Up the Center of the USA and turning left at South Dakota

If cotton is King in the South, then corn is the Emperor of the Heartland. We drove through 500 miles of corn. Almost as soon as we crossed the Kansas border going up I-35, all we could see was corn. I felt like I finally understood the Omnivore's Dilemma, a book Sarah gave Drake for Christmas which is about the industrial food chain in the United States. One of the sections is how our entire food chain is based on corn - we are more dependent on corn than the Native Americans were. Think about it: Corn syrup is in EVERYTHING. We feed every animal we eat corn. And, it's not only food that we use corn for - but when the food bits are extracted from corn, then there are non-food uses for the byproducts. Plus, can anyone say ethanol? Well, anyone who raises food in this country from the corporate level to the family farm level knows a cash crop when they see it. It was truly awe inspiring to see the corn waving in the wind. One funny thing is that when the corn started in Kansas, it was 4 feet tall. The last small field we saw in Montana was virtually unrecognizable as corn because it was only 6 inches tall. One last thought: You think driving across West Texas is boring? Try driving across the corn fields of Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota.

When we "turned left" on I-90, the corn fields pretty much disappeared. The central belly of South Dakota is cattle country, and it is also very boring to drive thru since it's mostly flat and monotonous. Scenery wise things picked up when we arrived at the Missouri Valley. This is Lewis and Clark country - they canoed up the Missouri in a northwesterly direction for a great part of the journey. The valley is lush and green and looks pretty much like every other big river valley that I've seen. However, once you passed this area, then a new type of landscape appeared: Soft rolling hills - Drake compared it to green ski moguls undulating across the land.

Then the first really interesting scenery popped up: The BADLANDS. This whole area reminded me of the Palo Duro Canyon. First, it's unexpected. There are these gently rolling green hills, and then next thing you know - up pops up these sand stone hills that are eroded like Bryce Canyon and colored like the Painted Dessert. It's rather like suddenly stumbling onto a moonscape in the middle of an oasis.

We couldn't leave South Dakota without a visit to its most famous attraction - yes, we went to Mount Rushmore. I actually expected to be diasappointed after watching North by Northwest. (For you movie challenged: this is a Cary Grant movie partially set at Mount Rushmore. In fact, he and Eva Marie Saint climb over the carved faces trying to escape the villain. FYI - the National Park people wouldn't let them actually climb on the mountain - so they built mock-ups of the carvings. You see the carvings as gigantic in this movie.) Therefore, I expected the real thing to be sort of small and insignificant. Wrong. It was impressive, and some smart person designed the lead up to the view of the carving very cleverly. They have a Walkway of States with each state flag flying and granite pillars with the date of each state's admission to the Union. I liked Mount Rushmore. I ate ice cream, took pix, and looked for Cary Grant.

Before we left South Dakota, we stayed overnight in Deadwood (the infamous town where Wild Bill Hickok was killed). We ate dinner at Saloon 10 where he was killed (actually we were upstairs in a wonderful restaurant). Drake was very, very happy to gamble for $2 stakes at Blackjack. Deadwood was really very quaint, and it also has a great bike trail - the George Mickelson - which is a 109 mile gravel/asphalt road laid down over over railroad tracks. It looks like excellent daytime fun. Overall though, South Dakota is a total drag until you get to the southwestern corner.

We skirted the edge of Wyoming, and we actually were only 75 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, but we just couldn't see much fun in being in one of the most popular national parks over the 4th of July weekend. We really have raced up here because of the necessity of being in Oregon on July 15th for the big family wedding. As Drake put it: "We can only skim the cream" which means that I didn't get to go to any tacky souvenir shops or other whacko places that appealed to me - like the REPTILE GARDEN!!!!!

We drove completely across Montana. It has interesting scenery from one end to the other. We did get to go to the Little Big Horn Battle Field. Now, when I was in school it was called a Massacre - exactly as it was portrayed in 1876 in every newspaper across the United States. The National Park Service has really done an excellent job in telling the REAL history which was a battle won by the Sioux and the Cheyenne in a last gasp effort to continue living the nomadic life. While it's called "Custer's Last Stand", in reality it was the Last Stand of the Native Americans. The reaction to the battle by the whites was so ferocious thanks to the inflammatory journalism and the self promotion of George Custer, that the Indians had no chance of preserving their nomadic way of life after the battle with Custer's 7th Calvary. After Little Big Horn, Indians were hunted down mercilessly and forced onto reservations or killed - didn't matter whether they were men, women or children, and it didn't really matter to the soliders which choice they made. It was really fascinating to hear about how the Little Big Horn (or Greasy Grass Battle as the Indians called it) came about, the strategy employed by both the Calvary and the Indians while looking at the actual field of battle.

The battlefield is marked with white markers showing where each soldier was killed, and red granite markers mark the places where the Indians were killed. I think the most interesting thing I learned was that as a result of a forest fire in 1993, archeologists were able to recover over 5000 artifacts from the battle that had been hidden by the grasses and reconstruct a much more precise picture of the battle. There's a large monolith at the top of "Last Stand Hill" which lists the names of all the soldiers and civilians killed in the battle. Under it are buried the common soliders who died. (There's a marker for Custer, but he's actually buried at West Point). The Sioux and the Cheyenne have a monument which is a stone wall circle with a wire sculpture on one side.

During the Ranger talk, they called Little Big Horn one of the most important battles in American history, and after hearing the actual facts, I have to agree. It solidified the white opinion of what to do about "the Indian problem". After Little Big Horn, there was no more pretense of treaties with the Indians. The Indians were overwhelmed and forced onto land which they didn't have much if any say in choosing. History shows again and again that unfortunately when one culture is so overwhelming in numbers and weapons, the opposing culture loses everytime.

Montana was rolling hills covered with cattle. The 19th century cattlemen must have dropped to their knees thinking they had died and gone to heaven the first time they saw Eastern Montana. They did learn the hard way over the winters of 1886 and 1887 that you really can't raise cattle on open range in Montana. That's when Montana was finally fenced. The cattle look like raisins dotted on green muffins. There is so much water in Montana that the roadmap looks like the wrinkled skin of a really, really old person with the tracings of all the creeks and rivers on the map.

As you drive farther west, the landscape changes and the Rocky Mountains appear in various ranges. It was thrilling to go over Bozeman Pass - a famous immigrant pass over which wagon trains traveled. We joked that Drake was so concerned about the V-8 engine pulling the trailer over mountains when 150 years ago, oxen were pulling wagons over these passes. 20 mph then would have seemed miraculous - much less 50 mph. The evergreen trees were magnificent growing right up to the edge of the roadway towering over everything, and we started seeing our first aspen trees. I can't imagine ever getting tired of this scenery. Oh, and did I mention that the temperature has been hovering between 60 - 75 degrees? It's really tough to stand this weather - especially after Mississippi.

Tomorrow we roll into Bellingham. We've driven over 4000 miles since June 5th. I've never driven in this part of the country before. Not only is this country huge; it is magnificent. The resources are amazing. It is so obvious that people across this country work hard everywhere. We overheard a table of men in work clothes and boots casually say they were amazed at the number of people taking pictures of the landscape. One then said, "When I look out over this land, all I see is work." One person's playground is another person's work place.

We are both very excited about getting to see the place we've chosen to live for the next 5 months. We'll let you know how the great apartment/house/duplex/townhouse/condo search goes!