Window Seat

After passing through Deadwood early in the morning, we settled in for a day on the road as we headed out of South Dakota. We only had one planned stop in Wyoming -- Devils Tower, seated a half-hour off the interstate just after crossing the border. The national monument has been a prominent feature of the local landscape (and folklore) for centuries, but is better known more recently for playing a role in Close Encounter of the Third Kind. In fact, the gift shops in the area sell a lot of trinkets featuring little green men and words like "taken" and "probed." We opted against heading directly to the monument and settled for some nice vistas from afar instead.

After that, it was back onto the interstate and off toward the more rural highways.

Before we left New York, Roy and I had sketched out a rough idea of most of the trip. Our next real destination after Devils Tower was the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, which meant we'd be only passing through Wyoming. Given that we had to split the drive across two days, however, this also meant we could do a little exploring. Happenstance allotted one of the final gigs I worked in New York to be with an actor whose wife grew up in Wyoming (a fact which, coincidentally, I only learned when I overheard him recounting a recent road trip they'd taken through her home state). Opportunity doesn't really knock any harder than that, so I asked for -- and he very graciously obliged to pass along -- her suggestions for some of the more scenic routes to take.

Wyoming, as it turns out, is gorgeous. And this is just what I was able to see from the window of the car.

This place, this land -- it's worth seeing.

Stones & Walls

I suppose one of my resolutions this year should have been to update this blog in a more timely manner. In any event, here we are, two weeks into 2013 and still crawling toward the finish line of my September road trip's recap. Selecting and editing photos is usually the most time consuming part of the process, but sadly, I've had the photos for this post ready to go since a few days after my last post. I don't really have any adequate excuses for the delay, other than a greater-than-usual willingness to succumb to other distractions. Maybe what I really need to work on this year is balance.

Let's dive back into the recap. After we left the Badlands, we headed for the Black Hills National Forest in southwestern South Dakota, most famous for being home to Mt. Rushmore. Before we headed into the forest proper, we stopped by the city of Wall. In another world, the quaint town would act as a border between the mundane and the fantastic, but in this one, it just plays host to a hybrid drug store/restaurant/tourist trap brimming with a charming kitsch.

5 cent coffee is hard to argue against.

Mt. Rushmore is one of those landmarks that's so well known to anybody who grew up in this country that we start to take for granted the fact of its existence. In fact, I didn't even have a tremendous desire to visit, but we had already trekked this far to see the Badlands, so it seemed silly -- maybe even a little disrespectful -- not to swing by on our way back west. It's not until you pull into the well-manicured lot, park, and walk through the terrace of flag-bearing columns that those famous faces loom into view and it finally hits you -- yup, somebody actually carved that into a fucking mountain. It's really there, sitting in the middle of a forest in South Dakota. No longer on a postcard or in cartoon form on some map of the U.S. you studied in second grade. And you know what? It's pretty damn impressive to behold. It avoids the pitfall of being smaller than you expected, but it's also not hugely imposing -- it's just the right proportion to hit you with the full force of its tangibility.

Of course, after that spiel, now the irony is that I can only represent it in the photos below. But take my word for it, it's worth checking out one day.

Once upon a time, the original designer imagined the heads to continue down into torsos. Then World War II happened and Congress stopped sending money. I won't say it was a timely war to get pulled into, but I think we dodged a bullet there.

Landscape lighting.

We did a drive through other parts of the forest to take in the sights before finally heading up to Roubaix Lake, a tiny campground in a forest filled with campgrounds, to spend the night.

That attractive cabin is not a cabin. It is an outhouse.

The next day, on our way out of the forest, we stopped by Deadwood, the historic early mining town so brilliantly brought to life in David Milch's eponymous show.

Today it's a small town with a few scattered tourist attractions, long tamed by the cresting tide of westward civilization. A lot of the old legends from wilder days past are still buried there, though, including Seth Bullock, Calamity Jane, and, of course, Wild Bill Hickok. We paid our respects at the cemetery on a large hill overlooking the town and the forests beyond.

Then it was off to Wyoming.