!
(I’ve long given up what people think of me when reading this blog. I figure if you’ve stayed with me this far you have a pretty good measure of how much I love this film and how much of a great frikkin trip this turned out to be so I’ll just keep writing and you can just keep reading)
Eventually, the girls decided it was time to quit and off they went. The Kansas Cooks. Respect for the impromptu picnic on Devils Tower! Devin and I were still buzzing as we hauled R2D2 and his pals back into the depths of the visitors centre when he came up with one final kick arse suggestion.:- There is a dirt track back down the mountain road called Joyner's Trail which leads out to a massive pasture about a mile away from the tower and it offers magnificent and famous views of the mountain and was I game for going there and setting up the camera for some final shots?
It was by now 00:30 and I’ll be honest, the thought of driving home 50 miles back to Belle Fourche at that time of night was heavy on my mind but I thought f*ck it, this is once in a lifetime baby…lead the way National Park Ranger person! So we convoyed back down the mountain and I followed him along the trail and parked up in a dedicated parking area and got out. I can’t even begin to tell you the view we had that late night, I’ll let the following pictures say it for me. There just aren’t words.
See….how do I explain those views… I can’t.
It got to 01:30 and I was really beginning to flag and I mean seriously knackered, so with a mutual respect for films and photos I bid Devin a solid and very grateful farewell, looked back at the mountain for an invisible Gillian Guiler, climbed aboard the mothership/ Subaru and headed home to Belle Fourche. Thanks Devin.
This is where things got a little dicey. I got as far as Hulett, 10 miles north when BAM! I was overcome with fatigue. Man it was like someone had unplugged me from the grid. I was 100% TIRED. I pulled over to the sidewalk, switched the car off, cranked the seat back and conked out right there. I gave it half an hour and then headed back to Belle Fourche. I didn’t fancy explaining to a state trooper that I was British, 50 miles from my hotel. But I was fine after a power nap.
12 hours before on a lovely sunny day and H24 was this classic empty highway dotted with little towns and not a lot of traffic. Very scenic and very drivable. There is a great section where you climb up and then drop down into a valley about 20 miles north of Hulett. But at night it’s literally a different game altogether. It’s pitch black, no cars, no truck lights, no towns, no road lights, no bridges to give you a sense of distance. After Hulett it’s a straight 40 mile drive to the next town, pitch dark for miles around.
Here’s here it gets really tricky. I was advised by a US work colleague to take out FULL cdw. This is because out in the Midwest, it ain’t other drivers gonna’ kill you, It’s the wildlife.
Devin warned me to drive the whole way home with full beam on but to be very mindful not to get too focused on the road ahead, but to keep a peripheral on the side of the roads left and right. And he was right. Three herds of deer ran out from nowhere right across my car doing 50. I shit a brick and woke the hell up I can tell you. On one occasion I thought was hallucinating as there was this strange image in the road ahead – turned out to be a stag deer standing in the road just staring at me. I slowed right down and watched about ten deer slowly traipse across the road in front of me with all the time in the world. I was more than happy to see the lights of Belle Fourche eventually appear and pulled into the car park about as tired as anyone could be.
I've learned hard lessons in the UK when I've been tired behind the wheel. I learned another one in Wyoming. Never drive tired late at night on the backroads as you'll hit or be hit by wildlife and then it will probably eat you. I'm not kidding.
I texted my girlfriend about 02:45 to say I was back in the hotel and don’t remember much after that! But looking back – what a tremendous day/ night - and what a hell of an experience. I don’t think I could’ve asked for a more beautiful evening do you?
Day Six Gallery
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Day Seven
Friday, May 5th 2017
Hogs, Snow and Porcupines!
After the previous ridiculously long day and night on Devils Tower I have to admit I was totally knackered the next morning. So I decided to have bit of a slow morning, get an extra hour in bed in the beautiful suite at the Americinn and have a leisurely breakfast before making the most of the incredible weather we were having at the. By 09:00 it was already 81degF, unbelievable considering the morning before it was snowing and bitterly cold in Deadwood only 20 miles south.
