The Badlands are NOT bad!

Badlands Panorama

The Badlands of South Dakota

We stayed with the Nobles for two days, went to the House on the Rock, had dinner one night at the Grumpy Troll—very good—and played bridge. All in all a very nice visit.

From Chicago we headed to Rapid City SD via Sioux Falls SD to visit our 49^th state and to see Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands. This is a drive, drive, drive day and a half, some 900 miles, then we’ll have a day and a half to sightsee around this southwestern corner of South Dakota. But at least on a drive, drive, drive day, it’s nice to be back in the 75mph area of the country!

Some of my random thoughts while driving 900+ miles: Why, in Martin County, Minnesota, do they have signs that say, “Welcome to Martin County, Sentenced to Serve.”? There are National Parks, National Monuments, National Forests, even National Corridors and National Scenic Rivers, and as I learned, National Memorials (Mt. Rushmore), but what on earth is a National Place?

Randy at the same spot in the badlands

I’ve started using Gasbuddy.com to find good fuel prices. I was prompted to do this by the first station we stopped at in Indiana. We were trapped on a toll road and stopped at one of the fuel centers they have on the tollway: $4.29! We couldn’t believe it because in Ohio, just a few miles previous, it was $3.79. In the Chicago area it was $4.09. And here in Rapid City there is a station selling gas for $3.33. Meanwhile the oil companies are making obscene profits. Enough. The whole topic depresses me.

Wall Drug

Right on our way to Rapid City is the famous Wall drugstore—well, I thought it was famous, it has billboards and signs literally all over the country and the world, but Randy had never heard of it. So of course we stopped and had a dreadful lunch there. And wandered around the huge store for a bit.

Corn Palace---Can you get any cornier?

Close up of the Corn Palace

Our next bit of tourist schlock was the Corn Palace, in existence since something like 1898. Every year they (the townspeople and anybody else who wants to put a hand in) decorate the entire façade of the building with corn husks, corn cobs, corn tassels, and any other part of a corn plant they want to use. Every year is a different theme; this year apparently is thanking the military.

We arrived in Rapid City at lunchtime, enough time—and in the only great weather we would have—to drive the scenic route south through Custer State Park, ending up at Mt. Rushmore National Memorial for the evening “Lighting of the Presidents” ceremony at 9pm. 

Mama Buff & Baby Buff

Climber

 

We did see wildlife on the Needles Scenic Drive and the, duh, Wildlife Scenic Route. No record breakers, but we saw wild turkey, pronghorn (not, as the AAA guidebook said, “pronghorn ANTELOPE”), deer, and buffalo as well as a few baby buffs. Buffalo (bison—or buffalo—are Bison bison and there is a subspecies of Bison bison bison) are not difficult to see, they are “cultivated” and once a year they are rounded up and “culled” from 1500 to 950. There is a huge auction in the fall and guidebooks tell us that “many” go to parks. Given the number of restaurants who offer “buffalo” burgers and steaks, I doubt that many go to parks. But buffalo burgers surely do taste good.

Mt. Rushmore is an impressive sight and our first view of the presidents was framed by a tunnel we were driving through. I wish there were a term other than “tunnel” to better describe what we drove through: the road sign warned that it was 8’4” wide and 11’ high. That is one tight fit for an SUV!

The lighting of the Presidents

We arrived at Mt. Rushmore about 7pm and wandered around for a bit, took the Walk of the Presidents (which gets you pretty close to the carvings on the mountain), ate dinner, then listened and watched the Lighting of the Presidents at 9. It seemed more like listening to a sermon in church, but it was still interesting. The ranger exhorted us to drive home carefully, asked us each to turn to our neighbor and thank him for coming, and then read some completely unintelligible poems having something to do with his life having become a train wreck. Sounds more like a church than a National Park—oops, National Memorial— to me.

Aside from the magnificence of the sculptures, the entrance buildings to the Memorial are also spectacular. I never did find out when the structures were built (they are obviously new), but it is an awe-inspiring welcome to Mt. Rushmore. But I could have done without the sermon.

Our second day was not as great weather-wise, but we made the best of it. We saw the “amazing” Thunderhead Underground Waterfall. $14 (cash only, but she said she wouldn’t charge us tax) for a 600 foot walk into a cave (actually an old gold mine) at the back of which was a 30 foot waterfall. It must be nice to have an all cash business.

Moving right along we went to Lead (LEED), SD and looked into a gold mining pit that is about ½ mile wide and 1500 feet deep. The Homestake mine in Lead was worked from the late 19^th century until (conflicting information) 1998 or 2002. I think they said it was the richest find of gold ever. Hard to believe that such a rich mine would stop, what with the price of gold and their ability to extract 98% of the gold in the ore. We even watched a little video about the company—founded by George Hearst, father of William Randolph, grandfather of Patty of Symbionese Liberation Army fame. If you didn’t live in San Francisco in the 70s you probably never even heard of Patty Hearst. Of the mining companies I’ve heard of, it seems pretty benevolent. But it did tear up the landscape pretty badly and hasn’t seemed to do much about returning any of it to its natural form. However, the people of Lead seem to have a pretty good impression of Homestake Mining Company.

