I am not the spry little dove that I used to be. In days of yore I would have been able to travel for 20 to 30 hour stretches without needing a pee break or to sleep. My body was a traveling machine that was able to withstand everything that the road could throw at it. I could watch the miles roll past in hundred mile increments and not even think twice about it. I once drove from Savannah, Georgia to Kansas City, MO and then on to Los Angeles, CA in 55 hours. Every car I have ever owned has quivered whenever I got behind the wheel knowing the brutality that lie ahead. I was fierce.
Today, I have to pee a lot, and a hundred miles seems like a full day of travel. Even if I could go farther, I wouldn't try it. As a seasoned traveler, I know that all that lies beyond that hundred miles in front of me is just another hundred miles, and another, and another... That's a lot of pee breaks.
I spent four long lovely days in Kansas City, eating, sightseeing and taking it all in. I stayed with Adam at his new digs in Olathe and made all the rounds of the Daniel historic landmarks; Winsteads, Gates, the parks, the Plaza and, of course - the zoo and the art museum were squeezed in there for good measure. I love going back to Kansas City probably as much as I like to complain about it. For every nasty thing I could think to say about it I still can't convince myself not to daydream about it. It is, and always be, my true home. It tortures me to think about the place, much the same way a bad cook looks at a ruined meal and tortures themselves thinking they can save it by fooling with it further. Their efforts will only add more misery to the flavor, but it doesn't stop them from trying. Kansas City has always tasted like it's been over seasoned, but I still ate as much as I could before it was time to go puke.
It was finally time to go home and the trail ahead of me seemed like a prison sentence. The trail home was in need some serious modification if I was to make it without going crazy. The well-traveled route that takes me from Lincoln, Nebraska to Salt Lake City just wasn't going to work for me anymore. The Wyoming plains are as mentally taxing as any remote part of the world can be and I doubt even the hardiest Siberian gypsies could make the trip as often as I have without losing their minds.
So it was decided that South Dakota might be a more colorful and therefore, less disturbing choice. Sometimes my thinking is questionable.
If you're thing on road trips is road side attractions then South Dakota is your state. It can boost more road side attractions in a 350 mile stretch of highway than anywhere else on earth. The USS South Dakota is buried up to its main deck in a park in Sioux Falls. The Corn Palace, adorned with corn, sits as a shine on the prairie to the Corn Gods for all the corn worshipers world wide to come and worship at. Just a few miles down the road from there is Laura Ingalls Wilder's house (yes, Little House on the Prairie). It's mad of mud and has grass growing on it. There is an old western town. A car museum with the General Lee. There's the famous Wall Drug. The Badlands, which is a smaller version of the Grand Canyon. The Wounded Knee Massacre site, and THEN....
Mt. Rushmore. A testament to America's bravado and its willingness to insult an entire nation of people by defacing its most sacred land and convincing everyone that it was a patriotic thing to do. A lesson that other countries should remember; If America is willing to desecrate it's own people's beliefs, what makes them think we would think twice about besmirching theirs?
If carving the faces of four white men on a mountain wasn't good enough, there's Sturgis. A small town of modest means that sits at the foothills of the sacred Black hills, and for one week in August it becomes the Mecca for Harley riders everywhere. It's nine or ten days of debauchery and hedonism on a level that only Genghis Khan and the Vikings could fully appreciate. (I mean the football team, not the marauding Norwegians). I'm sure the few remaining natives in the area must be beating themselves up that they lost to these idiots.
The most curious stop is Deadwood. A small town made famous by the latest HBO series of the same name. It's a small town that would have otherwise disappeared like many old western mining towns if not for the fact that this particular town is where Wild Bill was shot and killed while playing poker. Why is he famous? Can you remember? Well, it gets better. He's buried here and lying next to him is Calamity Jane. Remember why she's famous? No? Well, she's a drunk with a big mouth whose shameless stories of self-promotion were so bold and daring that she is famous to this day for reasons that NO ONE can remember. She was that good at it. I know a lot of drunks who talk big shit. HELL, I talk big shit when I'm drunk, but I doubt that I'll be famous a hundred year after my death for those campy little tales. Calamity Jane was just a big, loud drunk woman that lives on in our memory because she had a cool name.
Traditionally the trail between the Perch and KC takes two full, long days of driving. With a serious deviation comes an extra traveling day (hence the non-posting for so many days in a row) and that means more mental distress which is always a good frame of mind to have when looking at road side attractions.
Just past the South Dakota border lies Wyoming and that great big weird looking rock that was made famous by the film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Up close it's not as stellar as the movie made it look. I was able to walk all the way around it in thirty minutes which means that either I'm the God of hiking or Richard Dreyfuss is a slug. [SPOILER] They took out the runway where the space ship landed so don't ask to see it. I was here before when I was a child and the tale of how this rock came to look this way centered around an Indian legend where a bear clawed at the sides trying to kill some Indian children. I held on to that belief until I came back twenty-five years later still believing that only to have my dreams dashed by a park ranger explaining that the rock was just a volcano without sides.... .... .... ..... .... I was crushed. I liked the bear story better.
The final road side attraction is Custer's Last Stand just across the border in Montana. It was closed by the time I arrived, but the huge headstone that marks the spot where Custer fell on the battlefield was still visible from the locked gate. It's well marked and stands out because it's larger than the rest of the headstones and it has a huge bronze plaque on it that reflects the setting sun with impressive strength. It was almost like Custer's famous ego was shining through from beyond the grave.
The battlefield sits in the middle of an Indian reservation and had their forefathers known that their efforts would become such a famous road side attraction I'm sure they would have slaughtered Custer closer to the highway.
They're designed as a cash grab that appeal to our morbid curiosity but often they act as a modest goal that brings a decent mental break from a rather monotonous trip. One can only look at endless fields of corn for so long before they need to see some dead cowboys. So as much as you might despise their presence and their obvious offensiveness to good taste, you can still appreciate what they've done to get you home.
Their Ragu may be too spicy, but at least you aren't eating bland, flavorless noodles.
