Friday, August 10, 2012

From South Dakota to Wyoming, yee haw


Wednesday 8/8 
 We made an early start out of our campsite with a stop at the Fort We-Lik-It dump station (I call it "we lick it", although I suspect it's supposed to be pronounced "we like it". )  In our first 15 mins of driving we saw 3 deer grazing at the side of the road.  About 20 mins outside of Custer City we saw the Crazy Horse's face carved into the mountain, and decided to visit it up close.  After paying $20 to get in, we were told that we could NOT walk close to it at all (because of frequent blasting.  With dynamite).  This was starting to feel like a rip-off.  But then we entered the enormous American Indian museum, and watched the 10-minute movie explaining the history and magnitude of the project.  And we were totally hooked.  It is AMAZING.  It will be, when completed, the biggest statue in the world, (unlike Mt Rushmore which is only a bas-relief), of Crazy Horse on his horse with his arm outstretched, and his arm will be 263 feet long!  The head will be 87-1/2 feet high!  When finally completed, it will be the Eighth Wonder of the World.  I highly recommend reading about it on this link: www.crazyhorsememorial.org.  Nils and I want to come again in 20 years to see the progress.  

1:34 white model in foreground with sculpture-in-progress behind 
Then we headed for Devil's Canyon in Wyoming. On the way, over the 30 or so miles between Sylvan Lake and Deadwood, easily 2,500 motorcycles cruised by us in the opposite direction.  Soon we passed through historic Deadwood and therefore quite close to Sturgis (the veritable Ground Zero of motorcycle mania).  Needless to say, it was full, full, full of motorcycles(and looked just like that photo from the last post).....we'd heard enough muffler-less engine-rev-ing by now to last us a lifetime.   

We crossed the Wyoming border at 11:10am with 85576 on the odometer….3,201 miles driven so far.  Decided to visit the Wyoming Information Center to figure out where we might camp tonight, and got great information, including the disappointing news that today is "Wyoming Day" for the whole Sturgis crowd, meaning that Devil's Tower would be so crowded with cyclists that we'd have to wait hours to see the sights.  Yuck. To distract me from all this plan-changing: the most extraordinarily dressed woman walked in.  Or should I say un-dressed?  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Her whole "ensemble" was noteworthy, but the top half made the greatest impression, because at first glance she looked, well, she looked naked from the waist up.  As she came closer I could see that she had on a way-too-small string bikini top (which barely covered the middle third of each ample breast) which was almost the same brown color as her perfectly tanned skin and therefore impossible to discern from a distance.  I'm SURE that this was intentional.   Very short denim cut-offs revealed the bottom curves of her butt cheeks.  Over-the-knee black leather boots completed her look.  She was not 20, not 30, not even 40, but somewhere in her mid-to-late 50s, I'm guessing….thick around her bare middle and skin like tanned leather (from all the half-naked motorcycle riding?!)...basically, she looked like a hooker trolling for her third trick of the day....amongst the good people at the WY Info Center.    Hers was by far the baddest bad-ass woman biking outfit I've seen in the last 5 days (in an enormous field of trashily-dressed women).   Wow.  I was so taken aback that it didn't occur to me to take a picture until it was too late.  You'll just have to take my word for it that she was every bit as inappropriate, outrageous and incongruous as I've described.

Once we'd decided (somewhat reluctantly) to skip Devil's Tower, we motored briskly across Wyoming toward the Rocky Mountains.  Destination: Big Horn Mountain National Forest's Sitting Bull Campground.  We camped on the edge of a huge meadow with mountains in the distance.  Elevation: 8697 feet.  Location: N 44.19195, W107.21223.  We just drove in and found a great site (fortunately). As we climbed in elevation through our afternoon drive, the temps dropped…..from the 90s in Deadwood, to the low 70s in the mountains.  Tonight it should be in the 50s. 
 view from the RV back window...note Rocky Mts in the distance


1 comment:

  1. SO glad you stopped at Crazy Horse Memorial (and loved it as I did)! We felt the same way - wanting to stop back 10 or 20 years hence to see the progress. Now I can skip the 10yr trip, thx to your photo lol I can see the progress they've made even in the 7 yrs since my visit - pretty cool!

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