November, 2007. I’m on my way to the Yucatan and plan on writing emails to friends and family like last year. I tend to write a lot so some have complained about the length. If you don’t want to receive them, please email and I’ll happily remove you from the list without hurting my feelings. My idea is to provide a travelogue that others can use if they take similar routes.
My plan was to go through the states a different way than previously and I chose to go the fastest way possible. Certainly the area with the least to see was through the western part of the Midwest – South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and finally Texas.
After visiting my brother in Medicine Hat, I backtracked to the Coutts, Alberta border crossing in order to go to Great Falls, Montana to see the C M Russell Museum. Charlie Russell was the most famous artist (painting and sculpture) of the American Indian and cowboy around the turn of the century. Everything is cheaper here. Diesel is $3.27 to as much as $3.70 with regular $3.10 and it’s great to have such a good dollar. SE Montana is ranch country – lotsa cows and not much else. It’s also hunting season and seems like everyone has a fluorescent orange hat and camo clothing.
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument has very good displays on the course of the battle when 7000 Indians (2000 braves) from several tribes were attacked by Custer in 1876. Only 40-100 Indians were killed. The 1868 treaty that gave the Indians most of the Black Hills was completely broken by the Americans when gold was discovered and the Indians were forced onto reservations outside the hills.
Devils Tower in NE Wyoming is an igneous (hardened magma) tower with hundreds of hexagonal columns running vertically up the entire 867′ tower. 5000 people climb it every year on 220 routes rated from 5.7 to 5.13. There is a pleasant 2 km trail circumnavigating the tower. It’s amazing to think that 1.5 miles of sediment have eroded away in the last 50 million years to expose the present tower.
Deadwood, South Dakota is the original gold rush town in the Black Hills and has many old hotels and buildings – now all devoted to gambling. It seems to be the only reason people come here. It is also famous as the place where Wild Bill Hickok was murdered and Calamity Jane is buried. I passed through Sturgis, the site of the huge motorcycle rally held the first full week of August every year. It is not an attractive place.
Mt. Rushmore with the faces of Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt and Lincoln was carved from 1927 to 1941 and is well worth the visit. A mountain 17 miles SW of Rushmore is being carved into Crazy Horse riding a horse. It was started in 1948 and looks only about 20% finished. It’s huge.
Jewel Cave NM is the second longest cave system in the world with 140 mile of documented passageways (yes the longest is also in the US – Mammoth Cave in Kentucky). It is actually thought to have over 2000 miles of passageways – the volume of air exiting the cave in the diurnal heating and cooling is measured at the cave entrance. Also in S Dakota is Wind Cave National Park. The cave has 120 miles of documented passageways but few interesting formations. Today was the first big wind storm on the BC coast. Hopefully there will not be a repeat of last year’s winter storms.
NW Nebraska is the big empty – besides no towns, there weren’t even cows. I detoured to see Agate Fossil Beds NM, a site with 19 million year old mammal fossils concentrated around a small water hole. They all died in a few months after a drought. Scotts Bluff NM in west Nebraska commemorates the Oregon Trail and unfortunately the gallery of William Henry Jackson (an early photographer of the West) was closed.
It was very windy with winds from the north and I had a big travel day with a huge wind assist (the camper presents a big surface). I went through Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, and into Texas that day. All flat country without much to see. I stopped in Lubbock, Texas and did all the routine maintenance on the truck for $650. Luckily they found a leaking transmission cooling line and were able to fix it. One does not want to have any vehicle problems in Mexico as repairs are difficult at best. I’ve spent the last two days in Carlsbad, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas making sure that I am totally prepared before I enter Mexico at Ciudad Juarez. This is the crime centre of Mexico with all the drug cartels and I hope to drive right through without having to stop (I did stop at a grocery and it seemed like anywhere else). I did not see a non-Latino in El Paso. It is not the best place to find some of the groceries – they are not big on sushi as I couldn’t get sticky rice or pickled ginger. It has been well into the 80’s here.
I’m nervous about my complete lack of Spanish but otherwise am 100% better prepared than last year when we went to the Baja. I’m going to Chihuahua to spend a week or so exploring the Copper Canyon – a system of 6 canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon.
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