The Mythical American West

Waking up in Murdo, South Dakota was tough. We were super tired and the heat that next day was unreal. I have a new historical hero…ANYONE and I do mean ANY PERSON who could have pioneered South Dakota gets my vote as the bravest, most hardy person in American history. In the 1880’s, the United States government was eager to settle the Dakota territories and to be rid of the native “issue” once and for all. They offered people in the crowded lands of the east acres of land and $18 if they could survive a year in the Dakotas. Well, there were plenty of people who took up their offer and plenty who just up and died trying. One settler said that the government was really betting $18 that you wouldn’t live!!! Welp, this explains all the “ghosted” pioneer homes we saw all along the way (and there are thousands of them). They probably just up and died from the strain of living in South Dakota.

The western prairie is HOT. It’s not like the heat anywhere else on the prairie either. There are no shade trees just juniper and cottonwood every so often. The sun is relentless in the summer to the point of heat stroke and in the winter it is so cold and snowy that you’d freeze to death. This year is unusually rainy the innkeeper told me and I believe him. The prairie, usually brown and withered, is verdant and cool…for South Dakota! Every evening a rain shower breaks the impossible heat. It reminded me of the powerful storms that would come through in the evenings back at home and wash away the humidity and heat. That is happening here.

We drove to the town of Kadoka for a breakfast. I was glad the kids could see a modern town in South Dakota. It looked like a typical Native American Reservation; poor, lonely, decrepit, and depressing. The town is dusty, old, and its only industry is to house desperately tired people on their way to the Black Hills and the Badlands. Inside the shaky looking restaurant was a nice environment with happy people.

We stopped along the way at a Prairie Dog Ranch. Some “ranchers” (how can you call rodents burrowing in the ground “ranching” them I wondered?) built this place by the side of the road and for a mere 50 cents you can feed them unsalted peanuts. It is the funniest and sweetest experience ever! We fed these little rodents with utter abandon! We cooed and cuddled these cousins of rats like they were babies. It was the best fifty-cent experience you could ever buy.

Just down from the “ranch” there was a Prairie Homestead Museum and this was really educational for all of us. As I waxed on and on in the previous blog; I am a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and reading her books doesn’t even compare to reading them and then actually sitting in a dugout house on the prairie. It’s a miracle that any of her family survived until adulthood! This was a hot, dirty, buggy (there are thousands of flies all over the prairie), locust invested (they are everywhere and fly into you) prairie dog crop eating, hostile Native Americans (who can blame them?), and sun-baked country. AND the houses were smaller than my kitchen with five people living in them!!! I have no idea how anyone would even consider staying in the Dakotas for more than a week. And without air-conditioning or central heating no less!!!! To also come full circle, we saw an old 1920's Ford that was made in the factory that we visited in Dearborn, Michigan! Here are some pictures from the museum:

Since we hauled ourselves out to Murdo, we only had an hour to Cedar Lodge; a government run cabin motel directly in the Badlands National Park. I have to recommend staying in the parks if you ever even think to come to them out west. There are no better alternatives around the parks and the experience of walking from your cabin to the most stunningly gorgeous earth you’ve ever seen is worth your time to book it between 8-12 months in advance. (You’ll never get a spot otherwise unless someone cancels).

The kids and I tried to imagine the covered wagons heading west when all of the sudden they come across the Badlands. The French explorers named them because they thought they were a “bad land to cross”. This is true enough. Can you imagine yourself a pioneer woman who followed her husband’s notion to move west and came to the mountains of eroding earth with a loaded covered wagon, “Uh, Jedidiah, what are we gonna do NOW?”

The early "scientists" who studied the badlands were stumped. Some even thought that this was once a magnificent ancient city that was in ruins. I thought the same thing when I approached it. One part looks exactly like the medieval city of Mount St. Michel in France from afar! The Badlands are eroding earth because of the high composition of clay in its soil. Whenever you touch the sides of the mounds of earth, it comes off in your hands like chalk. The Badlands won’t exist in a mere 500,000 years. It will have washed away…some of it reaching the Gulf of Mexico I learned. The exposed earth also is comprised of ash from volcanic activities from the Black Hills. The oldest part of the exposed shale is 75,000,000 years old when a shallow inland sea occupied the Great Plains. There are also lots of fossils here as you might imagine. 37,000,000 years ago, this was a sub-tropical forest with alligators!

