MY 50-STATE STRATEGY

LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES: A feral donkey I encountered in Custer State Park in South Dakota sniffs the trailer’s rear bumper – one never-say-die stubborn old jackass to another.
 Saw many big-horn sheep here - finally!

CUCKOO FOR CRAZY HORSE: This monument to the ledgendary American Indian warrior Crazy Horse is being blasted up almost every day out of Black Hills granite and it dwarfs Mt. Rushmore. The Crazy Horse Memorial is the lifetime work, a multi-generational project, of the family of sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, a Boston native and self-taught artist and engineer, who began this project in 1949 and which his wife and seven of their 10 children continue today, 23 years after his death. Completely financed by donations, when it is finished (in about 10,000 years) it will feature Crazy Horse charging on a stallion his left arm pointing forward and
will be 563 feet high and 641 feet long.

A GEM? NOT SO MUCH! Deadwood, S.D., currently the subject of the HBO blockbuster serial of the same name, is the worst kind of tourist trap – you know, the kind with casinos. There is at least one slot machine in every ice cream parlor, drug store or trinket shop in this burg, never mind the big rooms. The Gem, a true-life bucket of blood back in the 1870s as well as on the TV show, has morphed into “the best restaurant in town” according to one local wag. However, it is currently under reconstruction, so I could not sample its fare. One thing for sure not up to snuff in the HBO recreation is its “boneyard.” On the show, it is shown as close to, even overlooking, “The Badlands,” the area in town where legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok was murdered, shot in the back, and also where all the bars and dens of iniquity, like The Gem, were located. But in reality the cemetery, final resting place for Hickok as well as his sidekick, Calamity Jane, is quite a hike away and it is all almost straight uphill. Deadwood? One heck of a TV show! The town? Today? Nah …

THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT: That's Devils Tower, jutting up 865 feet out of a hill in northeast Wyoming, just as night falls. The area I drove through before seeing this was incredible. Lush rolling hills with hundreds, yes hundreds, of deer and antelope frolicking in the fields, sun sinking through the blue sky in the west while to the east, some rainbows were forming between the intermittent lightning flashes. I was thinking, here I am, a place of legend, “God’s Green Earth!” It was wonderful, what I had been looking for. Then I drove down into a valley, turned a corner
 and ran smack dab into Satan's Statue…

HAUNTING HILLS: These stone memorials dot the landscape all over Little Big Horn in southeastern Montana, site of Custer’s Last Stand. A very busy place, with plenty to see: a great museum, well-marked trails and grounds around the hills and a first-rate lecture and demonstration put on by the Park Service. I was clued in on this place by my pal Ol' 56. He said if I was in the neighborhood, I'd be a fool to miss it. He was right. Well worth the trip up there!

RISING AND FALLING: A rainbow begins to form over Shell Falls up high in the mountains of the Big Horn National Forest in north-central Wyoming. The weather was bad, but the scenery was great. The place was full of wildlife and is also
 a dream for geologists, as some of the granite here, well marked I may add, dates back millions and millions of years.

These last two, as I said, were forgotten in the last batch of pictures. But I think they are germane to my little narrative,
 so forgive me as I insert them here out of order.
A HORSE OF THE SAME COLOR: This is the inside of “Rocinante (named after Don Quixote's horse),” the cabin that author John Steinbeck had built atop a pickup for him to take on his cross-country journey in 1960, chronicled in his best-seller “Travels with Charley. In Search of America". I read the book, gifted to me by Ol' 56 in Denver, while on this trip and I viewed this wagon at the Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California and was literally startled, as its inside is the spitting image of the trailer I am pulling across country, at least before I roughly customized it to fit my needs. No kidding, the wood’s the same, the appliances are a match, the space is identical, but his has a rear door, while mine has a side portal. Both were built in the same era, the 1960s, but Steinbeck, a Pulitzer winner and Nobel Prize recipient for literature, called up the CEO of an automobile giant to have his cabin custom-built while I went to Home Depot to customize mine. My cousin, Butter (can’t make up that nickname), called me up out of the blue last summer and offered me this trailer for my very own, for which I am eternally grateful,  and I would not
 trade my unit for his “Rocinante” in a million years.
HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN: Just a sample of what the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur looks like. You can see the ribbon of the road on the ridge above the ocean.

TIME GROWS SHORT NOW …

… And these are big, big states in the Northwest and Great Plains, requiring long driving hours but also with much to see. There are few areas here with cell service strong enough to uplink posts with photos to you and so when I find such an area I believe the blog is best served now if I show you some photos with brief captions. I promise to fill in the details and post a lot more photos as soon as time and territory allow.
I’m presently in the heart of the Black Hills in South Dakota, with just a few more destinations (Badlands NP in South Dakota and Teddy Roosevelt NP in North Dakota along with a couple of small stops along the way) before I shoot through Minnesota and Wisconsin, then under Lake Superior, but across the top of Lakes Huron and Ontario, into Canada and finally across the border again and down into the White Mountains of New Hampshire for my family's annual reunion sometime in the next 7-10 days. This camping reunion began before I was born and is still going strong, four generations later.
I will try to post some photos from these stops and an updated map soon as possible.