https://www.angelfire.com/art/ontheroad/index.html
coolartgirl@hotmail.com
2.24.03 Day One
Sunday I was madly packing away when I realized I left my black fringe hat at the Kimball’s. Nice for me, they brought it over, but all of the chitchat left me undone. Dee and I ended up napping for 3 hours, finally taking off at 3 a.m. in a fresh layer of snow. It was a slow go but we occasionally slipped in behind a plow, which made driving a bit easier.
It was very quiet. All of the houses were dark. Shhhhhh. Everyone is asleep. Don’t want to wake them up. Six or so houses were still celebrating Christmas, festooned with twinkle lights sparkling and gyrating in the darkness. I thought farm folks had to be up at like 4 a.m. to milk the cows, maybe not.
We wanted food. Not one restaurant was open, save Jay-Mor’s Eat More in Fort Atkinson. Dee wouldn’t stop. No eight-stool diners for him. Instead we finally ate chicken-fried steaks and eggs at Denny’s in Madison, where 6 retired smokin’ monkeys must have been chain smoking for at least an hour. Peeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeew!
Just north of Tomah we veered onto I-90 west and guess what was there? Fort McCoy! On the nightly news you hear about the reservists from Illinois being sent there. They never mentioned where in Wisconsin Fort McCoy was located. Well, here it is.
Right about now is when the muffler on the pick-up fell off. Well, I guess it didn’t fall off; it got a hole or something. Now we growl like those souped up gotta-race-ya trucks do. Arrgh!
Take a ten-minute look at this part of Minnesota, and if you are tired, just go to sleep. You won’t miss anything because the landscape just repeats itself over and over for hundreds of miles. It is one vast area of farmland and a small stand of trees, a house, a barn, a silo, and some other out buildings and that’s it. Your eye can stretch as far as it can see and the vista, long and low, remains the same.
Then right at the border…wake up! Oh the terrain changes swiftly, carrying you across the cobalt blue Black River, which is mostly frozen this time of year, so it is still and white. Frozen water is stuck to the dramatic rock out-croppings, and the highway twists and turns, and rises upward more and more until you are on top of the world looking down into amazing gorgeous valleys, all rounded and knotted together.
An even bigger change happens in the landscape once you enter South Dakota…billboards…lots of them. And they are advertising the most fantastic roadside attractions all located at the west end of the state, hundreds of miles away.
There is also another offical-looking sign right as you enter the state. It says...Animal Rights People Not Wanted In South Dakota. We Make Our Living From Animal Products.
What is here? Well, nothing. It looks like a scene out of Lawrence of Arabia, sand dunes carved into sculptural shapes by the wind. This time of year a light cover of snow blankets them. I would guess the cash crop to be wheat. It would look beautiful swaying in the breeze with a big blue sky filled with puffy white clouds.
There is a lot of sky out here and I just realized why my landscape paintings aren’t very successful. I paint the sky backwards. The sky is light at the horizon then grows darker and darker up into the stratosphere. Aha!
We had planned to stop in Mitchell for lunch at The Corn Palace. We did, sort of. The Corn Palace is all golden styled with minarets looking like something from Russia. The walls are done in patterns using grains, kinda like a mosaic. It is redone annually. Worth a look if you are in the area. Just don’t plan to have lunch there. It is a theater.
As we move farther west the landscape starts to grow into hills, the famous Badlands. The Interstate is snow covered and when a semi passes it pelts our truck, loudly. What is that? Too big to be salt.
The most beautiful sunset swathes the hills in pink and blue and orange. The city lights from Rapid City are just ahead, sparkling like an oasis. It is around 6:30. I beg Dee, please can we go to MT. Rushmore? He says, “Your driving, go where you want.”
We swooped down a scenic road winding and twisting and squeezing through little tunnels. When we exited the last tunnel, there it was drenched in sunlight…Mount Rushmore. It was nearly a religious experience with George Washington heading up the crowd, Thomas Jefferson next, and Teddy Roosevelt tucked behind so all three were knocking their heading together. Abraham Lincoln is off by his independent self. They are so amazing and awesome in the true sense of the words. How in the world did Borglum, the sculptor, spend 14 years passionately focused on carving the presidents out of sheer rock?
According to the official flyer, Borglum had a troubled childhood which was tempered by his art. He designed art in D.C. and he did the flickering flame on the Statue of Liberty torch. He was also active politically on the international and national levels throughout his life. The actual carving of the heads took 6 1/2 years. Borglum died in 1941. His son Lincoln completed the monument.
We zipped back to Rapid City on the big blacktop, grabbed a room at E-lodge, and went over to Minerva’s for dinner.
Minerva’s is great. I would recommend it to anyone. It’s civilized, upscale, woody, and the food tastes great. I had wood-grilled shrimp, and a cup of buffalo stew; Dee went for the elk burger. And what a burger, excellent tasting and I usually don’t even like meat.
I asked the waiter, J.T., about the road salt. “It’s not salt, it’s gravel. Did you crack your windshield yet?” Too funny. Like that makes sense. Instead of plowing the snow, we will leave it and throw gravel on it. They say salt is too destructive to vehicles. That’s not true. In Illinois we are genuine salt dogs and it doesn’t do anything to the cars. You just wash your car. And the cars back home are much more expensive and you rarely see a car with rust. I think that thinking is old hat, from when cars did rust. Anyway, we were glad that our windshield wasn’t damaged.
Back at the hotel Dee and I went hot tubbing. Oh yeah! And they had a pool with a 1000’ slide!
After we finished I went out to the reception area to mail off three postcards. I was talking to Joe who was manning the night desk. I asked what would be grown in the eastern part of the state. He said, “Most people don’t realize it but this is really a desert. We get less than 16’s of rainfall a year. Nothing grows out there.” So there it is…what I thought looked like desert was a desert after all. Who knew?
Word for the Day: Windswept
End Destination: Rapid City, SD
Total Miles: 865
P.S. As for dating out here...well there isn't anyone here. It could be a BIG problem. I think they probably go to the Corn Palace and to square dances and stuff like that. But it would be dating peeps you went to school with and that could get boring real fast. Good Luck!
