Go West, Young Matthew!

Three round-trip plane tickets to Rapid City. One rental car, 2,600 miles on the road, 580 pictures, sixty sketches, seventeen days, eleven museums, eight visitors centers, six National Park sites, five states, four horses, three state parks, two college campus tours.

And three people. These are their stories.

Saturday, August 14, 2010.  Rapid City, South Dakota.

The flight in from DC the night before had two delays.  When you have a connecting flight, the delay on each sort of works okay.  A delay in the first but not the second usually means you miss the second.

We stayed at the La Quinta out on the edge of town.  With a big motorcycle rally in nearby Sturgis, the motel was overrun with bikers.

The motel is comfortable enough with a complimentary breakfast, but it also shares the building with the Watiki Indoor Water Park.  Wow!  Fast slides and a lazy "river" for a tube ride.  One water slide drops you out into a large bowl about twenty feet in the air; you swirl around it three times; and then you drop like a stone into the "drain."

If your first thought was an image of a giant sink, that says something about your personality.  If your first image was a toilet bowl, that says something else.

The combination of the bikers and the lobby music put me into quite a cinematic moment.  Just as I was heading out to meet Cathie and Matthew in the car, "Freebird" started playing in the lobby.  The automatic doors slid open, I walked out into the parking lot.  Dozens of leather-clad bikers were on my left and my right, with their engines revving.  I strode straight through this iconic scene of Road Freedom.

Except I wasn't Dennis Hopper from Easy Rider.  I was a balding, hunched dumpling of a man carrying two cups of stryofoam coffee out to our rented Nissan.  Even the fact that our Nissan was a "Rogue" doesn't help much.

After checking out, we headed off to Mount Rushmore.  Back when I was Matthew's age, I can remember my father trying to make the long family car rides from Connecticut to Florida seem more bearable.  One time, he announced as we left Connecticut that the first person to spot a palm tree would win a dollar.

Okay, that was when a dollar could still buy you something.  But I cannot help but think that my father overestimated the attention span of his six children.

In any case, we left Connecticut before the sun was up and stopped at a pancake house in New Jersey for breakfast.  My brother Larry spotted a palm tree in a small pot next to the cash register.  He claimed the dollar.  Game over.

So we decided to add some excitement to our car drives out West by designating a sight to be spotted first each day, with the prize being that the winner could claim a free "stop" anytime during the trip.  If we were driving by a wax museum, for example, you can play your "card," and force the other two of us to walk through a wax museum.

Saturday's "Who will spot it first?" was easy.  The presidential faces on Mount Rushmore, of course.  And our lucky winner was Cathie.  She caught a glimpse about two miles before the entrance to the park.

The Mount Rushmore National Monument is such an icon of American sightseeing, that you cannot help but feel a little deja vu among arrival.  You know you have never been there, but those darned presidential faces look familiar!

We walked the loop from the main viewing area down toward the base of the mountain.  One neat stop is the artist studio where Gutzon Borglum built his scale models and directed the work on the mountain.  As we walked around, I kept trying to take a picture of Matthew, with the four famous faces in the background, where Matthew's face would look about the same size.

And here is where the controversy starts.  Cathie is pretty sure that the large slab of mountain immediately to the right of Lincoln looks very much like a sculpture of George W. Bush.  He is a man of simple features, after all.  I stared at the spot, but could not see it.  On the other hand, I always look at those "magic eye" pictures and see diddly.

We lunched at the visitors cafe, enjoying Buffalo Stew and presidential sodas.  Matthew went ahead and had the Ronald Reagan soda, despite his political differences with the former president.  There's an old expression: "Give an Irishman a horse and he'll vote Tory."  Well, give Matthew a root beer and he'll drink Republican.

(Historical footnote: I do not think the English used to say that about Irishmen, horses, and Tories.  I think this was a quote that William F. Buckley made up about the English and kept repeating it.)

Next up was the Crazy Horse Memorial.  Or monument-in-progress.  They've really only got the front of the head worked out.  Hey, it's the size of a mountain, so you cannot expect this to go quickly.

They do have a good visitors center and exhibits about Crazy Horse, the Lakota people, and the original sculptor on the project, Korczak Ziolkowski.  The parking fees and gift shop sales help support continued work on the sculpture.

We all had a better idea.  Why not let tourists pay to set off dynamite charges and get the rough cut of the sculpture done real quick?  Matthew thinks he'd probably be willing to pay two hundred bucks to blow up some mountain rock.

It was still not yet four in the afternoon when we moved on to the Jewel Cave National Monument.  All of our three sightseeing stops on this first day of the trip are in South Dakota, near Rapid City.

The "Amazing Ranger Candace" was our tour guide.  Great tour!  Jewel Cave is awesome.  You ride an elevator down about four hundred feet and the forty-five minute walk takes you another couple of hundred feet lower.  The crystals in the cave are spectacular.  A week into our trip, Matthew was still ranking Jewel Cave as his favorite spot.

All the neat formations in the cave have scientific names, but they also have nicknames given them by the spelunkers who first discover them.  Most of those nicknames are food-related: fried eggs, bacon, etc.  Spelunkers are typically hungry people.

We pressed on that night to Douglas, Wyoming - the site of the state fair.  Our arrival was too late for any fair fun that night, but we had already designated our next "Who will spot it first?" item: the state fair ferris wheel.  As we neared the motel parking lot, Matthew spotted the ferris wheel over at the fairgrounds!

