Abbie's Real Life Blog

Click here to go to the map!

So, here it is, the beginning of the trip!  What an amazing trip it was, too.  Above is a link to a custom Google map I made of the first leg.  You should be able to click on the link and go directly to Google to get more detail if you want.  I will intersperse Twitter posts here and links to images that I’ve already posted online (all iPhone shots), as well as Wikipedia articles and other information to give some context to the trip.\

Leaving on time! (more or less.) Sad, scared, excited, ready to go! – 3:12pm, May 29, 2010

I scheduled myself to leave in the middle of the afternoon on purpose.  In my mind, my trip began in Grand Island, Nebraska, where I hit my first scenic byway, a road I’d never been on before, but Grand Island is about seven hours from Columbia, Missouri, which is not really a full day’s drive.  If I left early in the morning, I would get to Grand Island in the middle of the day, the worst light, and by the end of the day, I would be off the beaten track to the point that finding even a cheap motel would be deviating from the course.  So leaving in the middle of the afternoon was a calculated move.

Just a simple point that is impossible to ignore when understanding my scheduling (and how the trip went, ultimately): light is everything.  I wanted to be in the best possible spots for sunrise and early morning, or sunset and late day.  Photographers call these times the golden hour.  So, in this case, I didn’t want to set out during the golden hour, and I didn’t want to hit my first scenic byway in the middle of the day.

I was still feeling sick.  I came down with a head cold in the middle of the previous week, though I was arguing with myself about it.  I wanted so much to go, but knew it would be pretty stupid to push myself hard and then end up trying to recover in a motel room over a vacation day.  Better to leave late and miss a couple of things than leave sick, but I was too eager to go.  I left on time with a bag of Hall’s cough drops and a box of Cold-Eeze zinc tablets, and hoped for the best.

After lunch with my family, I packed the car at home and said goodbye to the dog.  My car was washed and vacuumed.  The coolers were stocked with food.  My camera and equipment sat next to me on the passenger seat, iPod & phone on the console, snack foods right behind me, sunglasses in the car door… everything in its place.  It was great.  I stopped for ice on my way out of town, the first of many stops for ice.  I was set.

I took I-70 west from Columbia to Kansas City, crossing the Missouri River once at Rocheport and once in Liberty, and then headed north on I-29.  The light got pretty after I drove through St. Joseph, where I stopped at a Target for a forgotten item and a McNally road atlas.  I have a GPS in my dash and on my iPhone, but it didn’t compare with a real map.  From here, I picked out a state park along the river for dinner, and popped in the first disc of an audiobook that I’d borrowed at the library.  It was Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose, about the Lewis & Clark expedition with a focus on the biography of Merriweather Lewis.  It was a great choice, and I listened to it all the way from Missouri to Montana.

Distracted by windmills in NW Missouri, but the light is wrong at sunset.  Will have to come back at sunrise someday. – 8:41pm, May 29, 2010

After I left St. Joe, I kept north on I-29 but pulled off in search of a picnic table near Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge or Big Lake State Park, though this turned out to be a bit of a distance from the road.  When I got there, it was crowded and I didn’t end up stopping, though that state park does look pretty nice.  After a stretch, I drove north again to get on the interstate, only to be caught soon after by golden hour light hitting the windmills near Rockport, Missouri, so I got off the road again to chase after them.  Like the tweet says, I discovered that they all were facing east and the setting sun highlighted their backs.  I took some pictures, but I am sure they did not turn out well.  I will have to go back someday when the sun is right.

The sun was setting by the time I got back to the interstate, so I pulled over on the shoulder of the highway entrance ramp.  I started writing the above tweet when a policeman pulled up alongside me, either to make sure I was ok or threaten me to keep moving, but once I’d waved my phone at him and yelled something about texting, he moved on immediately.  Missouri police can be quick to pull over speeders, but I guess ‘texting’ could be the magic word if you’re caught loitering somewhere.  I talked to my mother on the phone, ate some dinner, and got back on the road.

