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Rapid City, South Dakota
I've buried my ballast I've made my peace, heard four winds leveling the pines
Of all of the trips so far, my trip in March to Rapid City was one of the ones I was most looking forward to and one of the ones with by far the best (or at least most interesting) story attached, at least so far. Until then, enjoy the calm before the storm at Mount Rushmore National Monument, the big time five star attraction in a big time tourist region with attractions that range all the way down to from five stars to one star (or maybe no stars to be honest).
This first view is actually one of my last views, the Washington head only view from Highway 244 as you veer on past the monument and start on your own journey west.
The classic view with all four presidents (from left to right): George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Started under President Calvin Coolidge by funny named sculptor Gutzon Borglum, it was finished in 1941 after Borglum's death. Maybe stopped is a better word than finished- originally they were all supposed to have torsos with a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution out front, but these things cost money that an America in World War 2 wasn't about to hand over.
Meanwhile, visiting the monument in March, you soon find that there's really not all that much to do- most of the programs haven't started, many exhibits are closed and the normally busy park rangers seem unusually needy when you stop by and ask a simple question. See the sculpture from the front, see the sculpture from the side, see the sculpture from the other side, repeat.
Think big, that's what I always say. Ok, I probably never say that. But maybe if I did, then maybe I'd understand Crazy Horse Memorial a little better than I do right now.
Bigger than Mount Rushmore's tiny little heads, a finished Crazy Horse Memorial (whenever that is) will be one big ass full three dimensional sculpture (500 feet high versus Mount Rushmore's puny 60 foot high unfinished heads). And while Mount Rushmore was built specifically to drag tourists to the Black Hills (and to act a future movie set for good Alfred Hitchcock and bad Nicolas Cage movies), Crazy Horse is a little less clear in its motivation. It was started in 1947 by Polish American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and features a man (Crazy Horse) who would probably not have endorsed carving up his sacred mountains, especially after knowing that he wouldn't even let himself be photographed when he was still alive. And while Ziolkowski's intentions certainly seem honorable (there are big plans for Native American schools and museums at the sculpture's base), the whole thing feels like a mistake that's too late to fix.
Not to say that a half carved mountain of a guy who was against destruction of the landscape doesn't have its charms. Ziolkowski may be long dead, but his family continues the work with periodic blasting, and it is interesting to see and imagine its completion sometime in the next few hundred years. Plus they do offer a yearly event (which this year happened just yesterday) that may draw me back to that part of South Dakota. An annual walk from the base right up to the face, a chance to stand on Crazy Horse's impossibly outstretched arm and see and briefly enjoy the view that the sculpture is doomed to see throughout eternity.
On my second day in the Black Hills I decided to drive on past the monument and head on down to Wind Cave National Park, a seemingly short and simple scenic drive south. What I didn't quite plan on was how scenic (or slow) the drive ended up being. Iron Mountain Road is more than a place to get from Point A (my hotel near Mount Rushmore) to Point B (Wind Cave National Park), it was and is a damn fine destination in and of itself. Features include one lane tunnels through the rock with framed distant views of the heads of Mount Rushmore (which consistently looks weirder the farther away you get) and steep, narrow switchbacks that made me glad the road was both generally empty and completely ice free. The other thing that separates Iron Mountain Road are the presence of several 'pigtail' bridges, an unusual and quick way to gain elevation while basically just driving in a circle (see pictures).
I ended up having so much fun driving to Wind Cave that I ended up not actually having time to see the cave. Maybe a better word than time is patience. In off season they have limited access to the actual (presumably) windy cave, and my schedule gave me the choice of waiting four hours for the next tour or deciding to move on. Shockingly I decided to move on and head west (see below), although I did spend some time among the well kept grasslands above all the underground action, pausing to see sweeping views and occasional resting locals.
High above glamorous Rapid City (ok, 'glamorous' might be a bit too strong, 'sleepy' probably works better), giant life sized dinosaur sculptures stand around and wait for people (like me) to take their pictures. An interesting roadside attraction that has the extra benefit of scale, from sleepy downtown Rapid City (ok, 'sleepy' might be a bit too strong, 'completely dead' probably works better), the dinosaurs appear as silhouettes on a ridge, a reminder of what things might have looked like millions and millions of years ago (or just 6,000 years ago if you don't believe in science, at least according to the Creation Museum from Part 2 in this slideshow).
