2012 Roadtrip - North By North... East
Sep. 25th, 2021 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanDay 16... It was 9 years ago yesterday...
Sept 26. Wednesday – Boulder to Keystone
Departure Day. After Gary returned from his morning shift, we all had breakfast together, including the dogs (they had breakfast with us, I mean!!). We then packed up the Nespresso machine, attended to final packing of suitcases & lugged them out to the Escape, which I’d almost forgotten how to drive over the last few days of being driven around by Gary. An extended & quite emotional farewell outside the house, including the dogs (yes, they were emotional too!) & promises to see each other soon either back in the States, or down in Australia some time. We were a bit torn between wanting to stay longer & wanting to see what the rest of the country has to offer. Curiosity eventually won, so we set off in the morning drizzle, heading north-east towards South Dakota, via Wyoming
Once across the Wyoming border, we pulled over to consult maps & plot our route a little better, then got back on the road. In a very short time, I saw a pair of headlights coming straight toward us & I realised I’d crossed to the left-side of the road automatically when we’d driven off. Fortunately, the oncoming pickup truck & I were able to avoid destroying each other, with the help of the road shoulder & I turned the Escape around to go back & check on who we’d nearly met by accident. It turned out to be two middle-aged sisters who were more concerned about us, as they were sure I must have been having a fit or an attack to have crossed to the wrong side of the road. I assured them I was fine, just having an “Australian moment” & apologised profusely for nearly killing us all. They were quite lovely about it really – very understanding & sympathetic... & glad to be alive. One of them wanted to know if we were on Facebook, but I just couldn’t see how that would ever be a comfortable correspondence, so told them we weren’t. Somewhat shaken by the whole thing, we set off again, on the right side of the road this time
Wyoming certainly lived up to the Rich Hall joke that Highway Patrol there will pull you over just because they’re lonely. Not that we were pulled over, but the highways were pretty deserted & the countryside is wide, flat & open for miles, with occasional rock formations to break the worst of the monotony... but we’d seen Monument Valley & the Arches, so weren’t sufficiently impressed for photos. Gradually we left the rain behind, but the day stayed overcast & mild. Being back on the road also meant a return to fast-food, so a Subway lunch & into South Dakota we went. This is the state that has the reputation of being the 'creepiest', though I doubt you'll find that on their car license plates... They have a National Park called the Badlands, in case you don’t get the idea. The Black Hills State Forest even has a ‘Hell’s Gulch’, not to mention all these stories & places...
But, they also have Mount Rushmore, which is one of the things you have to see if you’re coming to the USA... & given that we’ve ticked off all the other essentials as we’ve come east, this was next on the list. But first, we found Crazy Horse on the side of a mountain. This work-in-not-a-lot-of-progress was conceived as kind of a Native American middle-finger to Mount Rushmore having been carved into the Black Hills, which are sacred to the local Sioux tribes, by a guy with ties to the KKK. Unfortunately, the glacial progress on Crazy Horse makes Gutzon Borglum look like Gero Hilliger & it doesn't look like it will be finished in my lifetime.... If the monument was a bit further along in its execution, we might have been tempted to pay the entry fee & get a closer look, but the view from the side of the road was just fine by us
We arrived at Mount Rushmore just before 5pm & found that we’d timed it well, as this was the last week of extended hours & nightly floodlit displays before the winter ‘off’ season
Watchful eyes... the view from the parking lot
Unfinished business - what about George & Abraham's coats??!
Room for more?? Suggestions in the comments section & anyone who says Trump gets deleted & blocked!!
