Road Trip Day 3: Cody, WY to Custer, SD
Distance driven:411 mi
Time including all stops:12 hours 21 minutes
We got up and took our tickets to the general store across the parking lot. It had a back room for Comfort Inn’s complimentary breakfast. It was essentially the same food that we had had in Utah, but the room was decorated like an old saloon. There was a hug wooden bar with a mirror behind it. The walls had mounted heads of buffalo and elk, and period posters and announcements. There was a wooden player piano, which an employee activated several times.
We sat at a long table covered with a red and white checkered table cloth, and chatted with a couple from Iowa that sat down near us. After eating breakfast and browsing the Indian and cowboy artifacts in the gift shop, we hit the road. We drove past rocks with signs explaining what pre-historic age they were from. Then we got on the “low road” to Buffalo, Wyoming. (The highway we were on split to the north and south to go around the mountains, so you have to choose your road). It still wound its way up into the hills of the Bighorn National Forest. I drove while my mother monitored the speed limit signs and read them out loud if she sensed from my speed that I hadn’t seen them.
The drive to Buffalo took much longer than I had anticipated. As much as I wanted to change drivers at that point, there was no place of interest to eat in Buffalo and gas seemed expensive. So we drove on another hour to Gillette, Wyoming. We were about to get off at the first exit when we saw a sign for an A & W restaurant at the second Gillette exit.
A & W is a brand of root beer, a soft drink that is sweeter than regular soda in a way that apparently only Americans can love. All the foreigners I’ve met think it tastes like cough medicine or worse. My mother and I, however, were very happy to see this restaurant. There used to be one in Fillmore, CA but it closed years ago. This A & W didn’t have carports or women on roller skates delivering food on trays to hang on the car windows as we saw in other parts of Wyoming between Cody and Gillette, but it did have great root beer floats (root beer with ice cream) served in ice-cold glass mugs. Yum.
After lunch, we drove on I-90 and didn’t make any stops except for fuel and the bathroom until we arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota. We drove down the main street past Wild West saloons and gambling halls and parked at a meter near the Visitors Center. It was already about 4 p.m. We went directly to the Adams Museum, a treasure trove of items from the history of Deadwood and his personal collection of objects from around the world. We saw guns and photos of Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody not far from Chinese vases, Jewish yarmulkes, German history books, and African spears. Although the museum was only the size of a large house, we were there for an hour.
After the museum, we drove up a hilly road to Mt. Moriah Cemetery to see the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. We left shortly thereafter. We got on Highway 385 south, passing fir trees, lakes, rivers, campgrounds, and tourist traps of the Black Hills.
We had decided to go directly to Crazy Horse first, and then to see Mt. Rushmore the next morning on our way to Minneapolis. We got to Crazy Horse at about 6:30 p.m. We could see it plainly from the gate, the majestic face and lines of carvings which we hope one day will be honed into Crazy Horse’s hair and the head and mane of his horse.
We walked quickly through the Indian museum to the restaurant since it closes at 7:00. I had a Native American taco, an openface dish of meat, beans, lettuce, tomato, cheese, salsa, and guacamole on traditional Indian fry bread. Mom had a tuna salad. It was all tasty, reasonably priced, and in a room that Mom said was shaped like an Indian longhouse (meeting house). We also had a view of Crazy Horse through the window.
After dinner, we walked through an exhibit on Korczak Ziolkowski, the man who started the Crazy Horse project after seeing the Mount Rushmore project. There was also a lot about his wife, Ruth, who continued his work after he died until her death a few years ago. The museum was nearly empty, which made it feel even more quiet and spiritual than usual.
We barely saw one-fourth of the Indian museum before it was time to sit at the wooden benches outside to get ready for the “Legends in Light” show. Crazy Horse was illuminated in multiple colors while Lakota Indian music played. Then we saw laser lights projected onto Crazy Horse telling the story of Crazy Horse, Korczak Ziolkowski, and Native Americans in general. This too was set to music. I thought it was all beautiful; Mom thought it was just okay. We left around 9:00, drove 4 miles south to our third Comfort Inn for the night, and went to sleep.
Tags: Road Trip USA, Travel, U.S.
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