Rushmore, Powder River Pass, & fossils! (plus stories of a Wyoming waitress & Buffalo Bill)

no, our day was not done.  from Wall Drug, we swung south towards the Black Hills and some stone monuments.  to be honest, this felt to me a bit of an obligatory view.  like the Statue of Liberty (check) or the Hollywood sign (check).  not to disparage the art and effort, but Mount Rushmore was built specifically to attract tourists to the Black Hills (“Tourists soon get fed up on scenery unless it has something of special interest connected with it to make it impressive,” said he, who would be incorrect when it came to this particular tourist.)  it was not a government-sponsored undertaking but financed privately, & it sure did work.  this was the first stop for us that was overwhelmingly tour-group worthy, populated, & color-coded.

duly impressed. blue tone is because i forgot to change my camera settings. the stripes are because it had rained.

 we did the film, the museum, the gawk, and the walk.

Washington, as seen through a cave.

Mike's camera better captured the true colors of the stone.

 amazing to think it was mainly carved with dynamite.

here is the intended sculpture ~

we, also, saw the evolving Crazy Horse Memorial from the car window on the way to our overnight stop in Newcastle, Wyoming....it looked as if they still have a ways to go on that one.

so, Newcastle.  this stop was primarily selected for proximity after a long day of driving through the Badlands and the Black Hills & turned out to be the one mild disappointment on the trip (although, surprisingly, Great Falls, Montana, also kind of earned that distinction).  honestly, i think i was feeling a bit sullied by the unexpectedly gimicky feel of Mount Rushmore.  again, not that i didn't find it impressive and a worthy monument to four immensely important men in history - but i guess i thought i would feel more like when i go to the Smithsonian or something.  & i didn't.  i kind of felt like i was in Las Vegas.  so, that was a bit my state of mind upon crossing the border into Wyoming.

one-eyed dogie.

& Newcastle was, kind of, a grim town.  the weather was gray, the buildings were gray, the billowing smoke was gray.  energy is, we discovered, the name of the game in these parts.  we'd been crossing paths with coal trains as we journeyed west & revised our opinion of West Virginia being the main coal-producing state.  we'd also started seeing small oil derricks dotting the rolling green & tree-less hills.  everyone seemed to be in the business.

an oil refinery right in downtown Newcastle.

our motel (see, i'm a motel girl) was lovely, though.  a cheery yellow paint, boys had their own beds, nice garden to admire, and i had found the perfect place to eat - Donna's Diner.  we were getting in late, so i had even called ahead to make sure they would still be serving.  why, yes, indeed!  alas, when we arrived & pushed open the door, a private party was in full swing & no interlopers were allowed.  sadness.  the only other reasonable alternative after a long day of spotty eating was the local Italian restaurant, Isabella's Pizza.  (apart from the comparison to Lewis&Clark, this trip evolved into an in-depth exploration of pizza joints through the midsection of our fair country.)  which brings us to the absolutely fascinating waitress alluded to in the title of this blog.  nothing whatsoever to do with Buffalo Bill, it turns out, but just an unexpected encounter in this otherwise rather unsurprising little place.

maybe you had to be there - and be in the dreary yet perpetually optimistic state-of-mind that we four seemed to be occupying at this point in the trip.  it was late on a Sunday night; i was amazed to even still find a restaurant open in such a tiny town.  but Isabella's was - and there were even other tables of patrons when we arrived.  it was a wait-to-be-seated kind of place, with a waitress in a black suit & glittering blue eye-shadow.  quite a professional show.  until we started trying to place our orders.  no, just one scoop of soup is left in the pot.  sorry, but we only have one meatball left for the spaghetti.  nope, all the lasagna, our specialty, was devoured hours ago.  the 'one meatball' really tipped the scales for me & i giggled the rest of the way through the meal.  &, then, somehow, one of the orders (the spaghetti with single meatball, no less) was not noted & came to the table late & the waitress, in a baffling turn, appeared shortly afterwards, dripping wet from head to toe, at our table to inquire about the tastiness of our food.  she literally had rainwater rolling down her face.  granted, we had noticed that it had started to pour buckets of rain outside a few minute earlier (the chef had even run out to his car to put up the windows), but we did not expect this to mean our waitress would decide to go out for a quick rain dance.  when i remarked at her drenched state (really, how could i overlook it?  curiosity is a weakness.), she exuberantly replied that she had just moved from Nevada and could never yet resist a dance in the rain!  well, this did seem to be a logical if a bit loopy explanation.  frankly, i admired her spontaneity & liveliness.  (later, Mike observed that she had arrived at our table dripping wet after the meatball fiasco & had possibly dashed out into the rain in a fit of anguish over the overlooked plate of food.  this is entirely possible.  she did seem rather intense & very committed to her job.  at one point, she even praised the restaurant's owner for experimenting with dishes & combining unexpected noodle types with a particular dish.  it was all greek to me.)  whatever the case, i will never, ever forget her & wish her all the best in the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

completely switching gears, now, we resumed our adventures in the natural world, driving through the Bighorn Mountains towards our overnight in Cody, Wyoming!  i had debated routes across this mountain range &, after talking with some folks at the motel, decided to stick with the original plan of going across at Powder River Pass.  great decision!  our elevation change meant alpine flowers.  it turns out, i have many weaknesses....

 we, even, encountered SNOW!

&, typical Southerners, the boys frolicked across the ice in their flip-flops.

 this video might make you a bit dizzy - sorry!

 from alpine mountains to scorching desert.

we went off-road (well, gravel road) to find some

dinosaur fossils!

 it was hot, it was dry, the sun was beating down on us.

we felt like total paleontologists.

except we couldn't, for the life of us, figure out what was a dinosaur track

& what was just, i dunno, a hole.

in my paleontology gear.

hmmmmm.

maybe?

boldly searching for the elusive print.

the sign at the end of the gulch gave us permission to search for & take with us a handful of these fossilized invertebrates - pretty cool!

then, we were in Cody!  when we were, originally, going to fly in/out of Salt Lake City, i had booked us in Cody for several nights during the July 4th rodeo stampede.  we ended up being glad that wasn't what we most remembered about Cody.  you could do all the hype (like the choreographed street shoot-out in front of the old hotel; we lasted about ten minutes) - or you could spend most of your time at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which is really fantastic.  the best set of exhibits, we thought, were the ones about Bill Cody, but there were also good exhibits about the Native Americans in this part of the country, an impressive Western Art museum, a natural sciences wing, and more.

Buffalo Bill's equipage (photo by Mike)

always, the beadwork.

photo by Mike, looks like a cape?

for my mother.

detail of a tree in the courtyard.

example of the interior of a cabin, once Native Americans were forced to cease migration.

a beautiful painting in the art museum.  sorry i don't have the details!

i was quite taken with these two paintings.

the motel in Cody (ah, again, with the motels!) afforded us an opportunity to do laundry before heading into the National Parks, which was very nice.  the boys got to sleep in (for once) while i used a last chance for wifi to plan the next eight days & Mike returned to the Cody Museum to finish all the exhibits (i have always taken a rather rapid approach to museums....).  &, after his eggs & pancake, Joseph got bubble-gum ice-cream for breakfast.  Samuel chose chocolate&peanut-butter, yum!  (i was still enjoying many delightful cups of coffee, which would be reckoned with much later.)

&, soon, we were off for YELLOWSTONE!!!