Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Google told me today's drive would take 5 hours and 13 minutes, which of course meant it would take me at least 8 hours minimum. Sunrise was at 6:22, and I left the campground a few minutes later. It was a few minutes after 4:00 this afternoon when I arrived at tonight's campground, making the drive 9½ hours. Good thing I didn't wait until later to leave here.
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| today's route |
I stopped in Miles City to get some gas, and it was $3.89/gallon.
You can see from the map above I could barely get the whole drive in one shot and, until I got to South Dakota, I was pretty much in uninhabited country. I heard several weeks ago that this area, in the Powder River Basin, is the world's largest known coal reserve and the US's largest coal mines. It is also, increasingly, becoming a continuous fire zone. The coal seams can ignite and burn underground for years, even centuries, without much notice from humans. But when those seams burn upward and reach the drought-dry vegetation growing on them, they become very visible and dangerous wildfires. Their normal lack of visibility also means no one's been studying them. But the residents in this basin are banding together to change that, apparently figuring it's better to try to figure out how to control the fires while they're still in the ground, rather than waiting for them to come aboveground and destroy a town. I found an interesting article about the situation written just a week ago. https://www.msn.com/montana-s-devastating-wildfires-are-starting-underground
I heard on the radio that July was the 451st consecutive month with global temperatures above the 20th century average. (That's 37 straight years.) Those temps must surely be contributing to the coal-seam-wildfire problem.
I saw several mule deer and was surprised to drive quite a distance before seeing the first herd of cows. There were ranches scattered here and there, each with massive stacks of hay bales. I saw one small field with very small square bales of hay next to a large field with large round hay bales.
The town of Volborg consisted of 2 houses and a "general store," per the sign. And apparently a skunk (per the smell).
I saw 5 low hills together all covered with trees, and another one the same height right next to them with no trees but with a mohawk haircut of rock on top. Some hills here are lumpy with rock, some look smooth, some are as pointed as if a pencil sharpener had been at work.
I saw 10 or 13 wild turkeys in a field.
We stopped at the town of Broadus, the largest town in the area aside from Miles City. Google's directions told me to turn on Park Avenue, and I was hoping it got that name because it had a park on it. Which it did. Cottonwood Park, so we stopped and Dext got to walk down a large grassy avenue lined on both sides with nice old cottonwoods, each apparently with a smell.
After crossing the Powder River, I passed the first weigh station I've seen in a month in Montana that was closed.
From Miles City I took MT-59 for 78 miles, finding very little traffic along the way. After Broadus, I turned onto US-212 and encountered lots of semis, which made driving much more of a challenge for me. Trying to stay out of their way on those roads isn't easy.
I started passing Pronghorn here and there and reminded myself I was getting closer to Wyoming. You may remember that Wyoming has some of the highest numbers of Pronghorn, and I certainly saw a whole lot of them during my month in that state. In fact, I'll always associate the 2 in my mind, at least as much as Wyoming's other truly amazing natural attributes.
I also started to see quite a few flocks of sheep, along with cows and plenty more Pronghorn, and I thought I saw 2 elk, drinking from a water trough that was in a field for sheep. They had antlers and, if they were deer, then they were very large deer.
A sign told me I was driving through "America's top beef, corn and soybean producing counties."
I grew up in Texas with rivers and creeks running from north to south (towards the Gulf of Mexico). But in Montana they often run from west to east, I suppose because of the continental divide and the Missouri River drainage.
Speaking of which, I crossed the Little Missouri River. And very sadly, I passed the bodies of 2 fawns by the road, and felt so very sorry for the poor mama deer.
A sign told me I could turn right and get to Devil's Tower. Something about that place held a lot of magic for me (and not the Close Encounters kind). But that's not where I was headed today.
"Welcome to Wyoming," I was told. And "Fire Danger is High."
And suddenly, instead of desert-like land, I saw vast fields that had been cultivated.
One road was named Lonesome Country Road.
I started seeing snow fences and realized I'd seen very few in Montana which, after all, certainly gets its share of snow in the winter.
I'd forgotten how beautiful Wyoming is and passed a pastoral view of mountains and trees and farms and a deep river valley.
A sign warned me there was a "Truck Crossing 1000 Feet" and sure enough, when I got there I saw a truck crossing the road.
I passed several industrial plants of some kind, all fairly close together, and none of them within miles of any town - or even an RV park. I saw a whole lot of cars at these places, but I have no idea where those workers drive to after their shift. We were a long way from any town.
And then: Welcome to South Dakota. And I quickly arrived in the town of Belle Fourche. You remember when I was here last year visiting the Center of the Nation monument. I stopped for gas and found they were offering regular gas, with a 95 octane rating, for $3.99 and plus gas with a 97 octane rating, for $3.79. Before I started pumping I went inside to be sure I was reading those prices right, because it seemed odd to me to have the better gas for 20¢/gallon less. But that was the price.