I crossed into Iowa, and then it is not very far before the road to Nebraska City and on to Lincoln to meet up with I-80.  After the turnoff from I-29 to Nebraska City, I crossed over the Missouri River for the third and last time before I saw it again in Montana.

My original intent was to get to Grand Island for the night, but I was willing to settle for anyplace between Lincoln and Grand Island (they’re about a hundred miles apart).  I finally pulled off at Seward when a Super 8 motel looked promising, but it turned out that Seward was a few miles north of I-80 on US Highway 30, and by the time I got there, the Super 8 didn’t look so swell.  I decided to push on to Grand Island, where, ironically, I picked a much worse place for the night.  It was not expensive, but it was in bad shape and I was concerned with the cleanliness (which says a lot, because I am not a stickler).  But it was the first in a series of cheap non-chain motels on the trip, which was good.

Made it to Grand Island, NE.  Thunderstorms this morning, but hoping to drive through them to better skies. -6:52am, May 30, 2010

Wow, I thought this motel looked bad last night, but it’s so much worse in daylight. -7:10am, May 30, 2010

It was a warm evening after a hot day in the Midwest, but a thunderstorm pushed through a cold front overnight, and that was the last I saw of 80 degree temperatures until I reached Missouri again.  I woke to rain, which meant breakfast in the car.  But, thunderstorms or not, I was really on my trip, in a part of the country I’d never seen before.

First thing to see was the Platte River.  I have wanted to see it for a long time.  I don’t know why, but it has always sounded strange (they say it is an inch deep and a mile wide) and looked strange on a map (it is what is called a braided stream), and that has piqued my curiosity.  So I detoured to see that, then stopped for more cold medicine, and then started up Nebraska Highway 2, a scenic byway that tours through the Sand Hills on its way northwest towards the Black Hills.  Almost immediately upon leaving Grand Island, the weather cleared up a bit and the land began to roll.  I-80 is flat and boring, so you wouldn’t think that just north of there the land would be far prettier, but it is true.  I can attest that scenic Nebraska is, in fact, scenic.

The Nebraska Sand Hills are a lovely drive. -11:36am, May 30, 2010

The Sand Hills in Nebraska are throughout the central part of the state, and NE Hwy 2 goes right between them on its way from Grand Island to Alliance.  The rolling hills gave way to quite amazing landscape, and the skies were clear and beautiful.  I stopped for lunch in Mullen and actually ate at a picnic table in a park!  It was very pleasant.  The weather had cooled off to the low 70s.  Gorgeous.

I hit Alliance, Nebraska, in the middle of afternoon, and stopped at Carhenge, which is a replica of Stonehenge but made with spray-painted automobiles rather than ancient stones.  Both, I assume, have similar religious properties.  Light was good at Carhenge for iPhone pictures- I took several.

I continued north out of Alliance, which is flat, though at many points you can see the hills to the east.  Once I got near Chadron, however, there are many hills.  Trees appear, and they are mostly fir trees.  You can tell you’re in the vicinity of the Black Hills, though you’re still far south.  Then the hills turn into buttes, and it is amazing.  I love buttes.

I turned west out of Chadron towards Crawford.  One of the goals of the day was Toadstool Geologic Park, which is north of Crawford.  What they do not tell you is that there are fourteen miles of poor gravel road between Crawford and the Toadstool Geologic Park.  I thought I was up for the adventure, but after about seven miles of bad road, parts of which were washed out and all of which seemed to be devoid of car traffic of any kind, I started to get nervous.  It was Day Two of my adventure, and the last thing I wanted was to get a flat tire on a back road with little cell coverage or traffic, which would take hours or even days to fix.  My car isn’t exactly intended for the back roads.  I turned back to Crawford.

