Iowa Martins in Albania

Friday, June 24, 2011

south dakota, wyoming





The clouds are awesome.


Bison--a mighty animal. Much more cool than its replacement--the cow.


Badlands


“Humph. Is that all there is?” Then a little more steam spit up. The man said again, “Well, that’s not much.” The next thing we knew, there was a river of water gushing up out of the ground.

Gram said, “Well that’s just like a whole waterfall shootin’ up instead of down.”

This is how Old Faithful was described in the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech—a book that we had finished listening to earlier in the day on our way to Yellowstone. Although our boys are never afraid to show their excitement, they were wildly enthusiastic about Old Faithful—particularly after hearing the description in the book. Even more thrilling, it was Maxim’s birthday. I cannot deny that they are members of modern society, though, because they were at least as excited to have Maxim’s birthday dinner at McDonald’s.

The book has a character that is traveling from Ohio to Lewiston, ID. They travel some of the same roads that we were on. At one point, the person reading the story says, “We went into the Badlands” at the exact moment when we passed a sign that read, “Entering Badlands National Park.”

Another character in the book talks about how it seems that they smashed all of South Dakota flat except for the Badlands where the craggy, soft, sticky, rubbery hills and valleys simply appear out of nowhere. Maura had made nearly the exact same observation about 2 hours earlier.

As we pulled into the Badlands Park, we asked about a pass or something for several parks because we are planning to see several on this trip. Rather than pay $15 to enter Badlands, we bought an $80 yearly pass. We’ve already used it for Devil’s Tower, and for Yellowstone ($45)—and we are planning to visit Olympic NP, Crater Lake NP, and Redwood NP. We may be able to see Rocky Mountain NP, too. We are feeling quite the bargain shoppers.

We left Panora on Tuesday—our first stop was the Guthrie County courthouse to buy the registration for the car. I had called the day before to learn the hours and where exactly to go, etc. The woman on the phone said our account had a stop on it from the Iowa Department of Revenue saying that we owed $4643. About two weeks ago, I when talked to the IDR, they told me that I had a zero balance. So I called them again after I talked to the Guthrie County people. Again I was told of the zero balance.

“Oh, we’ll get that taken care of right away.”

On Tuesday, it had NOT been taken care of, I called again. After waiting on the phone for ages (I was lucky because I had taken my prepaid phone balance down to 61 cents), a woman came on and she “watched him push the button” as they cleared our name.

We drove on to Hinton where we had a meeting with our tax man, who runs an impressive operation from his home. The boys brought in coloring books and cars. They kept themselves entertained extremely well.

We were drove through Le Mars—the ice cream capital of the nation—and ate a buffet at Pizza Ranch. As we ate, it became exceedingly clear to us why the US has a problem with obesity. The greasy pizza, huge fountain drinks of sugary pop, and the all-you-can-eat nature of the meal showed clearly on the waistlines of the patrons. It’s true, we ate there, AND we ate at McDonald’s. It just shows that once we are here in this country, the bad habits are difficult to avoid.

We drove all night Tuesday night, sleeping in the car. At one point, I woke up to find us sitting in a massive parking lot that was about one-quarter full. Everyone else was asleep, so I got out to go to use the rest stop facilities. As I approached the enormous building, I couldn’t help but think that the rest stops had certainly been upgraded since we had driven across country in the past. I wasn’t sure if I should try to go in because there were two uniformed guards in starched white uniforms with walkie-talkies or sticks or guns handing from their belts. I tentatively shoved the sparkling, two-ton door. The guards did not even look at me as I walked by and saw a football field-sized room of slot machines. There were dozens of other uniforms standing around. I walked by the desk of a hotel reception area. I wasn’t sure if they wanted me to come in just to use the toilet, but no one even looked at me.

I could walk right up and look over the back of a Black Jack dealer. Everyone at the table had 20 except for one guy who went over 21. Dealer turned over a 9 and an 8. He said, “Ok, that’s 16. Oh, wait, 15.”

All the men at the table said, “That’s 17!”

The dealer blushed; he was obviously a dealer-in-training. I don’t blame him for making a mistake. A minder right near him (who must have been his instructor) said, “Ok, now you pay everyone at the table.”

There was a craps table that I couldn’t figure out at all. Random people seemed to be putting chips down and taking them off at unspecific intervals. Then someone would throw a couple dice seemingly whenever he felt like it.

As I took Maura’s place behind the wheel, she asked, “What IS this place? As I was driving, these lights rose up out of the corn fields and there was a lake of concrete. It doesn’t say anywhere that it is a casino.” As we pulled out, on the other side of the road, we saw sleepy farm yard. We both remarked how terrible it would be to have a nice quiet piece of property out in the country and then they build this casino that gives of a nuclear power plant worth of light pollution 24 hours a day.

On Wednesday night, after the Badlands, Mr. Rushmore, and Wall, SD, we stopped in Ten Sleep, WY. I wanted to say there because it was getting late and if we went on to the next large town, it would be too dark to ride bikes. We have the boys’ bikes on the back of the van—Oskar is finally eager to ride, ride, ride. I’m not sure how much of RAGBRAI he will be able to do this year. I may be pulling him in the trailer.

Ten Sleep is a town of 341 people—99% of whom work in the tourist industry. The name is a measure of distance. It took ten sleeps to go from one camp to Ten Sleep and 10 more sleeps to go from Ten Sleep to the other camp.

In the morning, I went for an early run and Maura went for a run later. The boys rode around on the empty streets to see the river—all rivers we have seen are brimming with melted snow and rainwater. Yellowstone have more snow in it than people here can remember. On our way to Y-stone, the road followed a river that was bursting. The whitewater was crashing down moving like a bolt of lightning.

We are staying in Butte, MT right now. We will be traveling to Seattle today.

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