There are climbers on the Tower!

I told you there were climbers!

From SD we headed to Wyoming and Devil’s Tower (from Close Encounters of the Third Kind fame). The weather there was still pretty good so we took a 1.3 mile walk around the base.

What a wonderful couple of days in the Black Hills of South Dakota! I had no idea how beautiful the scenery is in this corner of South Dakota.

You all will probably think we’re nuts, but we have decided to extend our trip a bit and go visit our daughter and her husband in Roseville, CA, about 1200 miles west from Rapid City. And we’re going north first to a National Park I never even heard of, Theodore Roosevelt NP in North Dakota (our 50^th state). Then on to Billings, through Yellowstone National Park, Jackson Hole (I hope the weather cooperates!), then Reno and on to Roseville for our son-in-law’s birthday (I don’t want to ask how old he is, it would just make ME feel old!).

(Postscript a couple of days later: the weather was rainy and thunderstorm-y as we left SD, but we had no idea how bad it would get where we had just been. The news said there were tornadoes and nasty thunderstorms in the whole Midwestern area where we had just been driving—IL, MN, WI, IA, ND, SD—in the days just after we left. We sure lucked out in missing most of that!)

50 years is a long time!

Lobsters for dinner

One of the things we did with Sherry and Joe during our stay with them in Portland was to go for a hike along the coast, ending up at the Black Point Inn for a lovely, albeit expensive, lunch. But it wasn’t that easy. We drove to where Joe thought we could park, but we couldn’t. So Randy and I and Sherry got out to do the hike—well, it was really more of a stroll—while Joe would go to the other end of the trail, park, walk in, and meet us. Oh, how the best plans can be bollixed up! First of all, Sherry didn’t really know the path so at every turn she wasn’t exactly sure where to go. Not that it was all that difficult; after all we had the Atlantic Ocean on our right!

Sherry texting while hiking

Then we kept losing Sherry because she had to answer her phone or send text messages and she would kind of drop back. Finally she called Joe to see where he was relative to us. Well, that wasn’t much good because she didn’t know where WE were. We sat down to rest after a mile or so (by my not so accurate pedometer) and she texted and texted and texted. By now we could see Joe waaayyy, waaayyy back. Eventually we all got together and with the help of some passersby, found the Black Point Inn.

Also, while we were in the Portland area, we had to go to L.L.Bean heaven, the main store. We did actually have a reason to go there, we had lost yet another item, our Gorillapod. That has been so handy on occasion that we thought it necessary to replace it. The new one of course has lots of bells and whistles. Well, OK, two new things: a quick release and a level.

After four beautiful weather days in Portland, we headed off to Hartford for Randy’s 50^th reunion. Our hotel was in beautiful downtown Hartford and we got an upgrade to a better room so that was kind of nice, especially since we were going to be there for three days.

I didn’t really expect to have a good time, since I didn’t know anybody in Randy’s class other than a couple of guys I hadn’t seen in 50 years, but I ended up having a really nice time. We had signed up for a lot of meals at the college and a couple of activities so we had little time to doing anything else while we were in Hartford. Except that I really wanted to go and see the Institute of Living, the “insane asylum” where Randy and I met. Those who don’t know the story will have to figure out which of us was the inmate. We found it but it was not recognizable to either of us—after all, it had been some 52 years since we had been there.

The only truly memorable function we attended was the dinner on the quad. We had ordered lobster as our entrees (that was before we pigged out twice in Maine on lobster; there is only so much lobster I can eat!) but they allowed us to trade our lobster tickets for steak tickets. The memorable part, however, was that I lost my purse. We both spent a sleepless night worrying, called a staff person we knew to check security (it had not been turned in), went to a meeting at the college hoping that someone had found it and would bring it to the meeting. Hurrah, that was indeed the case. Dhuanne Tansil, one of the wives we had met, found it and hoped she’d see us at the meeting or the lunch later. I had no idea how traumatized I would be by losing my purse—and I didn’t even have much in it, just one credit card, my license, and a small amount of money. Needless to say, I am eternally grateful to Dhuanne!

The Class of '61 donates $25 million to their alma mater

Everything after that was anticlimactic! We had a great time (in spite of the rain on the day of the “parade of classes), and it was fun being part of a 50^th reunion. Randy’s class was the darling of the campus for three days and after they unveiled their class gift—$25 million!—they were especially adored, particularly by the president of Trinity, Jimmy Jones. Yes, that’s what he likes to be called, Jimmy.

Cooperstown, Baseball Hall of Fame

After Hartford, we headed for Chicago by way of Cooperstown, NY. For those who happen not to be great baseball fans—is that even possible?—Cooperstown is the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and it is Mecca for any red-blooded American baseball nut. Cooperstown’s population is listed at 2032 in the AAA book but the popularity of the BHOF makes it seem much bigger. It’s charming if you can look past the seemingly infinite number of baseball-themed stores lining the main (and pretty much, only) street. Baseball overwhelms the fact that James Fenimore Cooper’s father founded the town. Such an emphasis on baseball also means, I guess, that it’s OK to charge whatever price you think you can get away with. We had a hotdog each and a glass of water (tap water, not that bottled stuff) in a cute little restaurant; the bill for lunch was $25 (including tax and tip). $25!!! for 2 hotdogs. I still can’t believe we did that.