The drive from South Dakota through Wyoming to Douglas did not offer much chance in scenery.  Dry grasslands, sporadic bales of hay, and few signs of animal life.

We invented a car ride game- "How far is it?"  You pick a landmark on the far horizon, which in Wyoming can be five or more miles away, and each person guesses how far away it is.  The car's odometer decides the winner.

One problem occurred when I picked a white speck on the horizon.  Matthew guessed 4.4 miles.  A half minute later, Cathie noticed that my "landmark" was moving towards us as much as we were moving towards it.  Turned out to be a large truck, which we passed at 2.2 miles.  Matthew had guessed the distance precisely.

But it was Cathie who reliably made distance guesses no more than a tenth of a mile off the mark.  "Oh, look at Ms. Google Earth over here," I thought as she won round after round.

Sunday, August 15.  Douglas, Wyoming.

The game plan for Sunday was simple, get out and enjoy the Wyoming State Fair all day.  Head off to our next motel reservation in Casper sometime around nightfall.

We had done very little advance research on the State Fair.  We did learn that the cattle dog trials were on for 9:30 AM that Sunday.  Our mistake was assuming that meant the whole fair would be in full swing from that point on.

It was easy to find a good seat at the cattle dog trials.  There were only about thirty spectators.  We took our our sketch pads and each did a sketch of the scene in the rodeo arena.  The dog handlers deserve credit for the skills of their dogs, no doubt.  Some use only whistles to give orders.  Others use only a few words, finishing with "That'll do."  But the dogs themselves really impress you.  They run hard and they really do keep the cows in line for some tight maneuvering in the corral.

After that impressive start to witnessing some cattle country savvy, there was.....nothing.  The fair did not really start off again until 5 PM.  We wandered about as exhibits and food booths slowly opened up.  We visited the Pioneer Memorial Museum next to the fairgrounds.  We learned about the WWII POW camp in Douglas, where German and Italian prisoners sat out the war.

By one o'clock we decided to blow town and get to Casper early.  It is only an hour or so from Douglas and the minor league team in Casper had a two o'clock ballgame.

So we attended the Casper Ghosts hosting the Orem Owlz.  And they turned out to the Casper Friendly Ghosts.  We arrived after the game had started, but the ticket window was closed and no one seemed much interested in getting any money from us for our seats behind home plate.  By the time the seventh inning rolled around, I dropped by the concessions to get some drinks.  The menu said hot dogs were three bucks, but I was told they were selling for a buck each.  I went back up and, indeed, Cathie and Matthew were interested in a dollar dog.

When I got back to the concessions under the stands, I was told that all the hot dogs were now up in the stands, being sold by the guy walking around.  I found him, and he had already knocked down the price to two for a dollar.

The Ghosts are the rookie league affiliate of  the Rockies.  (Todd Helton had done a rehab stint with the Ghosts earlier this season.)  They fell behind the Owlz by several runs, but closed the gap in the bottom of the ninth before falling short.

The game over, Matthew and about twenty kids ran the bases along with Hobart, the purple platypus mascot.  I know the team is the Ghosts, but who doesn't love a platypus?

All of which gave us plenty of time to use the pool and fitness room in the motel.  When we finally went out seeking dinner, we could only find Sanford's Pub and Grub in the downtown area.  The food itself was fine, but they served all three of us with the largest cutlery I have ever seen straddle a dinner plate.  Our forks and spoons were the size of serving ware.

Cathie ordered a red beer, the mountain-area beverage which is a mix of tomato juice and beer.  She was not particularly fond of it, but I tasted it and liked it.

Monday, August 16th.  Casper, Wyoming.

The day broke clear and warm.  We left after breakfast and drove mostly northward to Cody.  Our late morning stop was Thermopolis, a central spot for hot springs.  With our bathing suits handy, we paid ten bucks to frolic in the hot springs.  All the indoor pools there suffer from a heavy sulphur odor, a natural consequence of the hot springs themselves.  The outdoor pool had a ten-foot diving board.

Matthew walked right up to the diving board and made his first entry into the warm pool by flying through the air.  I was impressed enough to get out of the pool and take a high jump myself.

They have three water slides at the Star Plunge.  Two of them twist you through tubes and are easily the fastest water slides I have ever been on.  I only did them once and Cathie decided to just enjoy the spa pools.  Matthew was our speed demon on the slides.

We lunched at the Fountain Diner right in town.  Very friendly waitress and cook, with food to match. 

Our next port of call was Meeteetse, a small town with a very interesting museum.  It also has a chocolatier, where we sampled the sweets while the charming woman running the shop gave us some historical background.  The artist behind the sweets is Tim Kellogg, a former rodeo bronc rider who discovered he was really good at making amazing chocolates.

As Dave Barry often writes: I am not making this up.

We got to Cody a little before five o'clock and stopped at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.  It is really five museums under one roof - and they've done a great job with each.  We only had an hour on Monday before they closed, but entrance fees get you in for two days.

So we toured the natural history wing on Monday and took in the rest of the museum on Tuesday morning.  As we left on Tuesday, Matthew mentioned that he thought that Buffalo Bill, in the photographs on display in the museum really did look like a real cowboy!

I realized that sort of reversed things a little.  Buffalo Bill was such a clever showman that his image became what you expect a cowboy to look like.  So nowadays, when you see a lot of pictures of him like the three of us had done that day, you think: "Now that's a cowboy!  That's what I'm talkin' about."