I have to say, I’ve mentioned my North Face jacket a few times , and I’ll say it again: in the UK they rarely get to do their job, we simply don’t get the low temps these coats are designed for but in South Dakota and today in Wyoming, it was the right jacket to take with me. It’s prefect as it literally crushed down to fit inside its own pocket and then billows back out to gargantuan size within seconds. Bloody well worth the money and I now see why so many pros wear them.
Anyway, this morning it was shaping up to be a super warm day and the forecast for the whole coming weekend was excellent. So I had a good long chat with Stacey and Gregg at the hotel and discussed where I should go. I really wanted to go back to DT to watch the whole of the movie sitting on my own on the mountain as the sun goes down and time it to fit in with the final 30mins of wonder that closes this awesome movie. But I had another movie I wanted to watch a part of in a special place it was linked to.
On the I90 between Spearfish and Moorcroft heading west, is the turn off for Devils Tower. It is a great fortune that the city on the turning is none other than Sundance.
Yup, it’s the very same Sundance that gave its name to one Harry Longabaugh. He got nicked in about 1920 for stealing horses and was locked up in the city jail for 18 months. When he came out, to recognise the civility in which he was treated whilst in jail, he named himself after the town. So died Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, and so a legend was born: The Sundance Kid.
So after breakfast I headed back out at a slower pace for my last full day in the US Midwest. I headed back down to the I90 and headed west again towards Sundance. On the way I stopped at the Wyoming Visitors centre, the place I’d stopped at the previous Sunday and was closed…this time it was fully open and I stopped to see what was there and to maybe pick up some tips on where else to detour to on this fine blue day. I’d pretty much done everything within a decent drive away and anything else meant a good few hundred miles return trip, so I put the brochures back, said hello to one of the folks who was on the precious night’s tour around the mountain in the dark and headed back to the 90.
I love the famous 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Redford and Newman and in particular the beautiful Katherine Ross whom I think I had a crush on as a kid ha-ha.. and thought I’d go see the town made famous by the outlaw connection.
Sundance is a tiny town just off the interstate and I was surprised at how quick it was to drive through. No sooner had I entered it than I saw signs pointing me to an exit! I did a U turn by the Elementary school and headed back up E. Main Street. There was a state trooper tailing me as I crawled through town and I drove real slow. He had the coolest patrol car I’ve ever seen, but he just moseyed on by when I parked the car on North Third Street opposite the Wild West Espresso café.
On my left was the monument to the Sundance Kid and as it was very quiet I snapped a couple of pix off before taking a look around. The jail that once housed Longabaugh is now gone but there is a great museum right around the corner on E. Cleveland St. It’s down some stairs under the sheriff’s dept. It’s got displays of original mid-western paraphernalia and all sorts of cool exhibits on life in the area from early Indian times. There’s a great section at the back on criminals who were connected with Sundance with some great stories about what they did and how they died. It was a tough place to live and you died badly in those days! Harsh Justice indeed.
Heading back out to the bright and hot sunlight I realised how high I was altitude wise, around 4700ft above sea level and along the streets there was still snow! Unreal. 81 deg and snow in the streets. Probably because the ground hadn’t thawed out. So I was glad to have a 4x4 still!
I had a quick lunch at the Wild West Espresso café and sat on the sidewalk enjoying the day when a seriously gorgeous Hog pulled in. The colour was a gorgeous coca cola brown metallic which sparkled in the lunchtime sun. It was beautiful. I asked the owner if he minded if I took some snaps or vid of it and he was totally cool. Came out and told me all about it. What a bike. He told me he was coming in to Sundance to get it serviced at the Hog dealership around the corner which I had no idea was there.
Low and behold right around the block on E. Main St was a Custom Deluxe Hog dealer filled with all sorts of cracking bikes in various states of tune up. The lady behind the counter was really cool. She let me snap off some shots of the excellent State Trooper bike being sprayed up. It was one hell of a machine.
