It seems every year now we go on a road trip. While most people our age are flying to Europe or Hawaii, we continue to act like college age kids and drive around. At least we were ambitious this year.
First day we made the grueling ten hour drive to Calgary where we stayed overnight at my lovely niece Lyndy’s house. We were drooling idiots on arrival so not much to discuss about that night.
The next day we drove to Medicine Hat and picked up my wife’s sister, Marie, and her husband Russell. Originally we planned on going to Saskatoon and attending a pow wow, but as we drove north through Saskatchewan we collectively decided against it. So we stayed overnight at our nephew Tyler’s house, and found out they are due to become parents in January. The original plan also was to stay two nights with Tyler, but we let him off the hook with only one night.
Day three saw us drive south to Estevan, which is near the border. My wife and her sister were born in the area and lived on a farm in a little settlement called Roche Percee. The name is a French reference to sandstone caves in the area which have ancient native writing in them. And they also have a lot of graffiti, but they are cool anyway. They found the location of their old farm, but it was abandoned as the local river flooded a couple times and washed away everyone’s enthusiasm for living there.
The fourth day we crossed the border in North Dakota. We thought we’d go for breakfast once across the line, but then we found the nearest diner was hours away. Fun fact: ND has the fewest McDonald’s restaurants of any state. Not that we wanted McMuffins, but it might be an indicator of the scarcity of eateries. We finally found a Dairy Queen and were loading up on fries and burgers when Russell got to talking with one of his “native brothers.” Apparently there were Indian Relay horse races going on that afternoon nearby, so we headed over and watched. The sport consists of three riders racing horses bareback. After each lap they jump off their horse and onto the back of another bareback horse and gallop another dusty lap. The racers each do three laps. Some races were razor thin wins and everyone was cheering. Other races the rider fell off and the horse ran off without him, or once a guy jumped on a horse that wouldn’t run. It was great fun and I’d go to another event if I knew of one around here. That night, after the races, we gave up trying to get to South Dakota and stayed the night in Bowman. It isn’t far from SD, and it proclaims itself to be “God’s Country,” as seen on signs around town.
After a sad breakfast of white toast and jam with yogurt, we took off again for the most exciting day of the trip. First we drove south to the partially done giant sculpture of Crazy Horse. We got in for free because of Russell’s heritage, but we did pay a little extra to take a bus trip to the base of the sculpture. They’ve been carving at that hill since 1947 and they are maybe 1/3 done, refusing any help from the government that is offered. They think they will soon have computer-guided drills doing the precision work much quicker than humans and are willing to work in the cold and the dark. So maybe it will be done in our lifetime, who knows? We left Crazy Horse and went to Mt Rushmore. None of us was very excited about the four presidents as we are Canadian after all, and we’ve seen pictures of it ad nauseum. Still we parked, took a few pictures and left again, heading for Sturgis. The biker mecca was quiet, but there were signs of the annual rally everywhere in town. It seemed like every business had a skull or flames in their logo, and who can blame them? And we continued on to Deadwood.
We booked a cheap room in Deadwood, only to find it was like a 5 star hotel only not expensive. Downstairs in the hotel was a casino where they serve you free beer if you’re playing. Marie and Russell won hundreds of dollars right away so we went for dinner. The diner we ate at has been in business since 1877 at that location. We strolled around after and found most buildings had casinos in them and there was music and fake gun fights in the streets. They had several tours you could take, and there was even a stage coach that took you around town. I went shopping for a t-shirt and the boutique gave you beer while you shopped. My kinda town! If there was a major airport anywhere nearby this would be a destination. Since we never had time to take any tours or visit the graveyard to see Wild Bill Hickok’s grave, (or Seth Bullock’s), I will seriously consider returning here one day with a little more time on my hands.
The next day we headed to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, where Close Encounters of the Third Kind was filmed. There was a couple gift shops full of alien stuff and mementos of the tower itself. There was also a lot of Sturgis mentions there as it turns out the Sturgis rally has a run to Devil’s Tower every year. Then off we drove, through the waving grass of the ranchlands, speckled with cows and buffalo. We reached the Battle of the Little Bighorn memorial in Montana not long before it closed for the night, so we did a hit and run tour of the place. The battle took place over a huge area several miles long and wide. It also turns out that 350 of Custer’s troops survived the battle, so it wasn’t the total massacre it was made out to be. Custer’s body was dragged away and buried in West Point, but most of the fallen troops were buried in a mass grave with a big monument on it. The place was eerie and sad. There was a stone ring with inscriptions inside it where it told the events from the Indian point of view. The most chilling one for me was Custer smoking a peace pipe with the Cheyenne leader Stone Forehead where Custer promised never to kill another Indian, and Stone Forehead told him if he ever broke that promise he and all his men “would go to dust.” That night we drove to Billings.
Billings may be a nice town, full of beauty and fun, but our hotel room was terrible. The sign said there was a restaurant, a casino and a pool, but it turns out each of those things was not open. Our room was laid out crazily with the bathroom sink in the hall beside the door, and the door to the bathroom wouldn’t close. Our mattress had some kind of plastic liner that crinkled loudly every time you moved. Marie and Russell’s mattress had a big blood stain on it from the last murdered guest. Why we didn’t demand a refund and leave, I don’t know. That evening we went shopping at a Ross store and a Walmart, but the atmosphere in both places was bleak and empty. After midnight when we were all through crinkling our mattresses, the smoke alarm went off and woke us all up with a jolt. The next morning we tried to turn on a lamp but it started flashing and sizzling with electric danger so we left it off. After Deadwood, this was hell.
The next morning we created our own grand slams over at Denny’s then headed home. The border crossing north of Havre, Montana is called the Wild Horse crossing. The American side is a businesslike brick affair, bristling with flags and gates. The Canadian side is an Atco trailer with the lonely Maytag repairman of border guards in it. It took him a few minutes to come over and check us out, but when he did he joked around, looked at our passports and sent us off. I think as we were finishing another car pulled up behind us, but I could see there wasn’t much traffic there, and the crossing is only open from 8 until 5. It poured rain all the way back to Medicine Hat where we bid farewell to our in-laws. We pushed ourselves as far as Calgary that night and drove home the next day. Our trip home was going well when suddenly the highway stopped and we had to reroute through Kelowna, adding a few hours and plenty of snarled traffic to our drive.
5800 km and a week later, our holidays, like summer itself, are over.