It turned out I wasn’t the only person there who had been expecting a larger sculpture... it always seems so big on TV & in books... there was an American couple who expressed that opinion while I was changing lenses. A passing tourist heard Julia & I talking & came over, wondering if we were from Australia. When I asked how she'd known, she said there was an Australian in her tour group & he was around here somewhere. Thus forewarned, we kept an ear out for him. I eventually heard & spotted him in the inevitable gift shop complaining about prices & how the whole thing was a rip-off... (He's not with us!!! We don't even know the guy!!). We spent the rest of our time there avoiding him & trying to be the perfect antithesis of, & antidote to, the ugly Australian. With daytime photos taken, we headed for the nearby town of Keystone... wondering where the Kops were, where we found a Super 8 motel about two miles down the road & Peggy’s Place, a nice looking little Diner, a hundred feet after that
Checking e-mail before heading back to the Mount for the night show, we discovered that we’d both been sent an abusive message from one of those Flickr commenters who’d taken exception to the rail photo the other day. His message to me read “We welcome your hate, because we already hate you” (only with worse spelling & grammar) & a link to a page he’d set up called ‘PhotoFools’, where he’d re-posted Gary’s shot so that all his like-minded friends (all three of them) could make abusive comments & post doctored photos of dismembered bodies next to train tracks. Utterly charming. His message to Julia was milder, but still abusive, so I couldn’t resist sending a brief reply to him – something along the lines of “Listen micro-mind, check your facts before going off half-cocked, which is probably all you could manage anyway”... only much more subtle & less openly abusive, as I didn’t want to either sink to his level, or get involved in a flame-war with an idiot & his mates. We both then blocked his access to our accounts & pages & headed out to Peggy’s for dinner, which was a pretty basic roadhouse-style affair, but it’s only a small town, so all was well
Over dinner we compiled a progress report. We’d had a three-State day, travelling from Colorado, through Wyoming & into South Dakota. Our total number of States visited stands at seven – only forty one mainland ones to go!!
Back to Mt Rushmore for the night show, which consisted of a talk by a Ranger, then a film about the featured Presidents & the man who carved them. As the film ended, the floodlights slowly illuminated the sculpture, which certainly looked impressive. Then, any members of the US military, past or present, were invited onstage to lower the Stars & Stripes for the day, accompanied by the National Anthem, which Julia & I tried to hum along to, being mostly ignorant of the words. A moving ceremony, which moistened even our eyes & really was another example of the best of the US, following on from our misadventure on the road that morning & all the friendly hospitality we’ve encountered over the last two weeks. It just made our online experience seem all the more sad & pathetic. Talk about doing your country proud...
Can you spot Cary & Eva-Marie?
Not the most flattering lighting you could want... these guys will need a better image team if they want to be 'Influencers' (an unavoidable 2021 reference!)
Sept 26. Wednesday – Boulder to Keystone
Departure Day. After Gary returned from his morning shift, we all had breakfast together, including the dogs (they had breakfast with us, I mean!!). We then packed up the Nespresso machine, attended to final packing of suitcases & lugged them out to the Escape, which I’d almost forgotten how to drive over the last few days of being driven around by Gary. An extended & quite emotional farewell outside the house, including the dogs (yes, they were emotional too!) & promises to see each other soon either back in the States, or down in Australia some time. We were a bit torn between wanting to stay longer & wanting to see what the rest of the country has to offer. Curiosity eventually won, so we set off in the morning drizzle, heading north-east towards South Dakota, via Wyoming
Once across the Wyoming border, we pulled over to consult maps & plot our route a little better, then got back on the road. In a very short time, I saw a pair of headlights coming straight toward us & I realised I’d crossed to the left-side of the road automatically when we’d driven off. Fortunately, the oncoming pickup truck & I were able to avoid destroying each other, with the help of the road shoulder & I turned the Escape around to go back & check on who we’d nearly met by accident. It turned out to be two middle-aged sisters who were more concerned about us, as they were sure I must have been having a fit or an attack to have crossed to the wrong side of the road. I assured them I was fine, just having an “Australian moment” & apologised profusely for nearly killing us all. They were quite lovely about it really – very understanding & sympathetic... & glad to be alive. One of them wanted to know if we were on Facebook, but I just couldn’t see how that would ever be a comfortable correspondence, so told them we weren’t. Somewhat shaken by the whole thing, we set off again, on the right side of the road this time
Wyoming certainly lived up to the Rich Hall joke that Highway Patrol there will pull you over just because they’re lonely. Not that we were pulled over, but the highways were pretty deserted & the countryside is wide, flat & open for miles, with occasional rock formations to break the worst of the monotony... but we’d seen Monument Valley & the Arches, so weren’t sufficiently impressed for photos. Gradually we left the rain behind, but the day stayed overcast & mild. Being back on the road also meant a return to fast-food, so a Subway lunch & into South Dakota we went. This is the state that has the reputation of being the 'creepiest', though I doubt you'll find that on their car license plates... They have a National Park called the Badlands, in case you don’t get the idea. The Black Hills State Forest even has a ‘Hell’s Gulch’, not to mention all these stories & places...
