May 24 - Gillette, Wyoming - We survived the apocalypse

     We were close enough to Mt. Rushmore that we changed our mind and decided to go see it.  It was foggy as a glass of milk when we left Rapid City and it didn't change any when we got to Mt. Rushmore.  We paid the outrageous $11 parking fee and walked to the viewing area.  See that picture of me?  If you squint your eyes up real tight, maybe you can see just a hint of Jefferson just over my right shoulder.  Yeah, right…not a chance!  Fortunately, we saw it in bright sunshine a few years ago.  We went through the museum and watched a short movie about the building of the monument; all in all we had a nice time in spite of the fog.  I felt sorry for the busloads of senior citizens and Baptist church groups who came from who knows where and got to see only fog. 

     We left and drove through more constant fog to Devil's Tower, a hundred miles away, fully expecting that we wouldn't be able to see anything there either.  As we drove into the visitor's center the fog suddenly disappeared and was replaced by this beautiful blue sky.  It didn't lift, it just seemed to move aside for two or three hours, until Derek and Marcella were through doing their thing.  Cecil B. DeMille could have filmed it for one of his epic movies, like the parting of the Red Sea in the Ten Commandments.  What luck…it was unbelievable.  Put Devil's tower in the place where you scratched out the Corn Palace from your bucket list yesterday.  Adjectives like amazing, incredible and fantastic are hardly enough to describe it.  For me, it's right up there with the Grand Canyon.  We walked the mile and a half trail around the base gazing upward the whole time.  We talked to some climbers who climbed the tower yesterday, but held off today because of the weather.  It's over 900 feet high and comprised of vertical flutes and requires a lot of technical skill to scale.   We sat on a bench to rest and were joined by a man, a friendly sort, perhaps in his sixties.  As we were talking, he was fumbling with a piece of copper wire and a pair of little pliers.  As we got up to leave he handed Marcella the neatest wire hummingbird that he had formed right there in only a few minutes.  It's a great little gift and we have it stashed away in my ukulele case for safe keeping.  Devil's Tower was the very first national monument (1906) and I can understand why it was chosen.  I mean it, you need to make this monument a must see.  To use the vernacular, it's totally awesome!

     As we drove away, we could see black storm clouds looming on the horizon, not all that far away.  The sky got blacker and blacker and lightning zigzagged as we drove closer to the storm.  Shortly after we turned onto I-90 it all unloaded on us.  We had to pull over to the side of the road along with everyone else.  Neither Marcella nor I have ever seen it rain so hard in all our lives.  Pea sized hail also pummeled our car, accumulating on the road at least two or three inches deep, with rivers of water forming ditches in the ice. (It's the photo in the upper right...I haven't figured out how to move them around yet.)  I started to wonder if those wackos that were predicting the apocalypse were just off by a few days.  After about fifteen minutes it let up and we were able to drive away at a crawl, carefully driving over the ice on the road.  A few miles down the road and we were back in the clear.  The sky in our rear view mirror was black as midnight and looked amazingly like one of those storm chaser scenes that you see on the Weather Channel.  Glad it was behind us.

     At some time today we crossed into Wyoming.  Interestingly, the only rural roads that have speed limits here are the interstate highways - 75 MPH.  Otherwise you can go as fast as you dare on all the others.  We make pretty good time.

     We landed for the night in Gillette, Wyoming.  It has been quite a day.  Incidentally, we've spent every night so far in a Super 8 motel.  Every one of them has been perfectly clean, comfortable and inexpensive.  I think they've improved over the old days; every one seems to have been recently renovated.  They all have free internet and breakfast (which Marcella doesn't like, but I do).  Prices have varied between $39 and $59 and we belong to some Wyndham rewards program that gives us a free night for every eight that we pay for.
Derek