In Crawford, I went over to Fort Robinson State Park, which had been on my list of possible places to stay the night, because you can stay there in the old officers’ quarters.  But it didn’t work out on my schedule.  I just poked around there for a bit and then started to head north towards the Oglala National Grassland as the golden hour was approaching.  I passed the turnoff to Toadstool with a sigh, but soon I had several pretty vistas of grasslands and ravines and buttes, and I was enthralled.  But then I passed a second turnoff for Toadstool!  I made a U-turn in the 2-lane highway to check out the road.  To my surprise, there was a cattle guard at the entrance to it.  When I was a kid, I lived in a house with cattle guards on the roads, but this was one of the first times I’d seen them as adult.  I decided it was a bad sign, gave up on the road, and turned north again.  I stopped for more photos and vistas.  Then I passed a third turnoff for Toadstool!  I took this one, because my GPS seemed to think I was not too far at all.  The road was in better shape than the first one, but it was barely more than two tire tracks of gravel.  I followed it for a mile or so, stopping for a few amazing vistas, before the road seemed to fall directly off the side of the hill.  The descent of the road was nervewracking.  I turned back again for the highway.  I was not meant to see Toadstool.  I headed north again.  I passed one more turnoff for Toadstool on my way through the Oglala National Grassland, but I didn’t even pause.  It was sad to miss one of the things I really wanted to see, but even if I had it to do over again, I’m not sure I think it was worth the risk.

I headed on out of the northwest corner of Nebraska, and there was plenty to stop to photograph.  The lovely grasslands in the golden light were amazing.  I saw what I swear was a pronghorn antelope, though it might have been a mule deer.  I wasn’t very good at telling them apart yet.  I do know it wasn’t a whitetail deer.

Western Nebraska is beautiful.  Loved the Sand Hills.  Thanks for an awesome drive, Nebraska.  In South Dakota tonight. -9:54pm, May 30, 2010.

I hit Hot Springs, South Dakota, at the southern end of the Black Hills, right about sunset.  I picked out a Motel 6, ate dinner out of coolers in my room, and started the process of downloading all the day’s pictures and backing them up to an external hard drive.  I did this every night of the trip.  It just involved downloading each card to my laptop, and then copying all the files to an external backup drive so that I had two copies of everything in case one failed.  Good policy!

In the morning, I got up early to another pretty day.  I headed north out of Hot Springs towards Wind Cave National Park, home of Wind Cave, the fourth-longest cave in the world.  The land on top of the cave area is grassland, and I saw and took pictures of bison and prairie dogs before the visitor’s center opened.  I got a ticket for the first cave tour of the day, the Natural Entrance tour, which meant seeing the natural entrance to the cave (a fairly small hole), and then using a man-made entrance and staircase to walk down two hundred feet below the surface.  Some people had trouble with it- not the stairs, but claustrophobia.  I usually fear heights to some extent and would rather not travel out of sight of the shore by boat due to general fear of the ocean, but I realized that I don’t have any fear of being deep inside the earth.  Caves do not make me nervous.

Wind Cave National Park this morning, and now in the Black Hills. -12:19pm, May 31, 2010

The cave itself, I’m sorry to say, was not spectacular.  My favorite is still Onondaga Cave, near Rolla, Missouri.  The sheer size of the rooms in that cave are amazing.  The ones in Wind Cave were not that big, though I guess it gave us a chance to inspect the walls a little closer.  Wind Cave had a lot of very delicate, intricate patterns called boxwork on the ceiling.  That was pretty neat to view.  The tour was interesting.

I headed north out of Wind Cave towards Custer, South Dakota, where I was scheduled to meet up with my friend for lunch.  I was a little early and ended up driving through a bit of Custer State Park before he called and said that I should meet him in Hill City instead.  We went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant, which was the only hot meal I ate on the trip.  Afterwards, we decided to try a hike.  He had one in mind, so we changed into hiking boots and I got in his truck, and we went off to find it.  We found the trailhead, but it cost $6 to park, which seemed excessive, so we headed off to find a different one, the name of which I do not remember.  We ended up hiking a mile or so into the woods up a ridge, which didn’t have much of a view but was very pleasant.

