Custer to Lusk
The weather was unimproved this morning, so we decided to do our laundry. Many other people had made the same decision, probably for the same reason, so it wasn’t a particularly relaxing exercise. While the clothes washed, we had a light breakfast of a cookie and a drink at the Songbird Cafe, while taking advantage of its free WiFi. Yet more custom won though the magic of wireless Internet.
It was still raining when we loaded our clean, dry clothes into the car and set a course South on the 385, back to Nebraska. With the low visibility, we were glad we hadn’t relied on this morning being clear for a view of Mount Rushmore.
Maybe it was the weather, but I felt that the particular Black Hills of Dakota that are South of Custer were very similar to Wales, only bigger. Oh, and with less bracken. If you wanted to do a film adaptation of "On the Black Hill", using giant actors, you could do it here.
We’ve seen hot weather, and we’ve seen thunderstorms, but we’re not used to constant grey drizzle in the USA. From the dry of the car, it’s an interesting change. Walking around outside, it’s a bit annoying. The scenery is very atmospheric in these conditions.
In Wind Cave National Park, the road became very bendy. Signs warned us of buffalo in the road. We didn’t really believe it, and when I narrowly avoided running over a rabbit, we thought that was probably going to be the wildlife highlight of today’s drive. We were proved wrong, when we came upon a row of cars that had stopped to watch some buffalo cross the road.
After emerging from the National Park, we were speeding along at close to the speed limit, when we saw a car coming in the opposite direction waving an orange "SLOW" flag. I braked, and a little later an SUV came towards us with a plate reading "OVERSIZE LOAD". I slowed down a little more. Around the corner came a lorry bearing a house. I’m not exaggerating. This was not a caravan or a mobile home. It was a two storey building the width of both lanes and one hard shoulder — so I had to move into the remaining shoulder to let it pass. By British standards I would say it was a good sized three bedroom detached house, and it was being carried to wherever someone was going to live in it, on the back of a truck.
We came to Hot Springs, where we stopped for $6 worth of "all you can eat" Chinese food. We broke the contract, and stopped eating long before it was physically impossible to cram in any more food, but nonetheless enjoyed a good feed. We didn’t dawdle in Hot Springs, and kept going South on 385. Ten miles down the road, Debbie asked me where my sunglasses were. We turned back, I retrieved my glasses from the Chinese restaurant, and we were back on the road — half an hour wasted, and ammunition for Debbie to use against me for months.
We crossed back into Nebraska, and found ourselves out of the mountains and into the plains again. It was pretty samey to Alliance, but that didn’t matter, because Alliance had Carhenge.
Carhenge is a replica of Stonehenge, made in cars. There are some other pieces of "car art" here.
Some of the cars carried a lot of graffiti. One girl, named Katy Cunningham had seen these works, and decided that they were the ideal canvas to profess her admiration for Gwen Stefani.
We wandered around in the drizzle for a while, then got back in the car, and drove back North for the 80 miles back to US-20, using a slightly different route from the one we came in on. After miles of rolling plains, we were awestruck to come over a hill and see a spectacular wall of rock on the horizon — in a pool of sunshine. This turned out to be part of Fort Robinson State Park.
In fact, we passed through Fort Robinson itself a little later on. This is where Crazy Horse was stabbed in the back and died. The scenery around here is particulary spectacular. US-20 climbs steadily through grassy hills West of Fort Robinson, and we weren’t allowed to stop on the way up, at the top was a "scenic outlook". By now, we were under clear skies. The only sound was the pinging of our engine cooling down, and the wind. The panormaic view, like many of the incredible open landscapes in the West, was entirely impossible to photograph adequately.
We carried on into Wyoming. A sign welcomed us: "Wyoming welcomes you". Another sign reminded us of beef: "Beef - it’s what’s for dinner!". Wyoming is the 9th largest state, and the least populated state, with 499,000 inhabitants (tiny Rhode Island has over a million). The first "city" we encountered was Van Tassel — a house, a post office, and eighteen people. I was a little put out to have to reduce speed for the sake of eighteen people.
I thought Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico had big skies, but Wyoming is incredible. The road stretches into the distance, with nothing but grass and cows or horses for as far as the eye can see to the left or right. Some of the way, a railway track ran alongside the road, and a train coming in the opposite direction was so long that despite our travelling at 65MPH, it blocked our view to the right for a couple of minutes.
The next "city", Node, was smaller than Van Tassel, and we barely noticed it pass. It still warrants a dot on the Rand McNally road map.
We ended up in Lusk "the largest town in the least populated county of the least populated state". Road Trip USA claims that Lusk has the only traffic light on US-20 for the breadth of Wyoming, but we’ve seen two traffic lights on 20 in Lusk.
We’re in the fantastic Covered Wagon motel.
How many ways is it great?
- Neon: good neon
- Super friendly reception
- $80 — not ultra cheap, but very reasonable indeed
- Single storey, park by your door. This is what makes it a motel not a hotel.
- WiFi
- Nice big, clean, comfy room
No HBO or showtime though.
We ate at the Mexican place opposite, El Toro, and it was good and tasty.
Big Brother: today is "Golden Power of Veto" day. The "Head of Household" nominated two people on Saturday. Today some contestants, chosen by some convoluted process whereby nominees and the HOH choose representatives, played a game (involving a giant chessboard and knight moves) to compete for "Golden Power of Veto", and the winner got to veto one of the nominations, meaning the "Head of Household" had to nominate someone else instead.
As a result of all this, the housemates spent an hour gabbling on at each other about strategies, alliances, agreements, game plans, and all that kind of dreary stuff. They may as well televise a game of Diplomacy. Actually, that would be better.
October 9th, 2005 at 7:26 am
The link above links to a post that I wrote back in August, which includes a picture of the Covered Wagon motel.