But, they also have Mount Rushmore, which is one of the things you have to see if you’re coming to the USA... & given that we’ve ticked off all the other essentials as we’ve come east, this was next on the list. But first, we found Crazy Horse on the side of a mountain. This work-in-not-a-lot-of-progress was conceived as kind of a Native American middle-finger to Mount Rushmore having been carved into the Black Hills, which are sacred to the local Sioux tribes, by a guy with ties to the KKK. Unfortunately, the glacial progress on Crazy Horse makes Gutzon Borglum look like Gero Hilliger & it doesn't look like it will be finished in my lifetime.... If the monument was a bit further along in its execution, we might have been tempted to pay the entry fee & get a closer look, but the view from the side of the road was just fine by us
We arrived at Mount Rushmore just before 5pm & found that we’d timed it well, as this was the last week of extended hours & nightly floodlit displays before the winter ‘off’ season
Watchful eyes... the view from the parking lot
Unfinished business - what about George & Abraham's coats??!
Room for more?? Suggestions in the comments section & anyone who says Trump gets deleted & blocked!!
It turned out I wasn’t the only person there who had been expecting a larger sculpture... it always seems so big on TV & in books... there was an American couple who expressed that opinion while I was changing lenses. A passing tourist heard Julia & I talking & came over, wondering if we were from Australia. When I asked how she'd known, she said there was an Australian in her tour group & he was around here somewhere. Thus forewarned, we kept an ear out for him. I eventually heard & spotted him in the inevitable gift shop complaining about prices & how the whole thing was a rip-off... (He's not with us!!! We don't even know the guy!!). We spent the rest of our time there avoiding him & trying to be the perfect antithesis of, & antidote to, the ugly Australian. With daytime photos taken, we headed for the nearby town of Keystone... wondering where the Kops were, where we found a Super 8 motel about two miles down the road & Peggy’s Place, a nice looking little Diner, a hundred feet after that
Checking e-mail before heading back to the Mount for the night show, we discovered that we’d both been sent an abusive message from one of those Flickr commenters who’d taken exception to the rail photo the other day. His message to me read “We welcome your hate, because we already hate you” (only with worse spelling & grammar) & a link to a page he’d set up called ‘PhotoFools’, where he’d re-posted Gary’s shot so that all his like-minded friends (all three of them) could make abusive comments & post doctored photos of dismembered bodies next to train tracks. Utterly charming. His message to Julia was milder, but still abusive, so I couldn’t resist sending a brief reply to him – something along the lines of “Listen micro-mind, check your facts before going off half-cocked, which is probably all you could manage anyway”... only much more subtle & less openly abusive, as I didn’t want to either sink to his level, or get involved in a flame-war with an idiot & his mates. We both then blocked his access to our accounts & pages & headed out to Peggy’s for dinner, which was a pretty basic roadhouse-style affair, but it’s only a small town, so all was well
Over dinner we compiled a progress report. We’d had a three-State day, travelling from Colorado, through Wyoming & into South Dakota. Our total number of States visited stands at seven – only forty one mainland ones to go!!
Back to Mt Rushmore for the night show, which consisted of a talk by a Ranger, then a film about the featured Presidents & the man who carved them. As the film ended, the floodlights slowly illuminated the sculpture, which certainly looked impressive. Then, any members of the US military, past or present, were invited onstage to lower the Stars & Stripes for the day, accompanied by the National Anthem, which Julia & I tried to hum along to, being mostly ignorant of the words. A moving ceremony, which moistened even our eyes & really was another example of the best of the US, following on from our misadventure on the road that morning & all the friendly hospitality we’ve encountered over the last two weeks. It just made our online experience seem all the more sad & pathetic. Talk about doing your country proud...
Can you spot Cary & Eva-Marie?
Not the most flattering lighting you could want... these guys will need a better image team if they want to be 'Influencers' (an unavoidable 2021 reference!)