When we came back down, he suggested that we head north towards Deadwood and Spearfish Canyon in a carpool arrangement so that I could get in spitting distance of I-90 without having to drop him back off at his car.  The drive through the Black Hills was pretty, and I stopped at Pactola Reservoir for pictures, but otherwise didn’t want to stop too often for fear of annoying my very patient friend.  I was in the lead so when we got to Lead (which is pronounced like it is for the first use in this sentence, not like the mineral), he suggested pulling over and checking out some of Deadwood rather than continuing on to Spearfish Canyon as it was late enough in the day already that the canyon might be in shadow.  I got into his car again and we went up to the Mount Moriah Cemetery, where many of the famous Deadwood citizens are buried at what seems like the top of a mountain overlooking the town.  However, I was disappointed in the cemetery, which had apparently been given some money for facelift around the turn of the century.  Instead of replacing many of the old headstones with historically-accurate reproductions, the choice was made to use headstones of the current style.  As an archivist and someone interested in historic preservation, I thought this was really a poor choice, but we walked all around the cemetery anyway, and even made the trek 750 feet above the cemetery to Seth Bullock’s grave.

After that, it was evening and the sun was starting to set.  My friend suggested dinner, but I wanted to get on the road.  My original plan had been to see Devils Tower National Monument around sunset, and that wasn’t going to happen, so I was already behind schedule.  I wanted to get in the vicinity of the national monument and find a motel.  We said good-byes and I started out of town.  When I stopped to get gas, I realized that I might just have enough time to drive through Spearfish Canyon before all the light was gone, so I headed that direction.  And I did!  I just had enough time to get through the canyon before hitting the town of Spearfish on the north side as the last light drained out of the sky.  I really hope I go back someday- it looked like an amazing place, quite beautiful.

Had a great afternoon with my friend in the Black Hills!  Headed out of SD a little later than planned, but worth it.  Back on the interstate. – 8:19pm, May 31, 2010.

Spearfish is on I-90 and I headed west on the interstate until I got to Sundance, Wyoming, which was only about 30 miles.  It is interesting how you can tell the landscape from the lights in the distance, even if you can’t see anything else in the dark.  I could tell I was driving through some immense valleys, and I was disappointed to miss my first views of Wyoming.  Sundance, ‘the town where the Kid got his name’, is small but I found a cheap motel and got a room for the night.  It was an old-style motel, the real kind, built in the middle part of the last century.  It was in nice condition.  I did my backups and I went to bed!

Good morning, Wyoming! -5:44am, June 1, 2010

Yes, that time should be accurate!  I wanted to get to Devils Tower soon after sunrise since that is when the light is best.  I headed in a northwesterly fashion out of Sundance towards the national monument area.  The light was very pretty along the way, but as I got closer to the monument, the clouds came in.  I was a little disappointed.  Devils Tower is in the middle of a broad valley, so it really must be quite spectacular to approach it on a clear day.  But for me it was too cloudy to see even the top of it.

I stopped to take pictures anyway, of course, going for a dramatic clouds against the rocks kind of thing.  It was still very early in the morning, so after I had driven up and around the monument, I stopped to eat some breakfast, and that’s when the clouds started to lift.  Awesome!  I took some pictures and waited a little longer.  Soon the monument was in full view, the sun was out, and only a few clouds remained.  Yay!

I went back up to the monument and did the 1.4 mile hike around the base.  It looks like it would be a lot longer to walk around the tower, I agree.  Even when you’re there, it seems like it should be a longer hike, but it’s only a 1.4 mile loop and it still stays quite far from the base except on the northwest side where you walk along a path cleared in the boulder field.  It was a very pleasant, easy walk, and I took a lot of pictures.

“Nailed it!”  That’s always my thought when I’m pretty sure I got some good photos, especially of a place I wanted to see or went out of my way to see.  And that was totally my thought upon leaving Devils Tower.  I was at a crossroads as far as my next step.  Should I head back to Sundance and I-90 and move on to Billings via interstate highway, or should I continue north on the two-lane highway to US Highway 212 in Montana and head west on that?  Either way, I was under the impression that I was not that far from Billings, Montana.  After some consulting of my paper maps, I decided to take the more scenic route through Montana, so I headed past Hulett, Wyoming, and on towards Alzada, Montana, near the very southeastern corner of Montana.