On Monday night, we stopped by the Cody gun fight they reenact every night on the city streets.  I can remember being younger than Matthew and going up to the Lake George area with my family to an Old West theme park.  And they reenacted a gun fight or two.

Matthew enjoyed it, particularly when they stopped yapping and starting shooting blanks at each other.  Cathie endured it, not minding that her view was entirely obstructed.  I was intrigued by the idea that Matthew and I now had a comparable childhood memory, but I think the whole scene was badly scripted and could use some dramatic tension.

In the spirit of "When in Rome,...." Matthew started mentioning that we should be outlaws.

The motel offered a light dinner buffet (really just appetizers) and we took it in.  Most of our lodgings on this two-week trip offer breakfast buffets.  On the trip, we may have learned a lot about Buffalo Bill.  But our strategy was really "Buffet, low bill."

Then it was off to the Cody "Nitely" Rodeo, a summer tradition for many years.  Two hours of calf ropin', bronco bustin', bull ridin', horse racin', and the antics of rodeo clown Joey Hackett.  Matthew was quite enthusiastic about it, stomping his feet on the metal bleachers for each cowboy and cowgirl who entered the arena.  The youth division of bull ridin' included a six-year old boy who was tossed to the dirt pretty quickly.  (Note my Dave Barry quote above.)

And then, half way through the festivities, all the kids under the age of 12 were invited down to the arena dirt.  Matthew joined about sixty other kids as they chased very tame calves and tried to pull bandannas off their tails.

It wasn't the running of the bulls at Pamplona, but at that moment, Matthew had more in common with Ernest Hemingway than I ever will.

Tuesday, August 17th,  Cody, Wyoming.

After we had toured the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in the morning, we drove up Route 14, along the Shoshone River and into Yellowstone National Park.  The drive itself into the Park is spectacular.  We picnicked on the shore of Sylvan Lake, near the eastern edge of Yellowstone.

As we continued our drive, we turned a corner and a bison walked by our car.  Not something you see everyday back in Arlington, but none of us freaked out - too much.

We had pulled up to a full stop while we learned of the bison's intentions.  They were entirely honorable and we parted ways.  Later in the day, we drove through Hayden Valley and saw many bison, crossing the road and generally doing as they pleased.

When I ride a bike on a sidewalk around Arlington, I always defer to pedestrians.  The sidewalk is their domain, not a biker.  In Yellowstone, offroad or not, it's a bison's domain.

After the initial bison encounter, we reached the Pelican Creek parking area.  A short hike through the woods brought us out to a sandy beach on Lake Yellowstone.  A narrow spit of sand went out about twenty yards into the lake.  There was a narrow and shallow channel between the end of the spit and a long sand bar.

I doffed my shoes and waded through the channel to the sand bar. Matthew also got his shoes off and was wading the channel, while Cathie thought better of getting so far out into the lake.

But it all seemed fine as I walked around the sand bar.  I stepped over to the edge of the sand bar, in search of smoother sand, and suddenly plunged into the sand up to nearly my hip.

My inadvertent discovery of quicksand caused Cathie to frantically wave Matthew and myself back to shore.  I pulled myself out with a strange sucking sound and found some terra firma.

I got back okay.  Matthew and I dried off on the shore and we hiked back to the car.  None of us expected to find quicksand at Yellowstone, but you have it.

Next up was a stop at the Mud Volcanoes, a collection of hot pools and geysers.  Eerie colors and a sulphur smell greet you as you walk around a wooden boardwalk.

We drove on to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, a series of waterfalls and canyons along the Yellowstone River.  Our stops were at the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls.  At the lower, an outcropping is called "Inspiration Point."  All three of us pulled out our sketchbooks and found a shady spot to draw the Lower Falls in colored pencil.  The consensus was that Cathie had the best rock to sit on, but her sketch did turn out quite nicely.

As the afternoon was getting long in the tooth, we headed over to the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, a sprawling, yellow 1920's building on the shore of  the lake.  Now, the reality of the situation is that when they filmed "The Shining," the Stephen King movie where Jack Nicholson chases Shelley Duvall with an axe ("Honey, I'm home!") they used a hotel in Oregon for the exterior scenes.  But that night, as we walked around Lake Yellowstone Hotel, we were convinced that our lodging was actually the spot that Jack swung his horror movie axe.

To recap, so far that day we'd had a bison stroll by the car; Cathie was momentarily convinced that both Matthew and I were about to be swallowed by quicksand; and we thought we were spending in the night in the setting for "The Shining," sometimes called the scariest movie ever.

And despite all those reasons to freak out, we were all calm!  We did deadbolt the hotel room that night, I must admit.

We also spent a while sitting on the pier on Lake Yellowstone that night.  It was marvelous to see how many stars and galaxies you can see in a Wyoming sky. 

Wednesday, August 18th.  Lake Yellowstone, Wyoming.

Late start to the day.  While Cathie and Matthew were fit as fiddles, I had started into a massive head cold.  We enjoyed breakfast over at the Fountain Diner in the General Stores, checked out of "The Shining," and hit the road for Old Faithful.

Our first stop, though, was the Western Geyser Basin- site of Black Pool, the Abyss, and many other hot, bubbling spots.  Cathie and Matthew tagged along on a ranger talk, learning much about the geophysics of Yellowstone from Ranger Jess.  It's worth noting that Ranger Jess also has the talent of a stand-up comic, so the talk was as funny as it was educational.

