We are back on the road and camping in the Black Hills!
And it is 65 degrees!
We are very happy campers!
Happy Campers
Our first keepsake
If you have been following our blog, you know that space in the Rover is very tight, so buying souvenirs is not high on our list, and well we aren’t really shoppers anyway. But, during our stay in Newcastle, we befriended a team of Archeologists who were doing surveys in the area. Every night we would ask what they had found and they would ask how the Rover was coming along and we would chat for a while. The night before they left, the team leader, Hillary, gave us a brachipod fossil.
If I have my facts right, which I may not so feel free to correct me, during the Paleozoic period (something like 450 million years ago)Wyoming was covered by a shallow sea, hard to believe since we are in the middle of a huge landmass. It left behind all kinds of marine fossils, like our brachipod, in layers of sandstone, shale and limestone.
So this little critter remnant is really, really old. What a great keepsake.
Cotton in Wyoming?
The Wyoming state tree is the Plains Cottonwood, a member of the willow family. They are called cotton trees because of the cotton like substance that surrounds the seeds. One person told me you could spin the cottony fluff, I’m not sure if they were pulling my leg.
Diamond L Slim
As reported on an historic marker
in downtown Newcastle, WY
As reporred on an historic marker in downtown Newcastle, WY.
Caught in a holding pattern
Have you ever flown somewhere, had a long layover followed by a delayed departure or a cancelled flight? Wait, walk the terminal, read, walk again, eat over priced fast food, read, stare at people, make up stories about people, maybe actually talk to some people, walk again…and repeat.
You alternate between relaxed, hey it’s a mini vacation might as well enjoy it, frustrated, don’t they know I have places to go, trapped, the terminal is only so big and there are only so many times you can walk around it…and repeat.
Last week the wee Rover sputtered out a complaint and refused to go. A few calls later and Darrell, the amazingly wonderful tow truck driver from Kregel Towing & Recovery, came to our rescue. He put the wee Rover on his very large flat bed and drove us to Outlaw Motors in Newcastle, WY where Jason, our night in shining armor, pretending to be a mechanic, was nice enough to squeeze us into to his schedule the following Monday.
Newcastle, WY, the gateway to the Black Hills (from the west), the wild west train hub town, a small town trying to survive, like every other small town in America, a town one would normally just pass through. We were in a holding pattern.
Was this a delay? A layover? A cancelled flight?
Small Rover issue? Catastrophic? End of trip?
We walked every road in town, we visited the local museum, we walked every road again, we ate fast food, watched TV, walked some more, played cribbage …and repeat. We felt relaxed, hey what could we do, we felt trapped, there are only so many roads to walk, and surprisingly we felt lucky…
A town we normally would have just passed through taught us about the local coal industry, it’s proud history and team spirit (Go Dogies), fed us pancakes at a community breakfast followed by a parade for the weekend mud bog, and quite simply reminded us what small town America is all about…people.
People raising their kids, trying to keep their community alive, helping each other through the latest bust while hoping for the next boom. People who offered us rides and use of their cars, people who waved at us when we walked by for the tenth time, and stopped what they were doing to chat, and the wonderful ladies at our motel who were amazingly kind.
And we met people like us who were here for just a while. A team of archeologists who were working on federal land who offered to share their dinner and stories, a couple of motorcyclists on their yearly ride, and a civil engineer here for 6 weeks working on a water project.
All this we would have missed, yet there is still the feeling of being trapped. Ok relax, read, walk, eat junk food…and repeat.
Oh, and the wee Rover is just fine. Some small plastic thingee broke. The new parts are in and Jason will have us back on the road again tomorrow!
Trains, trains, and well…more trains
A train every 6 minutes.
Can you imagine a town where a train goes right through the center of it every 6 minutes? How do they get any sleep?
Newcastle, WY is, well was, such a town. I had no idea that Wyoming was coal country, and oil country, but that is a different story.
In 1887, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad stretching its way across the continental US reached Nebraska and realized it was too expensive to bring the coal needed to run their engines from the east. If they were going to continue west, they needed a new source.
Coal had been reported in eastern Wyoming. The railroad investigated and the Cambria mine, and town, was founded. The railroad stretched its line west running a spur up to the mine. The junction of the main line and the spur came to be the town of Newcastle, WY.
For the next 40 years the coal from the Cambria Mine flowed down the tracks and through Newcastle. In 1928, the mine finally petered out, but not the coal industry. To the west large resources of coal were found right near the surface. These mines are the largest producers of coal in the US. This coal is still transported via train right through Newcastle.
Today, I am sitting on the hill above Newcastle, which happens to be the town cemetery and a beautiful spot to write, watching a coal train snake through town like a mythical monster from a Viking saga, Darrin counts 135 cars full of coal.
The trains don’t run every 6 minutes anymore, but they do run back and forth almost every 15 minutes or so, day and night.
Now that’s a lot of coal!
The Unflatness
Many year ago, my brother and I drove across country. He had just finished at the Air Force Academy in Colorado and needed to quickly relocate with his car to an east coast post and I had a few days off before starting my summer job. We jumped on the highway in his little 2 seat sports car and made a quick job of it, stopping briefly at a few sights. I could now brag that I had ‘driven cross country, right?