I needed a grocery store and Google had told me there was one right on my way in Belle Fourche. I'm pretty sure I stopped at a grocery store at that exact location last year, and the owners were closing the store. But I've tried and can't find it on my blog posts from when I was in Belle Fourche - or anywhere else for that matter. I'm sure I posted it because it was such a weird sensation - most of the shelves were empty and the only meat they had was frozen prepackaged stuff, no fresh foods at all. I guess I'll find it when I go back and reread all this stuff at the end of my trip.
Anyway, there's an operating store there now, and I was frustrated that they had very little of what I was looking for. Which shows that full shelves aren't the only marker of a well-stocked store.
We stopped at the visitor center where I remembered they had a place to dump my waste tanks. It needed to be done and I really didn't want to get into a campground later today, tired from driving, and still have to empty my waste. By the time I got done with that, I was absolutely dripping with sweat at 11:45 in the morning.
I passed a sign advertising "Horse Hay For Sale," and I wondered what other kind is there? Wouldn't horses eat all kinds of hay?
I'd forgotten about those strange "Why Die?" signs that South Dakota has stuck around all the highways in the state. Because I couldn't find an uncopyrighted version online, I managed to locate a photo I took - it's in the Day 8 post for South Dakota, in case you don't remember them.
I passed Sturgis, and then got off the highway at Rapid City. Belle Fourche having disappointed me, I still needed dog food for supper tonight and thought I'd try in Rapid City. But I took a chance on a road looking like it had stores - and it did, but not a grocery. I drove around unsuccessfully for a while and finally stopped in a residential neighborhood and turned on my hotspot and my laptop and found a Safeway that was a ways away but it looked like I could find it. And I did. And got Dexter some supper for this evening (thank goodness).
On the way to the Safeway I'd passed what looked like a nice park and decided to stop once more to walk Dext. But when I went back, I found I could get into the very small parking lot only from one direction and had to turn around several times. Once there, I discovered the building I thought was for community groups was actually the Rapid City Parks & Rec offices. And they didn't want anybody else parking in their lot but P&R employees. So I parked anyway and ran inside and asked if they'd mind if I took 10 minutes to walk my dog. Which she graciously allowed. There was no other parking for that park - which had a name and picnic tables and lots of trees - so I can't figure out who they expected to visit the park or where they expected them to come from. Very busy streets on both sides, so not a quiet neighborhood. Weird.
The park had 6 or 7 busts of people who all seemed to be Native leaders from various fields - lawyer, scientist, medicine - like that. Carved into each pedestal was the person's name and dates and field of work and a quote. I didn't have my camera so I had to rely on my memory (hah) and remember only a man named Vine Deloria, Jr., known as a historian and Native rights activist. His quote said something about how the Bering Strait theory of people crossing a land bridge to get to this continent was racist. He said proof exists only in the minds of white scientists who want to keep Indians down. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that long-accepted theories have been shattered by modern perspectives, so I looked it up. And I couldn't find anything at all that made me question the theory, or to explain why it was racist. Human beings have to come from somewhere, and evolution has long suggested humans gradually evolving from apes, and I've never heard of any of the big apes living anywhere in the Americas at any point in time. So either humans or apes had to get here from somewhere, and the land bridge theory seems to have a lot going for it - early forms of men following the game that was seeking new territory across the land bridge that had been formed when the earth's crust had a different shape than it does now. Why is that theory something that keeps Indians down? To me, it shows how adaptable and resourceful they were. Anyway, that was our stop in Rapid City.
We passed huge fields of sunflowers, huge fields of maize, huge fields of corn, and a gazillion signs for Wall Drug.
The "check engine" light, that had come back on soon after I left Hardin on my way to Miles City the other day, went out some time around where I had to climb a hill and revved the engine up over 4000 RPMs to do it. And then I wondered if by doing that, I was just helping to blow out the carbon that was probably clogging the valves because of using ethanol gasoline and driving relatively slowly all the time. I think that's what that Sea Foam I added was supposed to clean out. Whatever it was, the light went out and didn't come back on today. Yea!
And finally we got to tonight's campground, which fortunately turned out to be very pleasant with not many people there. And I made a mistake. I was so tired that I decided to order a pizza that the campground was offering from their little cafe. It turned out to have a thick blanket of mozzarella on top and almost no pepperoni, which I'd paid an extra $1.25 to have added. Mozzarella's okay but not my favorite cheese, and there was an awful lot of it. But it was supper I didn't have to fix myself, so that was okay.
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