We got to Old Faithful just in time to miss the midday show.  That set us up to see the next one in about ninety minutes.  So we lunched on bison meatloaf and trout.  Back outside, we had good seats for the 2:07 PM geyser show.  And indeed, Old Faithful was punctual.  The gushing water and steam were impressive, but somehow the regularity and predictability seem even more so.

Our lodging for the next two nights was the Anvil Inn in Jackson, so we made for the southern entrance/exit to Yellowstone.  Along the way, we stopped to look at an elk just south of Grant Village.  Matthew and I tried to make for a ridge above the elk for a closer view, but the park rangers called us back to the bridge with the other spectators.

Leaving Yellowstone, we were quickly in Grand Tetons National Park en route to Jackson.  We found a picnic spot on Jackson Lake, where we pulled out our sketchbooks and tried to draw a likeness of the mountains on the far shore.  After a stop at the Grand Teton visitors center, it was on to Jackson and our motel.

The Anvil Inn is an old fashioned motel, comfortable without any flashy amenities.  It's on the main street in Jackson, so you can walk over to the city square and see all the shops and restaurants along the wooden sidewalks.  They do offer a hot tub, outside by the main office.  Or at least, that offer stood for the first night.  Before our second night at the Anvil, the hot tub had mysteriously vanished.  Outlaws afoot?

Thursday, August 19th.  Jackson, Wyoming.

Somewhat slow start for us- perhaps reflecting the wear of the miles we had covered by car after flying to Rapid City.  More lay ahead of us.

Our first stop was the boat dock at Jenny Lake in the Tetons. The boats cross over to the other side of the lake, where the Inspiration Point and Cascade trailheads meet up. Our gutsy move was just buying a one-way ticket. We planned to boat over, hike up to Inspiration Point, and then hike back along the lake.

The total hike for us was about four miles, but the first mile or so was somewhat tough.  We were climbing about four hundred feet in elevation to get to the Inspiration Point.  The view did not disappoint, but you cannot get there and expect inspiration from solitude.  Lots of hikers like us knocking around.

On the way back down to the lake, we stopped at Hidden Falls and picnicked.  And this is where I would have gotten in trouble if I had been able to smuggle in three, realistic-looking bear suits.

We found a log off the trail near Hidden Falls for our lunch spot. It struck me that if someone could sneak in bear suits and put them on in the woods, they could have a grand time entertaining tourists.  The trick would be to act like a very humanistic bear.  It would freak people out!

Continuing the hike brought us to an overlook below the peak of Teewinot Mountain, but above a small pond at the eastern base of the peak.  We decided to perch ourselves on a rock and sketch the view.  A couple of moose helped out by browsing down in the pond.  So we could sketch a glacier-capped peak, a green vale with a moose in a pond, or try for both in one sketch.

We finished up the last mile and bought many drinks at the park store.  By then, it was getting on in the afternoon.  We drove back in the direction of Jackson.  Matthew and Cathie indulged me at this point.  They did not want to do another sketch, but they waited while I sketched Grand Teton from the Glacier View Turnout - a roadside stop lacking the amenities of even a bench.

Throughout the trip, Matthew generally had more energy to do things than either of his parents.  He seemed okay with the schedule being less strenous than he would have preferred, except there was one clue to his frustration.  About every four hours or so, he would casually mention: "When I come back here with my kids, we're going to....."

Good luck, buddy!

Back in Jackson, we ate dinner at the Bunnery.  The experience was one of our favorite meals of the trip.  Cathie gave the Amber Ale from Grand Teton Brewery four stars.

Friday, August 20th.  Jackson, Wyoming.

After saying our good-byes to the Anvil Inn (okay, all we did was hand in the room key), we rode the chair lift up the top of Snow King.  It's about twenty minutes each way - and what a view!  There is a short nature trail to hike at the top.  We were very glad to have gone up Snow King, even if it was going to be the lone diversion on a long day of driving across Wyoming.

As we drove all day, Matthew resumed talking about being an outlaw.  I tried to get my favorite game - "How far away is that?" - going.  Matthew and I played a few rounds.  Cathie kept saying: "This is a stupid game."

Which was odd.  The other times we had played it, with Cathie proving that she can gauge distances of several miles with an eerie precision, seemed to reveal that this was her superpower.  Okay, it's not an exciting superpower like being able to fly or become invisible, but a superpower is a still a superpower. 

And Cathie would have nothing to do with it.  Even when she couldn't resist guessing the distance - and turned out to be spot on! - she simply said: "This is a stupid game."

We stopped for gas in Wamsutter.  When you travel, and you arrive in a remote place, you might ask yourself questions like: "Do you think cell phone coverage has reach here?" or "Do you think wi-fi has reached here?"  Well, when you drive into Wamsutter, it is so dry and dusty that you wonder: "Has water ever reached here?"

By 6:30, we reached Cheyenne and decided not to push on to Boulder that night.  The State Capitol building was closed up, but Matthew and I walked around outside while Cathie called the Holiday Inn to book a room.  Dinner was in an old railroad building.  Cheyenne rose to prominence as the site where the trains met.

Saturday, August 21st.  Cheyenne, Wyoming.

We hit the road after breakfast and were in Boulder pretty quick.  And we found a downtown parking garage pretty quick.  And then we ran into a street performer from the Fringe Festival - yes, quickly.

The performer was atop what seemed to be a ten foot unicycle.  He was juggling flaming clubs and catching his hat with his foot.  And I thought - "Jeez, what do you have to do to get the Festival to book you in a real venue?"