I bought a super cool tee and hit the road to my next destination up on the Sundance/ Warren Peak Road about 7 miles north of Sundance and about 20 miles SE from Devils Tower.
Warren Peak is a Fire Lookout station on top of Bear Lodge Mountain. It’s a classic tall structure with a bunch of stairs taking you up to the lookout tower at the top, all metal, offering 360 views of the landscape in all directions at about 5000ft above sea level. There was quite a lot of snow around at that altitude and it made for some excellent views across Wyoming and South Dakota. The climb up was fun as it meant putting the car into X mode and digging in to get up around the gravelly side road that winds up at the top of the peak. The views were incredible, and you literally could see for miles. I was stunned by the clearness of the air and could only wonder what the night sky must be like up there with a clear night. Fantastic no doubt.
I actually had a bit of a sleep in the car up there as it was so peaceful and I left the panoramic sunroof open to get the fresh cool air in the 4x4. Again, I have to say the car was a perfect choice as I don’t know how I would have fared that week in a drop-top Mustang. Well done Subaru, it’s a great car and I loved hanging out with it for the week.
So after cranking out a few shots of me and the car and of the beautiful blue sky, I hit the dirt track in full X mode, dropped back down to the main highway and drove back up to Devils Tower.
Timing was crucial as I wanted to watch the whole movie at the right moment to coincide with the sun setting so I could watch the last half an hour in the dark before snapping a few long exposure shots of the mountain and once again, heading home to a much needed sleep before the next day’s long ride home back to the UK.
This I did and instead of sitting like a twatt at the base of the tower with a bunch of tourists watching me watching a movie, I opted for the parking areas out on Joyner Ridge Trail and settled in with a bag of chips, a spring water and a bunch of popcorn and hit play.
I didn’t see another sole for close to three and a half hours.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate….:) Part way through the dining room scene where Roy builds the massive sculpture, I spotted movement up ahead on the trial. It was a couple of deer and a porcupine! Awesome. So I paused the movie and crept out the car, it was dusk and this little feller was rummaging around on the dirt trail. I got about 50 ft. away and it scurried off! A close encounter for both of us. There were deer everywhere and they crossed the trail heading for the tower. It was getting dark quickly now and there was a deep growl from off in the trees to the east and that was enough to send me back to the car pronto. Ha-ha.
I watched the end of CE3K in the semi-dark, with the tower as a backdrop through the windshield and it was a fantastic moment for me. There I was, 7600 miles from home, alone on the mountain, watching my favourite movie where it was filmed and watching the scene with the real mountain just behind my screen….it was Bluetooth to the car hifi so it sounded great. It was – as were many moments on this trip – emotional to say the least.
I think it’s safe to say this was one of the best weeks of my life and each and every day brought something wonderful to the table and something you could not buy or read about. You just had to be there. It was too real to be caught in a camera or a brochure. I got out of the car to witness the final waning sunlit drain from the countryside and realised that I was literally living the dream. It was real, I was really there and nothing could compare to being alone in the silence and darkness of that amazing location. Spielberg, Alves and Gottlieb nailed the location and made it real on our screens but it’s quite something else to be there in person to absorb the beauty of Devils Tower, the setting, the sounds and the smells of the surrounding countryside.
I hope I have done a reasonable job in conveying the above with this website which is one of the reasons for setting it up. One day this trip will be a long-distant memory, so this is a reminder to myself of what it was like to actually come here and live that dream held since childhood and share it with a wider audience.
Before I left the trail I took some more long exposure photos of Devils Tower in the dark and some of the surrounding valley. Devin Cherry was the right – this probably is the best vantage point for photos as the sun goes down behind you – casting its last rays on the mountain which stand totally proud of the surrounding countryside. Quite an amazing view. I’m sure there are countless other fantastic places to snap from but for me this was good enough, plus I wasn’t equipped to go hiking in the moonlight alone across the prairie!