Wildlife is everywhere here. We saw Big Horn Sheep climbing a sheer wall like it was nothing special (shown here in the picture), lots of rabbits, deer, black-billed magpies (who aren’t happy we’ve moved in near their cedar tree), and the American bison. Marley nearly lost her mind with joy when she saw the bison frolicking in a field. They are like mythological American creatures. The magpies crack me up. They don’t like the rabbit that lives on the green near the cabin either. They harass her all day long poor thing. She seems unfazed however.

In the evening when the rains came to the south and the weather was cool enough to go hiking, we went for a 5-mile hike into the wilderness and then back 5 miles through some rough terrain. It was fabulous. Hiking in this area is fairly safe with there being so many other nature-loving people doing the same thing.

The hike was so strange. Here are some pictures from the hike. At one point we had to descend a very long log ladder and a dangerous pass. It was a great way to get some exercise while feeling like we were on the surface of the moon. As the sun was setting we saw a prism rainbow in the mist to the east. It was breathtaking! We also saw a clean and vibrant sky and after sunset the sky was complete with millions of stars. This is such a beautiful place. These pictures were taken during a 24 hour period. You can see how different the landscape looks when reacting to the changing light:

The bikers don’t seem to be into hiking so we didn’t have to hike with bikini-clad fifty-year-old women or pot-bellied smoking men. (A fifty-ish year old woman came into the café of the cabins wearing a bikini top and a pair of cut-offs. She definitely had some “work done”. The families seated all around her were upset and she was asked to leave. It was super strange to sit near her I must admit but I had to admire her comfort level with her older body…she did get her money’s worth!). The people from Sturgis Bikers Rally seem to think that the whole of South Dakota is their play land while they are here! I will say one more thing about them…they are really nice people and are so happy to be here that they do bounce the mood in a positive way. Also, as one of them pointed out to me, the population of South Dakota DOUBLES when the Bike Rally is here!!!

The next day we meandered through the Badlands and got out of the car for a hike in the early morning coolness. We headed out to Wall, South Dakota. This is the home of Wall Drug Store. Well, it was better than I originally thought it would be! Wall Drug Store is a huge complex of humorous exhibits, Western culture museum, and interesting shops.

The ever-constant bikers were right there with us, enjoying the sights. I stopped in for a coffee and the proprietor’s son asked me where I was from and asked me why I would ever think to come during Biker’s Rally. He then told me the following:

The Sturgis Biker’s Rally completely destroyed the town of Sturgis. He used to live in Sturgis until the town was bought up by some hotshot California investors who turned it into a kind of ‘Woodstock’ (see my second blog) where the legend is bigger than the reality of a place. The town is only ‘OPEN’ for the months of July and August and then everyone bails out for the remainder of the year, having gotten enough money from the two months of serving the biking community.

The Hell’s Angels are the most dangerous of the group. His parents sell Black Hills Gold (that tri-color gold that was big in the 1980’s) and they usually come in, try on the gold, and walk out with it. The leader of Hell’s Angels found out what they did this year and made them return it, not wanting trouble with the town of Wall, but most times the people aren’t so lucky. The local police forces of South Dakota are responsible to keep everything in order and they are just out-numbered and there is nothing they can do. These dudes and “ladies” are just really tough. The people of South Dakota are stuck because so much of their economy depends on the Rally. What is law enforcement to do other than threaten to shoot them?

Speaking of shooting, the mother of my coffee hop talked to me at length about the Biker’s Rally in the 1970’s and how a woman would never THINK to come to the Rally because she’d be attacked. The Hell’s Angels would shoot each other dead right in the streets of Sturgis. She once saw a man gunned down right in front of her as she ran screaming to her parent’s store in town. She was actually SHAKING when she was giving me the details. I felt so bad for her. She said that the Rally has become far tamer in recent years and the only people who come are doctors, lawyers, and wanna-be’s because they are the only ones who can afford it.

We did see Sturgis from the road as we ascended into the Black Hills. It was just like Woodstock; campers set up tents and makeshift lean-tos, bikes outside of rotting hotels, and half-naked people holding signs requesting all kinds of “uncommon behaviors”. Guns-n-Roses, Poison, Brett Michaels and other heavy metal groups were playing during the upcoming nights at a yearly amphitheater. This is a picture of the road to Deadwood as you ascend through the Black Hills to the town. It is very wooded and deep green colors are everywhere. The natives called them the Black Hills because from very far away they look dark.