We strolled up Pearl Street Mall and lunched at the Paradise Cafe.  Everyone gets a cookie with their sandwich!  Good system, but why do I think that if Larry David showed up for lunch he would go into a tizzy when they slipped him a cookie?

Our motel was the Outlook, over by the eastern edge of the college campus.  A very eco-friendly motel, along with a bar that supports blues musicians.  The Outlook lends out bicycles to its guests, so we pedalled around the University of Colorado campus the rest of the afternoon.

And Matthew decided that is where he will go to college.  We picked up a student spirit tee shirt in the college bookstore.  Glad that's settled!

I pointed out the irony of our trip.  He makes a college decision on a trip where we spend so much money he cannot afford college!

That night, we went over to the Naropa University Performing Arts Center for a comedy-hypnotist show by Alan Sands.  Alan was in Boulder for the full week of the Fringe Festival.  He called up Matthew as a volunteer to help with the rope trick.  Of course, it did not end well.  Matthew got some laughs.

Then I was Alan's next victim.  He called me up on stage, along with three other guys, for some balloon blowing antics.  All I know is that I had to take off my glasses to put on the Daffy Duck mask, and from then on I'm not sure what happened.

The second half of  the show was the hypnotism, with ten or so volunteers falling under Alan's spell.  Matthew was willing but not old enough.

Sunday, August 22nd.  Boulder, Colorado.

Brunch at the dining hall at Chatauqua Park was splendid.  All the food is done well and you can't beat the outdoor seating on the porch.  Then our sketching spot for the day was outside the ranger's cottage in the park.  So long as you face to the west, any landscape you sketch in Boulder has mountains in the background.

Our afternoon diversion was back at the Fringe, for a performance by the Bicycling Comedian, Tom Snyders.  He's funny and has quite the story to share.  His slide shows and videos document all the miles he has pedalled since launching his comedy career more than twenty years ago.

Then we left town, put the Rockies in our rearview mirror and drove to Burlington, Colorado.

Monday, August 23rd.  Burlington, Colorado.

Breakfast at the Comfort Inn was not without a glitch.  The self-serve waffle iron is designed to be rotated and, if not done properly, causes a disaster.  We cleaned up, forgot about waffles, and settled for cereal.

Kansas was a short drive away and soon we were in Colby.  The Prairie Museum in Colby has a nice enough collection of items inside, but  the real attraction is the five buildings they have on the property: a sod house, the Cooper Barn, a 1903 farmhouse, a church built by Danish immigrants, and a one-room schoolhouse from 1882.

We hung out in each building.  At school, Matthew was the teacher while Cathie and I read passages from the  books on our desks.  Then we sat outside the barn and sod house while each of us found something to sketch.

Leaving Colby, we pressed on to Norton and checked into the Hillcrest Motel.

Tuesday, August 24th.  Norton, Kansas.

A late start to the morning.  Drove downtown and found a coffee shop, but it only had coffee, smoothies, and donuts on the menu.  That served as breakfast.

We drove over to Prairie Dog State Park.  Here's the thing.  Kansas was already back in school.  I'm not sure Prairie Dog State Park ever gets really crowded.  But on this Tuesday in late August, we were the only visitors.

So Matthew talked about being an outlaw.  Now he was in Kansas (and later Nebraska) where kids were back at school.  To any truant officer, Matthew was now a geniune outlaw!

We pulled up at the picnic pavilion in the "prairie dog town."  Almost immediately, prairie dogs all around us poked up their heads and starting "yipping."  The prairie dogs have at least a dozen calls or "yips" they use for communication.

And at that moment, you can be sure you know what they are yipping about: You.  "Hey, humans over there!  Get your babies inside!"

Our sketch that day was the Kansas landscape and we tried a triptych.  After we divided up the view into thirds we sketched separately.  When our sketchbooks are lined up, you get the full view.

There was not much to do in Norton.  The only movie theater was showing "Sorcerer's Apprentice."  Already saw it.  Matthew tried swimming in the motel pool.  Ice cold.  I did laundry downtown and was the only customer.  We did enjoy dinner that night, in downtown Norton at the Hidden Dragon Chinese restaurant.

One thing about that ice cold motel pool.  There was a frog living in the filter area, which you don't see everyday.

Wednesday, August 25th.  Norton, Kansas.

It did not take us many miles to be able to say: "I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."

Breakfast was in North Platte, Nebraska at the Rogers diner.  Proved to be one of the best breakfasts of the trip.

We faced a bit of a drive that day to reach northern Nebraska.  But serendipity decreed that our route would take us past Carhenge, a roadside attraction.  It's like Stonehenge in England, except they used old cars instead of large rocks.  And it was built in 1987, not in some prehistoric time.  With stops like that, who could mind a long drive across the plains?

By dinner time, we had reached Chadron.  Before driving over to Fort Robinson State Park, I persuaded Cathie to detour out to Toadstool Geologic Park.  The hitch is that you have to do more than twenty miles round trip on gravel road to see the toadstools.

The toadstools are unusual rock formations because the park is really a southern extension of the Badlands.  We did a mile hike and really had to earn it.  The trail is not well marked and the rocks are rife with sudden drops and twisting turns.

Our lodging that night was not a single room in a motel, as it had been all trip.  We had a three-bedroom, adobe house that was built for cavalry officers and their families back in 1887.  It sleeps ten, but after all our motel rooms, we found its expanse quite cozy.

Thursday, August 26th.  Fort Robinson State Park, Nebraska.