I quit the mountain at 21:30 and headed back down to the main road. It was empty, not a soul around so I stopped off at the sculpture near the Prairie Dog Town near the campsite and took some parting shots from that angle. The drive home was quite surreal. Not only was I fully awake this time haha, but it looked beautiful under the moon lit cloudless sky. It was stunning. More of a deep blue than a black sky and I was able to pull over every so often and simply gaze up in awe at a classic mid- west night. No ambient light pollution or traffic or houses, especially between Hulett and Aladin. Just silent, deep blue night skies that beg wonder and awe. One could easily believe Spielberg’s story of aliens cruising the back roads and spinning off to the heavens. Great road!
Got back to the Americinn at Belle around 23:00, packed as much as I could for the journey the next day and basically fell asleep on the floor. Totally wacked. Woke up around 03:00 and texted Sue to say I was doing fine, climbed into bed and passed out.
Join me for my last day on this bloody mental trip of a lifetime as it comes to a close and I head East for the shores of ole Blighty!
Day Seven Gallery
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Day Eight
Saturday 6th May 2017.
"Calling my Reservation, so long, hey thanks my friend"
All good things must come to an end and sadly this was my last day in the Midwest.
What a week, what a hell of a week!
By Saturday morning I was absolutely knackered and in a way, ready to leave this beautiful part of America and return to my own beautiful part of the UK. I had a 14:40 flight out of Rapid City to make and I wanted to go see the Geographic Centre of the US (you have to say that in a ‘Frank Zappa Announces' kind of voice) some 16 miles north of Belle Fourche, then drive over to Devils Tower to say farewell, and then head east on the I90 to Rapid City for the flight to MSP.
Now you’ll remember my abortive quest on Thursday where I tried to find the Geographic Centre of the US and found Montana instead? Well that’s because I made the mistake of thinking I knew where I was, rather than actually CHECKING where I was and watching the GPS! So this morning before checking out I had a good talk with Stacey – my hotel manager - and she gave me the low down on how to ‘locate’ the Geographic Centre of the US, rather than sticking a zip code in the gps and getting lost again. Turns out it is easy to find when you know where it is but it’s not all that obvious if you don’t watch what you’re doing. So I headed north out of Belle Fourche on Highway 85 and kept going for about 16 miles. There is not a lot to see on that road, it literally heads off into the wild blue yonder and keeps on going, I was told to wait until I went past Camp Crook Road on the left and then slow down as the road starts to swing east and then look out for the marker for Old highway 85. Now, for me a highway was a paved marked road with lines and lights.
No. No they aren’t.
Not Old Hwy85, it was literally a dusty dirt track in between two fields which were bigger than your average county back in the UK. So I drove, slowly, worried about the tyres and undercarriage of the mule and eventually made progress along the dusty brown old highway.
Now with a title such as the Geographic centre of the US! One would think there would be a cool sign post or a small museum to check out.
No. No there wasn’t.
You have to keep your eye out for a barn on the left of the road and a flag in a field opposite the barn on your right. That’s the Geographic centre of the US.
After seven, slow, tourist speed miles, I eventually saw the lonely barn in the middle of nowhere on the right hand side and there was as little boulder on my left with a hand painted sign saying Geographic centre of the US. So I ditched the mule, took my bearings: barn, tick, field, tick, flag, tick, no one else for fecking miles, tick. I was here.
So I disembarked from the mule and headed through the gate and across the open field to the small US flag blowing wildly on a pole in what was a very VERY windy location. Thank god it was sunny and bright as this place would be a crappy place to be in heavy rain or snow…..
I took a few snaps…kind of like Amundsen did over 100 years ago further south but probably just as lonely. Snapped a few wind buffeted vids. Then climbed back on the mule and tore back down the dusty highway wondering what the hell I’d do if the mule gave out and I had no signal. Man I’d be fecked out there! It was long way to go for such a short stop but to be honest there is literally nothing to do there other than try to visualise yourself in the precise middle of the US and that’s pretty much it. Honest guv. Great to tick off the bucket list and add another place to my bonkers busy week of travelling- but really – it was perhaps the least dramatic place to go, unless you like real solitude and isolation. To think it was on the old Highway 85 is in itself a testament to the unbelievably hostile and desolate distances people used to travel in the Dakotas.
