Home Again

We rolled into Minneapolis at 8:00 PM after starting out this morning in Spearfish, SD at 8:30 AM. Needless to say it was a long and exhausting day of driving and the scenery was both foggy and bleak for much of the drive. We drove through the Cheyenne River Reservation (Sioux). The drive through the reservation is about 75 miles long and it is 75 miles of virtual nothingness. In a little over an hour we saw a number of aluminum sided homes, two gas stations, a cultural center, a few churches, and a wellness center; I believe we saw most of the non-residential spaces in Eagle Butte one of the larger towns on the reservation. We also saw a power plant and a beautiful new school made of red brick, antelope, and cows. I was struck by several things 1. the size of the reservation 2. the lack of businesses and employment opportunities, 3. the number of road markers indicating traffic fatalities* there must have been 30 such signs within the 75 miles stretch of hwy 212, 4. the remoteness and isolation 4. the lousy land with its dry conditions that make farming impossible. Please see the link to the right for more information about the reservation. We made just a few quick stops for gas but didn't stop for lunch until 4:00 PM in the town of Watertown, SD because it was the first town large enough to have more than a couple family owned diners. John did about 80% of the driving today because the heavy fog made me nervous and it lasted for hours, he did the night driving too because my night vision isn't the greatest. When we got to his house we made popcorn and I had a cup of hot tea, and now we're just chillin' out.

I have an appointment with my hairdresser, Del Marie at 10:30 tomorrow, the first since October 22nd. She was afraid I'd dropped her, but I told her "no way" just traveling and trying a new hair regimen. She also told me that she's 9 weeks pregnant with her 2nd child. Her older "child" is 21 years old.

*Official signs erected by the SD Dept. of Transportation, part of a program started in 1979. Diamond in shape, one side says “Think,” and the other side says “Why Die?” Both sides have a red “X” painted on them (definitely not a Christian cross), with “X marks the spot” in small type.

Multiple fatalities are depicted as individual signs in a line spaced ten feet apart -- we assume this was to avoid the visual horror of signs sprouting from one spot like some abstract fatality flower.

The signs stay until they fall apart or are displaced by construction, and are not replaced unless the deceased family makes a special request.

Spearfish, SD

We got off to an early start, getting up at 6:30 to have breakfast and pack up the car. We were on the road at 8:00 AM on the dot only 30 minutes shy of our goal of 7:30. The drive was beautiful and today was the perfect day to spend on the road. I had no idea how much beauty one could see from the window of a car moving along at 65 mph. I was completely blown away by the spectacular scenery along the highway. We started out in the Tetons, then drove between the Wind Rivers and the Absarokas (mountain ranges), then the spectacular Big Horns, and finally into the South Dakota Black HIlls. We stopped in Thermopolis, WY and for a picnic lunch in a park near the hot springs where it was nearly 60 degrees. Thermopolis is known for its dinosaur discoveries and hot springs (the world’s largest according to words painted into a hillside leading into town). After lunch we hopped back in the car for more beautiful scenery. We spotted hundreds of antelope by the highway, and saw everything from snow-covered fields, 3 billion year-old precambrian granite. Unfortunately everything wasn’t completely perfect and picturesque; ugly oil fields complete with pumps resembling huge grasshoppers littered a long stretch of the highway. The oil towns are horribly unattractive with no sense of order or planning whatsoever. It's like an airplane just dropped houses and businesses from the sky to take root wherever they landed. Something about the oil fields polluted by the big grasshopper like machines was a little unsettling, even depressing. Once you've seen those enormous long necked machines repeating the same incessant nagging motion over and over again for 50 miles it starts to get to you. I guess they are synonymous with our constant, nagging, incessant, dependence on oil and this made me feel a tad bit slimy as we burned through precious oil trying to make our way home. We logged 495 miles today to our ultimate destination, The Best Western in Spearfish, SD and an Italian dinner at Roma's. We didn't waste any time after checking into the hotel and walked several blocks to Roma within minutes of dropping off our luggage at the hotel. Roma's is a lovely looking place and I'm sure it is hands down the finest eating establishment in all of Spearfish, SD and possibly all of South Dakota but with the exception of a decent Caesar salad and a nice glass of wine the food was average at best and the tiramisu tasted like something I made in my Easy Bake oven when I was a child. There was a plus size waitress working at Roma's, she wore a snug fitting skirt and blouse and fishnet stockings, and I truly enjoyed watching her work because she had so much confidence and style. I took at least 50 photos today so I'll upload one in a few hours to accompany this post. Goodnight from Spearfish.