After a leisurely breakfast over at the main dining hall, we took in the two museums in the park.  One chronicles the many uses of Fort Robinson over the years, while the other is about woolly mammoths and other fossils in the area.

The trailside museum on mammoths has a witty approach.  The centerpiece exhibit is two mammoths skeletons, with tusks fully entangled, and the position is how they were found.  The going theory is that these two woolies must have been fighting to the death.  Both won.

A panel at the exhibit talks about two fossil hunters, both academic paleontologists, who arrived in the area about a century ago during which time great discoveries.  The museum panel text compares the two fossil hunters to the two mammoths, as there were disputes over who found what first.  As the musem text explains it, both were in their "manly prime" while hunting fossils.

Ever since he read that panel in the museum, Matthew has been asking me if he's in his "manly prime" yet.

Fort Robinson is where Crazy Horse surrendered and then died under somewhat mysterious circumstances.  There is a monument to him near the old officer's headquarters.

Just as we were driving in a big circle on this trip, we had traced a circle in Crazy Horse's life.  We started up by a monument to him in the Black Hills he loved.  We were now in an old army fort where he died.

We booked a horse trail ride for  two o'clock and had lunch in the dining hall.  Cathie and I had been joking about the comic routine where Kathy Griffin talks about her helicopter rides in Afghanistan.  The pilot always says to her: "Do you want a ride or do you want a RIDE?"  We figured the horseman would offer us the same choice.  And we would take the same choice as Kathy Griffin - "We want the short ride, the little ride, the boring ride...."

Strangely enough, our horsemen guides had either never been to Afghanistan or were clueless about Kathy Griffin.  The three of us saddled up with the only choice being whether to put on a helmet.

Matthew was riding a horse named Roy and it did him well.  I was atop Trigger and we seemed to get along fine.  Cathie was assigned to a stallion named Art, who proved to be as headstrong as Roy and Trigger were tame.

First, Art did not want to leave the corral with the rest of the horses.  Then, Art did not like the well worn horse trail that goes from the corral to the nearby buttes.  Cathie tried horse whispering, she tried patting his neck, and she tried kicking his ribs.  Art remained his own horse, doing his own thing.

So out on the trail, Cathie swapped horses with one of the guides.  Her new steed, Kilo, was much more congenial.

I was having some problems of my own.  It seemed that as soon as we got to Fort Robinson, I had quite a bout of flatulence.  It was as if I heard the word "Fort" with a very heavy Boston accent. 

I thought I had gotten over it by the afternoon, but the mechanics of sitting on a horse seem to facilitate breaking wind.  Now, I would have thought that hanging out with a horse while feeling gassy would not be a problem.  I know it is a good way to break the ice with a dog.

But Trigger was a polite stallion, apparently.  He bucked each time I let one fly.

We rode across the meadows, past the grazing areas for the big horn cattle and the frisky ponies that tourists never ride.  We did not ride up on the buttes, but seemed to come close.  As we turned around to head for home, we briefly passed over a grassy bluff.  Dang, what a view!  The fort and the valley beyond it in clear view.

The thought occurred to me that it was just as well that our beloved dog, Doodle, was not alive to see us ride horses.  Oh, how she hated horses!

In fairness to Art and the other horses, this was nearly the end of their season. Soon, all the Fort Robinson horses were getting their shoes kicked off and then they would winter in a far pasture.

Dinner that night involved hopping on the back of a hayrack and having a Jeep tow us across those same meadows to the foot of  the buttes.  The chuck wagon dinner is grilled steak and salad.  Jim Lees is the host and he gave a long talk about local history after dinner, as the shadows grew long and darkness fell.

We hopped on the hayrack for the ride back to the fort and got dropped off at the rodeo.  This was not anything like the Cody rodeo.  No rodeo clown, so the announcer had to be both straight man and comic.  No bulls were broken, although earlier in the season, the Fort Robinson Rodeo does present bull ridin'.  We saw some calf ropin' and then some bareback horse racing.  Most of the perfomers were under  the age of ten.  Our horsemen guides earlier that day, Steve and Dana, were both in the rodeo.

The finale of the evening was the "Hide Ride."  Small kids lie down on a big piece of hide, tied to a rope.  A horse rider holds the rope and drags the kid the length of the rodeo arena.  Looks safe, I guess, even with all the bumps.

Friday, August 27th.  Fort Robinson State Park, Nebraska.

Left Nebraska before breakfast and finally saw a restaurant in Hot Springs, South Dakota.  The Fall River Bakery had coffee and muffins.  Matthew decided to use one of his "stop" cards and so we toured the Mammoth fossil dig site out on the edge of town.

The story is that a developer found a mammoth fossil in 1974 and the resulting dig ended up finding so much stuff that they built a museum and lab around it.  The dig goes on.  As Matthew put it, you can work as a paleontologist, dig, and be in air conditioning.

On to Wind Cave National Park.  We took an hour walking tour, unusual because we started off walking through a ground level entrance and going down steps.  Our tour took us a couple hundred feet below the surface and we used an elevator to get back out.  Wind is the fourth largest cave in the world and noted for its "boxwork" and for its relative dryness.

A century ago, two families were in business together, trying to turn Wind Cave into a big tourist stop.  They used to argue about the business and lock each other in the cave overnight when the disputes got out of hand.  Soon, it became a national park.

Our next stop was Custer State Park, where many bison roam.  From Mt. Coolidge lookout, we could see Mount Rushmore through twenty-five-cent binoculars.  We could also see clearly, without any magnification, one of the four forest fires started by lightning strikes in that part of South Dakota earlier in the day.