Just amazing and I think you probably needed a set of balls to travel around at night in such massive spaces. Those early pioneers must have REALLY wanted that Gold!
I cruised through Belle Fourche, waved adieu to the very nice hotel I called home for three days, turned right onto the h24/h34 and headed west, one last time, toward Devils Tower for a final goodbye.
I have to say again, this road, H24 that goes through Hulett (named after Lewis Morgan Hulett) is a lovely highway to drive along, hardly anyone on the road, beautiful views and amazing history in the surround hills.
Lt. Col. George A. Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills passed through this area and there are still remnants of his passing by way of rutted roads created by his troops and carriages near the town of Aladdin en route to Hulett. Custer is famous, even in the UK, for the Battle of Little Big Horn some 255 miles away in Montana and his eventual death there, forever known as Custer’s last stand in 1876.
I was lucky with the weather again as it was a stunningly hot day and since leaving Belle, it got a lot warmer as the day progressed. To be fair, I knew this because the weather forecast for Hulett showed temps up in the 80’s for the weekend and beyond so I was looking forward to a lovely summer’s day hightailing it across Wyoming and South Dakota before flying home. Sure enough by the time I hit Hulett it was 83deg and man could you feel it. Even with the A/c on it was not exactly cold in the car. I wondered how it must be in July or August when the summer truly kicks in and how the hell the pioneers and gold diggers managed to stay cool in the late 19th century.
I arrived at Devils Tower mid-morning and knew I had to be quick with my goodbyes so I tied up the mule outside the Trading Post, hit the wallet and went crazy on souvenirs… I knew the chances of me coming here again were very slim so I went for it. I think my best buy was a WY number plate made of the numbers for the last day of filming on the tower on 26th May 1976. I bought a bunch of Tees and slightly less touristy souvenirs that meant something and then grabbed a few postcards to send to friends and family.
I sat on the porch of the Trading Post in the shade as it was really hot and wrote out my post cards. Whilst I was sitting there three bikers pulled up and went in for food. They had gorgeous bikes and they were glinting in the sunlight with all the polished chrome. I’d seen quite a few bikes out on the highways and realised that this was the way to truly see the Midwest. But like in Sundance I knew not to just fire off some pics for the hell of it so I asked the owners if they minded and they were totally cool. I learned pretty quickly that as rough and desolate and hard it looked out here, the people were some of the nicest I’ve met, I don’t know if it’s my British politeness or accent or whatever, but they all seemed truly happy to oblige with photos, help, directions, anecdotes etc….I’ll say this , if you go to the Midwest you’ll have no problem conversating with anyone….they are really good people and didn’t take the piss when I asked dumbassed questions that a non-local just wouldn’t know.
In fact when I passed through Hulett earlier that week and stopped to get some supplies, I parked by a big tent on main street. I saw a stall out front with some hats and tees on it so I went in the tent and asked what was going on? It was a competition turkey shoot. They were really kind, showed me some of the weapons, how it all worked, even if I’d like to have go….but I passed. I sling a guitar, not a rifle and to be honest, it’s pretty intimidating seeing all those amazing guns in one place….the true Midwest ha-ha…too rich for my blood! I’d have never survived Deadwood in 1876
So I snapped a few cool shots of these glorious machines outside the Trading Post, finished my postcards and headed over to the DT Post office. The lady heard my accent and asked why I was there so I told her the background about the movie and she brought out a special stamp that she smacked each card with that gave it a cool DT Post Office print and I handed them over. Good times.
It was quiet on the mountain but I didn’t have time to go all the way to the top again, it was still 130 miles to the Airport and I had to feed and wash the mule in that time and I wasn’t sure of traffic etc. so I headed up the mountain and pulled off onto Joyner Trail.
Once again, there was no one there. I guess everyone just heads up the mountain to the visitor parking lot and hikes from there but I can assure you, this little trail and the view back toward the mountain is truly fantastic. So with not a soul around I parked the mule, grabbed my cameras and tripod and took some final shots of the tower.