Boy was I wrong.
Traveling on the highway did not give me a true sense of the areas I had traveled across. I did not see the subtle changes every area had to offer.
Traveling slowly on the backroads in the Rover with the windows open (our version of ac) has given me a whole new appreciation for the land we have crossed. It is definitely not flat, although if you look across the horizon at times it certainly seemed so. And the tornado warnings made it seem like we were quite exposed.
The trip from Florida to South Dakota has included rolling hills, sharp winding gorges, rollercoasters (see previous post) and long slow ups and ups and ups with very few actual flat areas.
The countryside has included corn fields, soybean fields, other fields growing I know not what, large open spaces fenced for cattle, and large expanses of horse country. We constantly remark on how the landscape can change in 150 miles (our chosen daily limit in our putt, putt vehicle).
While at times the trip has been challenging, the heat, the long days, the many miles, learning to live on the road (that is a whole other post or two!) I feel very lucky to have travelled the backroads and had the chance to experience all that we have, so far.
Did we see it all? No way. We could spend months or even years in each area and still have much to learn. I at least feel that I have a flavor of the many landscapes and what they have to offer and a new appreciation for their unflatness. Perhaps on our return trip in a few years, we will see or experience even more or find a state that really is flat!
Black Hills Storm
Storms in the Black Hills can be quite intense. With all the flat prairie land to the west and south, the storms can build up some steam to run into the hills. The outcome is amazing storms that are intense and fast moving. Last night a storm skirted around us, just barely skimming our nicely sheltered camping spot and allowing for some great pictures.
ARB Awnings
As you can probably tell from the pictures, we designed and made most of our stuff because it allowed us to customize and because honestly it was cheaper. We did, however, purchase a few things because there was no way we could improve on the quality and design. ARB makes quality products that can’t be beat. (http://arbusa.com)
We purchased two awnings from them. The first larger awning is on the side of our Land Rover and the second, smaller awning, is on the back. They are incredibly easy to put up and stow away, they are free standing and so far incredibly rugged, we have been out in some pretty good storms. And, our favorite feature is ARB’s use of keder strips, which allows us to add our own ‘touches’ to the awnings.
Being from the north where the Mayflies can drive you crazy and the mosquitoes and horseflies can be big enough to carry you away, we had to have a screen room. We set to designing and sewing using the keder strips to attach it to the ARB awning and the Land Rover. We ended up with a completely enclosed area that is large enough for the two of us to hang-out in and cook, and it keeps the bugs out of our vehicle and tent.
Being true northerners, we couldn’t leave home without a woodstove. So again, we set to designing and sewing, and again used the keder strips to attach it to the ARB awning and the Land Rover. This ‘winter room’, as we call it, allows us to camp in at least three seasons.
All of these extra additions stuff into sacks and store in our ‘junk drawer’, the red box on the back door of the Land Rover (we’ll blog about that later).
Thank you ARB for such quality products! We will write another blog later highlighting some of the other items we also purchased from ARB.
No sleepwalking tonight!
After four wonderful nights at our camping spot in the Black Hills, we decided it was time to go to town. We were running low on a few essential items like toilet paper and Oreos😁 So, we got out the wash bucket, heated up the last of our water and cleaned ourselves up, we felt like the old trappers going to Rendevous, packed our stuff and headed to Custer, SD to stock up.
We hit all the important spots in town: we wandered the aisles of the grocery store choosing our staples and treats for the next week, snuck into a state park to refill our 5 gallon water jugs, sat outside the town library for free wifi so we could pay bills, order some things off the internet to pick-up at a later post office and reload books onto our tablets, treated ourselves at the local bakery, and hit the nearest lake for a swim with the fisherman, who were not at all thrilled to have us there.
Now to the most important part of our day, choosing a new camping spot. As you can tell by the map in the previous post there is a lot to choose from. We wanted to stay close to Custer because we wanted to visit Jewel Cave, but we wanted to be far enough up in the hills to ‘get away’. We chose our area, drove up in, and scouted for about an hour until we found the right spot. While we were scouting we noticed a few dug holes in the area, since this was gold country, we decided someone must be trying their luck. We thought nothing more of it, set-up, cooked supper and went for our nightly ramble.
As it turns out, we are camped right in the middle of the original Black Hills Gold Rush area where in 1874 Col. George Armstrong Custer, the same who would die shortly at the Battle of Little Bighorn, found gold in the French Creek River (near where we took the afore mentioned swim). During our ramble around our camping area we found at least a dozen old mines and another dozen shallow pits (no mom, we didn’t get too close).
We spent the evening reading about the gold rush and learned it was a very small, quick gold rush with the biggest impact being the Lakota’s loss of land to miners and the future battles it created between the new nation and the Lakota people.
We also tried to imagine what the miners life was like living in these hills. While the scenery is beautiful, living here year round in a tent or shack and working through the rock by hand must have been a very hard existence. I wonder how many actually found gold?
So, tonight we sleep in this beautiful spot amongst the shadows of the past. How cool is that?
P.S. If we don’t come home, we found gold is them thar hills! If not, perhaps we’ll try our luck in the Yukon!