After we drove down from the lookout, we stopped at Legion Lake.  Only Matthew was brave enough to dunk in the icy waters.  He swam for a while, came to his senses, and then the three of us went to the lodge for ice cream.

As darkness neared, we left the state park, drove north past another one of the forest fires, and headed for Wall.  As soon as you get to Interstate 90 and head east, the running series of billboards for Wall Drug greets you.  Same deal as those South of the Border billboards in North Carolina as you drive south on I-95.

We checked into the Best Western in Wall.  A sign in each room informs you that, as their water source is a thermal spring, you can't get cold water from the tap.  You can get free cold water in bottles from the office.  Funny thing is that I could not figure out the shower the next morning so I couldn't get a hot shower, either.

Saturday, August 28th.  Wall, South Dakota.

On to the Badlands!  The entrance is not far south of Wall.  Once inside the park, we stopped several times and took in the sweeping views.  Cathie and Matthew posed for pictures, doing their best to look "bad."

The geology of the place seems eerie and other worldly.  At times, it looks like human carvings fallen into disrepair.  But it has all been done by nature.  We found a lookout and sketched a triptych.

A volunteer guide from Minnesota gave an interesting talk on fossil finds in the park.  He let Matthew and the other kids handle actual, very old fossils.

Matthew's favorite joke in the Badlands was to say to either Cathie or myself: "Do you think we'll find any fossils?  I mean besides you guys."

After lunch, we did the Cliff Shelf hike.  Cathie had gotten ahead of us, so Matthew and I were left to encounter an antelope about twenty feet away.  We were on a wooden boardwalk at the time and the antelope seemed to want to cross under our feet.  We had a staredown for about thirty seconds, during which it occurred to me that antelope seem a lot bigger than deer.

The antelope ran off.  We walked on.

Back at the visitors center, the national park rangers had set up a hydrogen-filter solar telescope that lets you look safely at the bright sun.  We took a peek.

In the Badlands, you walk on rocks that look as dry as the moon.  And you stare at the sun without fear of blindness.

Returning to Earth, or at least Rapid City, we checked into the Super 8 motel.  After dinner, we drove to the Central States Fair.  Dinner had been slow - our waitress kept giving us the slip - but we were still not too late to catch the air guitar finals on the main festival stage.  (As Dave Barry would say....)

But lightning filled the sky and the wind picked up.  We decided to skip the Central States Fair and made a hasty retreat to the motel.

Sunday, August 29th.  Rapid City, South Dakota.

As day broke, we flew to Minneapolis.  A quick dash across the airport and we made our connection to Atlanta.  We got to Atlanta on schedule, we dashed with alacrity across the airport, but our connection to DC had already left.  So we cooled our heels for an hour and took the next available.

By early evening, we had returned home.

Long Weekend to Pittsburgh, July 9-11

Friday, July 9, 2010.  Cathie and I each had the day off from work and Matthew was skipping his last day of basketball camp. We headed west after breakfast, cruising through the light traffic of Interstate 70.  Shortly after we had left Maryland, we were near the village of Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania.

Our first stop was Fallingwater, the Kaufman residence that quickly became an icon.  Frank Lloyd Wright designed it for the department store family, but it has been a public spectacle almost since it was finished.

The cafe and gift shop area on a hill above the residence is itself an elegant and refreshing spot.  When I toured Taliesin, FLW's school in Spring Green, I was struck by how comfortable the light and air felt inside all the rooms.  Fallingwater pulls off the same neat trick.  But I was mildly annoyed with Wright's attitude towards ceiling height.  In the cozy bedrooms, Fallingwater has varied ceiling heights.  That itself is good, but the low end of those ceilings is too tight for me- and I am not particularly tall.

Still, Cathie had been wanting to see Fallingwater for a long time and Matthew had wanted to eat the thick chocolate brownies in the cafe within a few minutes of spotting them.  And any FLW project is of interest to me.  So this stop fulfilled dreams for all of us.

We pushed on to Pittsburgh - until we hit a wall of traffic.  Our destination was the Hilton, right near the site of old Fort Pitt.  The rivers meet there and the Pirates new(ish) stadium is not far away.  As we sat in traffic for more than an hour, trying to get downtown, I concluded that there must be few ways into the core of the city.  The hills are steep near the river junction.  I suppose that made Fort PItt hard to attack.  I know it made the Hilton hard to reach.

We booked a room for the night because the Alliance for Community Media was having its annual meeting there and I was receiving a Hometown Video Festival award in the category of "Government Programs" portrayed by public access television.  My series of scripted game shows, using some humor to explain new Arlington County government programs, had been judged the best for 2009 from anywhere in the country.

We got to the awards dinner late, but the speechifying was still going on.  They showed a clip of my award-winning program (as they did for the 109 other winners), I was handed my plaque, I walked across the stage to applause, and I shook hands with a strange man.   Meaning a stranger.

That was fun, despite not being able to give an acceptance speech.  The plaque is on the mantel at home for all to see.

We blew town Saturday morning.  Driving east, we got all the way to Canoe Creek Lake, a state park near Altoona.  We stopped by the diner for an early lunch.  I had to help out the couple who flip the burgers and do everything else.  My task was to get the pickle jar open.

So it was an upbeat weekend for me.  Lauded for my television production on Friday night and then I assumed the role of Pickle Liberator on Saturday.  I could hardly imagine what Sunday held in store.