I don’t do selfish much. Can’t think who would want to see me but I did take some shots with me and the mountain as I wanted one or two shots that said’ I was here’
It was so quiet. Literally almost silent apart from the occasional car heading up the mountain but apart from that it was a really nice way to say goodbye to Devils Tower and the beautiful surrounding countryside.
This rock, this mound, this iconic setting, this huge monolithic throwback to my childhood long ago represented a tangible dream for me to actually see and touch, and that I did. It was 100 times more impressive than I imagined it to be and when I left the dirt track and began heading down to the highway I knew it was much more than a movie location. It was a unique geological formation, like nothing else on earth. It was a sacred place for the native population for thousands of years before some upstart American filmmaker committed it to celluloid, forever linked to aliens and 5 note musical motifs. It was a place of adventure, of spirituality, of timeless yet ever evolving erosion and exposure. But most of all, and above all else, it is a place of wonder. I was as wonderstruck the day I drove away as the day I arrived and despite perhaps some reality filtering in, I will still watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind with wonder, with a side order of respect and acknowledgement for what it represents in real life: A place to dream and a place to wonder.
Thanks Devils Tower.
It was real. It really, really was.
So with a mixed bag of emotions I head back down the H24 to join the I90 at Sundance, fed the mule, fed myself, hit cruise control and headed to Rapid City Airport.
The great thing about the US, especially WY and SD is the speed limit. 80mph and almost no traffic. You can literally do 100 miles in 100 mins on a freeway. Just slap cruise on and admire the drive. Love it.
I arrived on the outskirts of RAP in good time but had to locate a car wash to rinse the mule and fill it up one last time. This was a funny experience. After 8 days of traipsing through dirt, driving rain, dust, snow, sleet, hale, baking sun, prairie grass and puddles my trusty mule was a little less shiny that when I collected it haha….it was a f*cking mess.
So I stuck it on one of those car washes that drags you through the building in neutral and yanks you through about 15 different cycles and essentially tries to strip your paint off. But the fun part was that they spray your car with a jet of multi-coloured foam which smelled like Hubba Bubba bubble-gum from 1978! Cool!
So with a spotless mule fed and watered, cleaned and smelling uber fresh I left him in the corral and checked in for the flight back to MSP.
The journey back on the hopper flight was uneventful but it was in the daylight and I can tell you it was jaw dropping from up there. The view across the prairies and farmland is stunning. You can see the valleys and arroyos with towns clinging to the sides for dear life, stretching for hundreds of miles across the plains. You can see where life has collected along the natural water ways for miles and miles heading south towards Nebraska and Iowa….quite something to see for a non-local. It literally goes for miles in every direction. The only clue your near MSP is the terrain starts to feature lakes, a lot of them.
As with all journeys of discovery, the way back is always faster than the way there and I was sitting in MSP having dinner before I knew it. It was getting dark by now so there was no point heading out of the terminal at that point so I watched a movie and waited for the flight home to LHR.
It was not a good flight….nothing like the outbound trip. For a start it was freeeeezing cold and I simply could not sleep no matter how many blankets they threw at me and for some reason the air con vent was down on my right side blowing cold air straight at me so I kept shifting around for almost ten hours. But I didn’t really care, it was all part of the adventure and I arrived back safe and sound to LHR.
I didn’t know this but the arrival gate was/ is the same one used in the 2003 movie ‘Love Actually’ (a small plaque in the wall explained it for gathered folks). I love this film so it was pretty cool when my girlfriend jumped the barrier and gave me a big fat welcome hug as I passed into the arrivals hall. Fantastic. What a sweetie and what a perfect ending to a movie drenched trip!
Journey’s end. A trip of a life time bookended by the love of a lifetime. What a week. What a fantastic, unbelievable and totally overwhelming week.
Thanks for reading; I really hope you enjoyed my memories as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you.
Glen.
Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Leicestershire.
Day Eight Gallery
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