We turned to the road to Deadwood and enjoyed the crush of the bikers for one last time. They are quite the characters! I didn’t witness one altercation or even a foul word. I can’t imagine what they used to be like. Mostly, they are gentle old fat men with their half-clad wives. This picture is of my favorite Biker Chick and her “Hoss” as the men are called. I love this picture. I went up to her and told her “I just think you look great! I am writing a blog about my travels and I would like to have a picture of the two of you to share with my readers!” As you can see, these are super eager people to share the Riding Culture with the world!

Apart from the bikers, Deadwood is an amazing place. If you don’t know anything about it, it’s worth a read. Deadwood was a place that grew up fast without the law until a sheriff named Seth Bullock came and tried to bring justice to this American Gold Rush town. He came across characters like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Wild Bill was killed in a poker game after he was accused of cheating. He and Calamity Jane are buried together in Deadwood. Deadwood is just as I imagined it to be. It’s gotten busier since the HBO series came and went a few years back, but it’s still Deadwood and has the feel of the old west to this day. We also had the best locally raised Angus beef fire-grilled burger that I’ve ever had.

To the right is a diorama of the event that killed Wild Bill.

We started our trip to Montana after Deadwood but I started to feel uneasy. This would be problematic since I needed to be in Hardin, Montana that was a six-hour drive through the Montana wilderness. I had a bad feeling about this part of the trip. I remember planning this leg of the journey and I was so worried about it and perhaps it was stress or just trying to fathom such a far distance from civilization that made me feel dizzy…or just the fact that I am feeling really tired and beat…it’s hard to say, but things were about to get weird.

We went to the area called Belle Fourshce, which is the geographic center of the United States longitudinally. Now, many towns could claim this too, no? We took a picture and then visited a pioneer cabin. I was still feeling strange. We drove up to the most northwestern corner of South Dakota, a sliver of the most northeastern corner of Wyoming, and then crossed into Montana.

This part of Montana is so similar in its geography from the moment I crossed into the state for three hundred miles. It is hills, grass, white and ponderosa pine. It goes on like this for an eternity. There are NO TOWNS along this lonely stretch of route 212. It’s completely EMPTY. The bikers started to even disappear. The road is so lonely that at one point I was alone on the road for about 50 miles.

We passed through Custer National Forest and the Cheyenne, Creek, and the Crow Reservations. These reservations are extremely depressing to outsiders and yet insulated and functional for the people living there. There are no services for people passing through though and I was warned to fill up my gas tank at Belle Foursche so I was glad I heeded the advice of others. There are no restaurants, shops, cultural centers, rest stops, or toilet facilities for anyone passing through. As we were almost out of the final reservation, it happened…we almost got into a serious accident in Busby, Montana. I felt like the whole day was leading up to this moment. Everything was off balance all afternoon. Here are some pictures from the drive through the reservation:

The accident was in the form of a little Daschund who was wandering back and forth in the middle of the road. I braked hard from going 70 mph (which is the speed limit here) and tried to signal the person behind us to stop as well. The little dog saw my car stop and he came over to us. The kids got out of the car and he let them pick him up in their arms. We went to the only house on the Reservation near the dog and beeped the horn. A teenage Crow boy came out to us. I asked him if he lost his dog, “No,” he said, “someone must have dropped him from their car because he’s been in the road for a few hours.” (A FEW HOURS???) I said, “What should I do with him?! Poor thing!” And he shrugged, “He doesn’t belong to anyone around here…keep him!” and he promptly went back into the house. Here is a picture of Marley going up to the house to inquire about the dog.

Now, it isn’t just that easy of course but I couldn’t leave him to wait for his going-to-hell-abusers to never come back and have him be hit by a car. He was also younger than a year old. He was so sweet and his tail was wagging when he was in our arms as if he was going to be better from that moment on. He fell asleep for the rest of the ride. We named him ‘Busby’ because we found him that town. He fell fast asleep with Marley. He looked a mess.

We brought him to the hotel in Hardin, explained the situation to the receptionist who told us to be sure we got him to Billings where he could be somewhere better than near the reservations which has lots of problems with stray dogs. The receptionist was hostile about the town of Hardin. She told me she hated it here and was waiting for her chance to get out of it. I couldn’t blame her from what I saw of the town so far and I’d only been there ten minutes! The town was a shambles of a place. It probably got its name as a warning to others; “It’s Hard-in this town“ was what it meant originally! She said that the SPCA in Billings was so overcrowded from abusive living conditions that he would only be up for adoption for about 10 days before they’d have to euthanize him to make way for other dogs. I was heartbroken.