Montana is huge; Montana is beautiful! -3:46pm, June 1, 2010

I totally underestimated how long it would take to drive to Billings.  I thought it would be about half a day, and I had calculated based on getting up and out after seeing Devils Tower the night before, not heading out after a few hours spent at Devils Tower.  I had even planned to have a few things to do in the western Montana area on the afternoon of June 1, because I thought I would get there with plenty of time to poke around.  Not so!  I reached Billings in mid-afternoon and there were still hours to go before I would make it to my cabin reservation for the night.

But Montana!  Eastern Montana!  I loved it.  Even though the highway was just a two-lane nothing kind of road (or would be classified as such in Missouri), the speed limit was 75mph and I had to barrel along, knowing I was behind on time.  No stopping for photos, even though the scenery everywhere was amazing.  I would take a vacation just to travel around eastern Montana and Wyoming and photograph those landscapes.  Wonderful.  It’s hard to describe, but it’s exactly as if ancient mountains had melted into rolling plains, stark and empty of trees.  Some old mountaintops remain as piles of rock here and boulders there, and you get the sense as you pass them that they were grand and glorious in their day, millions of years ago.  Time has worn them down and new mountains have grown up in their stead, but this is what remains.  It is quite awe-inspiring to drive the roads through there.  I don’t know how you can live in such a landscape and not be constantly affected by it.

I drove along US Highway 212, entering and exiting the Custer National Forest and the Crow Indian Reservation and passing through many small towns that were very far apart and eventually hitting I-90 as it wound its way into my path.  I did not have any cell service during my time between Sundance and the interstate.  The West is not AT&T country, and it is certainly not AT&T 3G country.  But I did my best.

At one eastern Montana rest stop, the maintenance guy noticed my license plate and asked me where I live in Missouri.  I told him, and it turned out that he had lived for a long time in central Missouri, and only recently had moved to Montana, which he was not at all pleased with.  We had a short but interesting conversation.  I wish I’d traded names with him, but I forgot and soon I had to get back on the road to get where I was going.

Right before Billings, the Yellowstone River (a tributary of the Missouri river, which winds away further north) crosses the interstate and then it flows next to the highway for many miles before it heads south to the park at Livingston, Montana.  I stopped for gas and twittering at Billings and then headed back west again, really conscious of the time.

Outside of Columbus, Montana, there is a sign on I-90 that says Beartooth Mountains, with an arrow pointing south.  I looked, and there was my first glimpse of snowcapped mountains!  This never fails to take my breath away.  I gasp and want to stop and stare for awhile.  It is magical.  The Beartooth range was specifically amazing because, though I was driving under partly cloudy skies, the mountains were covered by clouds and looked dark and imposing over the grand valleys that I was passing through.

I was on target to get to Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park, outside of Three Forks, Montana, by 7:00pm.  That was the goal.  I had a reservation for two nights in a small cabin with no bathroom or bedding, and I was prepared for my stay.  I had been told over the phone to get to the park by 7:00pm to check in.  I was pushing it, driving at high speeds along the huge interstate that is I-90.  A pop-up summer thunderstorm came along and tried to slow me down, but I kept up my speed.  Another thunderstorm was not far behind the first, and it was in a very heavy downpour that my GPS directed me off the highway and down a narrow road at the base of giant cliffs and boulders to the state park.  I was elated as I pulled into the parking lot at 6:35pm, just to have my hopes dashed as I realized that the park building was dark and the last car had just left.  I had missed it!  I pulled out my bag of reservations and realized that the fine print instructed me to call if I was going to arrive later than 6:30pm.  I had not even seen that.  I cruised over to the campground to find a restroom.  It was still pouring rain.  A few RVs were parked, but either their owners were off somewhere else or everyone was sheltered inside, because the place looked completely empty.  I could see the cabins where I was supposed to stay, and they looked small and lonely at the base of the cliffs, far from the nearest restrooms in the downpour, and not exactly homey or cozy.