Anyway, the museum was nice. I told Randy that I thought 80% of the visitors would be male and he didn’t believe me—doesn’t he ever learn? One nice touch was that they supplied free wireless internet access so I could use my iTouch to look up things to do with baseball. That seems to be a coming trend in various places (except a lot of timeshares). I expect that within a few years, not having wireless internet access will be a rare exception pretty much everywhere. Even timeshares.

Our next stop on the way to our friends, the Nobles, was the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY. Corning is in the extreme south central part of New York. I had always thought Corning was in “upstate New York.” Randy assures me that anyplace outside of New York City is “upstate.” So south-central New York is upstate New York.

Glass blowers at work

Glassblower using a torch

Another of my favorite pieces

One of my favorite pieces

The Corning Museum of Glass is a fabulous combination of a museum of static art, a museum of kinetic art, and a museum of hands-on creativity and I wish we had had more time to spend there! We did get to see three shows: glassblowing using a big furnace, glassblowing using a torch, and glass breaking; and a tour. All were fascinating. We’ve watched glass blowing demonstrations many times before, but never before have we had a narration so that really added a dimension to the show. Unfortunately we did not have time to try to make our own glass product, one of the other options available to the visitor.

It also had the largest museum store I have ever seen! Including a store inside the store devoted solely to Steuben glass. Wish I could afford some of it. The most expensive item Steuben makes is a bowl decorated with 12 gazelles. If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. But anyway, it is $65,000.

B52s and Portland

I was sorry to see the graffitti

Part of the memorial

While we were at Moosehead Lake, on one of the Chamber of Commerce days, we took a short—very short—hike to the site of a B52 crash into Elephant Peak. It was a training flight on January 24, 1963. The vertical stabilizer broke off and the plane crashed ten seconds later. There was a crew of six and three observers on board, of whom two survived. The captain parachuted successfully, landing with a broken foot; the navigator is the only person to survive an ejection without the parachute opening; he landed in the snow upright in his ejection seat. They spent a night on the mountain in five feet of snow with temperatures reaching -30° before rescuers could get to them. The site has been preserved as a tribute to the victims and each January there is a memorial service for them at that site. Possibly only 5% of the airplane remains in the area but it is a very moving experience to see those tortured pieces of metal scattered around the area. Several of the landing gear with the tires still intact even now survive, 57 years later.

Randy and part of a B52 wing

B52 debris

After this we needed sustenance so we ate at the Black Frog, a restaurant with the most creative menu I’ve ever seen. Check it out here, but a few samples are warnings such as, “When dining in the Moosehead Lake region, never assume it’s a raisin.” And under “Salad Schmallad,” “Cook's Salad: If we call it a chef's salad, he'll want more money.” They also offer pizza with just cheese for those of us “with acid reflux disease.” And my favorite, their “Top Ten Answers To The Most Frequently Asked Questions:”

1. A deer becomes a moose at age 4.
2. Yes, we are in favor of Plum Creek's proposal...you wanna fight about it?
3. The weekend after Labor Day.
4. 38 below zero with a 77 degree below wind chill.
5. 32 miles long, 300 islands and 518 miles of shoreline and 90,000 acres.
6. No.
7. That's not how you pronounce Kokadjo.
8. The second largest fresh water lake totally within the confines of one state east of the Mississippi.
9.We never close. The bar is open Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for the lonely guys whose wives or girlfriends have thrown them out.
10.Yes, you can sit on the barge in the off season but we won’t be serving you there.

So after enjoying all that Greenville and Moosehead Lake have to offer (which is, not much) we headed to Portland to visit Randy’s cousin, Sherry. But we detoured to Acadia National Park. It was a pretty nice day and we wanted to see what it was like in Bar Harbor and Acadia NP. We didn’t have time to do much other than drive the loop drive in the NP and have lunch with a seagull on Cadillac Mountain. Then a long tedious drive to Portland.

Panorama from the top of the Observatory

Randy & Sherry ordering lobster rolls

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We spent four nights in the Portland area doing touristy things like going to the most photographed lighthouse in North America (Portland Headlight in Cape Elizabeth); having the most wonderful bagels anywhere (The Scratch Bakery in South Portland, just a couple of blocks from Sherry & Joe’s home); spending the morning at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden (which only opened in 2007); and of course, having fresh Maine lobster.

A beautiful rhodedendron

Rhodedendrons are in beautiful bloom!

Another rhodedendron

And another beautiful rhodendron

And a friendly animal

Sailboats off Sherry & Joe's home

The most photographed lighthouse

Portland Observatory

Lunch with a seagull on Cadillac Mountain

Sherry & Joe's house with the overhanging rock below

Randy on an overhanging rock below Sherry's house

We also climbed the Portland Observatory, the only remaining historic maritime signal tower in the United States, used before the advent of phones to alert people not only that a ship was arriving at the port but even which ship it was (there was a catalog of the ships’ flags kept at hand for the observers).