We got in nine holes of frisbee golf and then lazed in the swimming area.  The afternoon was getting deep when we decided to rent kayaks for a hour.  Cathie and Matthew took out a two-seater, while I had the single boat.  We did not go too far, but did try to explore a small feeder creek.  Both of our kayaks were grounded in shallows a few times, but Matthew was gallant and hopped up to pull Cathie off the sandbar.

Next up was minor league baseball, at the home of the Altoona Curve.  Great seats, pretty good game, and a constant series of goofy entertainments between innings.  The Curve nipped the Flying Squirrels from Richmond, 2-1.  Everyone at the park was friendly.  After the game, Matthew and about sixty other kids ran the bases along with Steamer, the biggest mascot.  I held back by the dugout, but got a warm greeting from Al Tuna, another mascot. 

Because I am an insane traveler, we piled into the car and drove south in the dark.  Our motel for Saturday night was in Chambersburg.  The whole point was to get up early and play nine holes of golf at Caledonia.  Which we did, choosing the short front nine.  Cathie and Matthew hit great shots at times, and took plenty of shots on each hole to really get acquainted with the course.

On the par 3 seventh hole, my tee shot landed behind the green, off to the left.  I chipped on and the ball rolled to the air space above the cup.  It was held up by a leaning golf stick.  But when I walked on the green towards the cup, my girth turned out to be enough so that I now was Earth Shaker.  The ball wriggled free and dropped in for a birdie.

On the eighth hole, Cathie also had an amazing chip shot, but it fell a few inches short of the hole.  Even the Earth Shaker could not help her in that situation.

After golf, we found a charming lunch spot - Dodie's.  Great sandwiches and ice cream.  Then we pressed on to Antietam National Battlefield.

Matthew and I were more interested in this stop, to be sure.  Cathie fell asleep watching the short video in the visitors center, but stayed awake for the ranger talk about the battle.   Then we started on the auto tour, stopping at the cornfield.

On the Antietam battlefield, the site of the bloodiest day in U.S. military history, the cornfield was a particularly bloody spot.  Both the Union and Confederacy moved troops through the cornfield and incurred heavy losses for that tactic.

We headed off on the cornfield walk.  It was hot and dusty.  And we quickly got lost.  And we complained about the heat and the confusion.  At that point, the three of us needed only uniforms to become very realistic Civil War reenactors.

After a while, we got our bearings, found the car, and took in more of the auto tour.  We walked down to the Burnsides Bridge.  Then we drove to a Maryland state park a short distance away.  We had just enough time to swim before they closed the beach.

The drive home from that point was short.  The three days of fun involved a lot of driving, but we managed to see a lot, too.

Day Trip In July

We got a jump start on the 2010 summer travels with a day trip to the Manassas Battlefield Park on July 7th.  As Civil War outings go, this is a doubleheader.  The first Battle of Bull Run was in 1861 and they decided to hold a rematch in 1862.

Cathie was at work all day and missed out on the fun, but Matthew was out at George Mason University for another day of basketball camp.  That is at least in the direction of Manassas, so I picked him up after camp and we headed to the park.

It was getting on in the afternoon as we finally sorted out our bearings and got close to the Visitors Center.  But traffic is so bad in these parts that I don't know why anyone wanted a second battle.  Or even how anyone got to the first battle on time.

At that first battle on July 21, 1861, Beauregard's Confederates were on the verge of losing to McDowell's Union forces.  But additional Confederates under the command of Johnston finally showed up and turned the tide.  Given the traffic we sat in, I can't fault Johnston for his tardiness.

The exhibits and historic buildings tend to close up at five o'clock, so our tour was pretty much limited to the first battle.  The temperature was right around one hundred as we headed off on the half mile or so of walking tour.  In that heat, it had a certain forced march feel to it.  And we were, indeed, the only fools tramping around in the parched grasses of Henry House Hill, past the decorative cannons and to the edge of the woods where Jackson's troops emerged to charge the Union positions.

That's the spot where the Union forces were advancing strongly in the first part of the battle, but Jackson's men held firm.  Someone said it was like a stonewall, and that's why no one today knows that Stonewall Jackson's first name was actually Thomas.

We got back in the car, amped the AC, and took in a few of the driving tour stops.  That got us into the terrain of Second Bull Run, including the ground (Hazel Plain) where Longstreet's troops were held up by stubbon Ohio regiments.  But our tour was incomplete, putting aside a full account of the second battle for another time.

Our excursion moved on from history to recreation.  Matthew and I played nine holes of golf at Oak Marr, a nice little par-3 course in Oakton.  Although it was nearly seven o'clock when we teed off on the first hole, the temperature had still not dropped much below one hundred degrees.

And, as at Manassas, we were the only fools tramping around the dry grasses of Oak Marr's fairways and the firm turf of its greens.

I popped two ice cubes into my golf hat and stayed relatively cool for the round.  This is a trick I learned twenty years ago on a golf course, but have only started to use it this summer.

Matthew was eager to get in on the chill, so he put a couple of ice cubes in his hat.  No benefit.  He kept having to take off his hat and swat at the gnats that seemed delighted to find golfers out in the heat.  He would then catch the cubes and put them back in the hat.

After about three holes, he ditched the ice.  We realized his thick head of hair was making ice in the hat a moot point.

I, on the other hand, did not have that disadvantage.

Oak Marr is a nice little course.  I shot nine holes below my age, while Matthew scored something below the temperature.  Unfortunately, the pool at the rec center at the course had already closed when we walked off the ninth green.