I assessed my options in the parking lot, staring at my maps.  I was supposed to be at the park for two nights while I roamed around western Montana before heading south to Yellowstone, but now I had nearly limitless opportunities at hand.  I could head north to Butte or Missoula on my quest to see some of the Bitterroot range, or towards Helena along the Missouri river.  I could head back towards Billings to Red Lodge to take the Beartooth Highway.  I could take a loop through southwestern Montana to Idaho and back, a route I’d been told was quite pretty.  I could go to Bozeman and see what is reputedly a very nice college town.

But all of those options required more sunlight than I had left in the day.  One nearby option remained: the Missouri Headwaters State Park, also near Three Forks, Montana.  This is, as its name indicates, the headwaters for the Missouri River, which is formed from the confluence of three rivers within a matter of feet.  I had already decided this was going to be a major stop for me on the trip, because I already have a fascination with the Missouri River.  Seeing its headwaters was very important to me, and even more so that it would be done at sunrise or sunset.

But it was still pouring rain.  I decided to head over to the park anyway, to take a look.  If the skies didn’t clear, at least I’d have scouted it for sunrise.  It rained the whole way, and the park was small and empty.  I parked at a lot and checked out the map.  I could see that there was a good view of the river up a small bluff from the parking lot, so I shouldered my tripod, opened my umbrella, and set off.

I don’t really know what I expected.  With summer rains, there is often the opportunity that the skies will part at sunset and dramatic skies will prevail, making for some good light at the best possible times.  It often doesn’t happen, but for someone in the right spot, it can be magical.  When I hit the top of the bluff, I felt pretty frustrated.  Other than a pretty couple of hours at Devils Tower, I’d passed up a lot of beautiful landscape only to arrive too late for my reservation at the state park.  I didn’t know where to go for the night.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet.  I was tired from driving all day, far from home, still a little sick (talking like a frog, coughing hard).  I stood on a bluff overlooking the beginnings of a river that has been important to me all through my life, and it was raining.  I felt a little bit pitiful under my umbrella, camera on the tripod, hoping something would happen.

And then something happened.

The clouds parted a little at the west, and the sun came through, and the light!  It was beautiful light.  It reflected on the waters of the confluence of the river, and though it was still raining a little (I kept wiping off my lens with my tissue t-shirt), the clouds were passing.  It was amazing.  I took photo after photo.

I don’t know what made me turn around, except that I felt vulnerable at the edge of the cliff, but at one point I did.  And behind me was a full rainbow, a complete rainbow.  Nearly a complete double rainbow.  I swung my camera around and shot more pictures, filling up cards.  I looked to the south, and the snowcapped mountains in the Abrasoka range were rosy with light from the setting sun.  It was all so beautiful that I cried.

The sun set and I came down from my blufftop perch, but the sky was still a little light.  I put away my camera and tripod, then walked down the road to a bridge over the Gallatin River.  The confluence I’d been looking at was just the Madison and Jefferson Rivers coming together, and the Gallatin River flows into it a few hundred feet to the east.  I stood and watched the water for a long while, until it was almost too dark to get back to my car.

I still had no idea what I was going to do for the night, but I had that feeling that I’d had the same morning at Devils Tower.  ”I nailed this!”  There was no reason to return to Missouri Headwaters State Park in the morning.  I did what I came to do.

I talked to my mom on the phone for a little while, and thought perhaps I’d head up to Helena so that I could go to Missoula the next day, but by the time we hung up, I realized how late it was.  I’d passed a cheap older motel in Three Forks and decided to head back to it.  The woman at the front desk was very friendly, very inquisitive, but I was soon in a nicely-sized though outdated room near the main office, backing up my stuff and getting ready for the day.  I had every intention of making it to Missoula and the Bitterroots on June 2.

It was a crazy day, but it ended with magical light, rainbows, and snow-capped mountains glowing pink.  It’s all worth it! -11:09pm, June 1, 2010

But I didn’t end up going.  This is the end of the first leg of the trip!  Here is a link to the next part of the journey.