An actual freak of nature, Devils Tower is an actual, hard to miss (but way out of the way) landmark in the eastern Wyoming landscape. Possibly created from the inside of an now eroded volcano (or possibly not, who the hell knows), it rises over 1200 feet high in scaleless wonder. And much like Mount Rushmore, there's not all that much more to do than look at it, although the circular trail at its base does at least afford constantly changing views from constantly changing angles, so at least that's something.
And if you have cable tv or are as at least as old as me, you'll recognize Devils Tower from Steven Spielberg's classic film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," where a pilgrimage to the tower reveals a secret UFO landing site, probably located somewhere right about where this first photo was taken.
My scheduled flight out of Rapid City was on a Northwest (now part of Delta) Canadair Regional Jet to Minneapolis and was scheduled to take off on a Monday at 11:15am. Complicating all of this was an ominous weather forecast. What had been beautiful, 70 degree plus blue sky days was all supposed to be dramatically replaced by a quick moving storm that would start out as rain, shift to ice and by noon on Monday would create a full fledged blizzard warning. Luckily my flight was scheduled to leave just before things got bad, 45 minutes before the blizzard warning would go into effect, 45 minutes before the end of the world.
I got up early that morning to a windy, driving, cold rain and headed out on the 10 mile drive, up and over hills (and past two actual tumbling tumbleweeds) to the airport, returned my car rental, walked through the hard to walk through and increasingly strong winds and anxiously waited to board my flight. Looking outside the window at other planes, the wind was so strong that the planes were visibly shaking and everyone in the terminal looked at each other in disbelief that planes could still operate in such conditions. Later at the gate, the Northwest agent told us that we should get ready to quickly board the plane, to take off a little early before the weather worsened, that all appeared somehow to still be on schedule.
Surprisingly we boarded the full commuter sized plane (which constantly shook and swayed, even while parked, as if we were in severe turbulence), left the gate, taxied to the runway and were told by the pilot to expect a bumpy ride but that we were cleared to take off. A few minutes later the pilot apologized for the delay, but explained that the airport asked him to wait until an incoming plane landed since the airport did not have radar (!). As we waited you could feel the wind and watch the rain turn to ice. A few minutes later, the pilot apologized but said that we were returning to the gate because of the weather, and that while the flight was not officially cancelled, we should still leave the airport as soon as possible so they could close it down and all of the workers could return home to their families. End of the world indeed.
Luckily I had a kind of back up plan. When returning my car I got the direct number to the counter which allowed me to quickly reserve one of the Rapid City Airport's last available SUVs. I also found a downtown hotel with a restaurant that I was able to quickly call and reserve a room. And while the walk to the rental car was damn near impossible (ice pellets were being shot right into my eyes from the strong winds) and the ten mile drive back to Rapid City brought peril at every turn, at least I had somewhere to go and somewhere to stay, somewhere to wait out a promised blizzard from as much comfort and safety as one could have possibly hoped.
I was stuck inside the hotel with nowhere to go for two full days, getting myself quickly re-booked (thank you Sky Team Elite Status) on the very next flight out of trouble and out of Rapid City. For most of those two days I watched in awe as the blizzard came and went, an amazing white blur of sliding cars, rattling windows and blowing snow. Not something I would recommend, but a great and memorable life experience none the less.
As for the hotel, it was certainly fine. They had a restaurant so I could eat and they had tv so I could watch the Weather Channel reporter in Rapid City get hit in the face outside with ice pellets, but the real attraction wasn't on tv but instead outside the window. Inbetween the whiteouts there was at least a chance to rest and to catch up on reading and finish off another book, I'm up to eight so far this year ("And Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris, "Naked" by David Sedaris, "Dangerous Laughter" by Steven Millhauser, "A World Made by Hand" by James Howard Kunstler, "Like You'd Understand Anyway" by Jim Shepard, "The Terror" by Dan Simmons, "Senselessness" by Horacio Castellanos Moya and "Snuff" by Chuck Palahniuk). Always open to good book recommendations should you have any.
There's not really all that much to do in downtown Rapid City, but even less to do right after a blizzard. Nothing was open and hardly anyone was to be seen. Even the Statue of George Bush seemed especially lonely.
This picture also shows what happens in the Black Hills after a blizzard. According to the tv news, over a foot of snow fell in Rapid City, but good luck finding any because of the wind. Occasionally there would be pockets several feet deep pushed against a building or car, but in general the wind pushed all of the accumulated snow somewhere else. Sidewalks were clear and dry, roads and parking lots and grasslands as well. If I hadn't been trapped like a rat inside my hotel for two days watching a blizzard, I'd be hard pressed to believe the thing even happened in the first place.