We brought Busby into the room, fed him some chicken, gave him some water, ran around the grassy playground with him, and then gave him a bath where he promptly turned the water into a brown mess. For such a little dog, he sure had a lot of dirt and mud in his fur. He dried off by rubbing himself into the carpet with abandon and then promptly laid his head down between Marley and Cole and passed out into a deep sleep. He had a horrible day.

I lay awake thinking, “What on earth am I going to do with a young Daschund on a trip across the country?” It just wasn’t possible to keep him. I started emailing no-kill rescue agencies in Billings. Busby, for all his gusto in loving the kids and me by cuddling us, had been beaten before. Every time I would try to pet him softly he would shrink from my hand until it landed gently on his fur. He was breaking my heart but the stress of thinking how I would keep him the rest of the way until I could find him a home was also causing me a lot of anxiety and stress. I would have to find him a place to go and within 24 hours before we entered Yellowstone National Park and my NO PETS ALLOWED and NO REFUNDS hotel in the park itself.

At midnight a call miraculously came in from a no-kill facility that said that he could take him because he’s a purebred, small, and housebroken. YAY!!! Busby was going to find some Billingsites to love him forever! I was thrilled for everyone including myself! He really was a great dog and if we had found him anywhere near home I would consider him for ourselves. The man also said that he needs donations for all strays and I agreed to pay for Busby’s neutering and vet bills, which is $100 as a standard donation. “No good deed goes unpunished,” I thought. But, the tax-deductable hundred bucks does help me sleep at night so I wouldn’t have to imagine this sweet little dog going up in smoke in the crematorium. That's him in bed at midnight after the call came in.

We drove the next day to Billings, Montana to the Homeless Pet Rescue Agency in Billings and gave Busby to the nice people of the rescue. I gave them money and they whisked Busby to the operating table to neuter him. He was so sweet and I was having a hard time letting him go. The woman offered to bring him to the airport to have him shipped to Philadelphia. This was an option that I didn’t want to think about. She said not to worry, that Busby would find parents as they have an exclusive contract with PetsMart and that he would find a home quickly because he was a year old puppy. She also said that he would most likely be adopted this weekend when they bring him to the store. I felt so much better.

We walked around Billings afterward. Billings is amazingly depressing and dismal for a western town. It was even more disturbing because so many people were in the throes of unmedicated mental illness. We walked about 5 blocks looking for something interesting only to be alone on the streets with over a dozen people who were talking to themselves, mumbling, wearing bizarre clothing (like red ropes tied specifically around the knees), and searching for handouts. The city design brings this on itself. All the businesses are built up, as in vertically, and the shops available to the public on the street then disappear because the entrances are all marble and stone with revolving doors. There is NO STREET LIFE apart from lost souls communing with invisible companions. I did bring personal protection on the trip with us in the form of pepper spray. Never, in the whole time we have been on the trip, have I felt that we’d be in trouble apart from the day walking around Billings. A young man who was talking to himself started to follow us at a fast clip. There was no one else around to help. I had my finger on the spray button as he mumbled something angrily to himself about not having his coat with him. He then got sidetracked when a group of men came from around a building to the free food pantry. I was creeped out. We made a small donation to the food pantry and got out of town as fast as we could.

We decided to spend the night in Livingston, Montana that was closer to Yellowstone after having dropped off Busby. The wind whips through the Rockies here with gusts sometimes up to 151 mph a local was saying in the Laundromat. He said that the wind comes through so fast and hard that trucks tip over. Two policemen were killed when they tried to help an overturned truck and another truck blew over on top of them. The Rockies are impressive but certainly come with their own calamities.

Livingston is one of my new favorite western towns. It puts Billings to shame in a thousand ways. Whatever myth that the American West wants to build up for itself, the town of Livingston is LIVING the American western lifestyle. The city planners should all stand up and congratulate themselves on a job well done. All the signs are vintage, all the fonts on the buildings are historical, and the shops are a healthy blend of restaurants, ethnic places, artisan studios, and business venues. I was so impressed. The bookstore was so impressive I was stunned into just staring at everything around me. This is a place of respect for the better things about the American past. Here are some pictures of downtown Livingston:

The Rockies are the most mythical of all American mountain ranges and rise up from seemingly nowhere from the vantage point of Main Street, Livingston. After enduring so much flat and redundant scenery, Livingston was a welcomed relief. Coming out from Billings, we had reached our farthest point north on the trip. We had met very few of the farmers and ranchers in Montana, but had shared their company in all public places we spent time. They are hard working, dust covered and rugged individuals. They are the closest living representation to the American Cowboy. We also got a lot of cuddle time with a small sweet dog that needed our love and mercy. We were glad to have passed on through.