🗽American Odyssey Tour ~ Leg#10, Pt. 3: The Badlands & Devil’s Tower

[Leg #10 is a long one, covering the three weeks Robyn Scott and I traveled together, so I’m splitting it up into more manageable sections – kf]
Day 9 (7/23/15) Keystone, SD:

We spent a quiet night in our Keystone, SD hotel with the elevator that shuts down at 10:30. I was determined to gently question the mousy receptionist/owner to figure out why she felt it had to be turned off. After making tentative friends with her, I then expressed my concern at the time restriction, especially due to my handicap that makes stairs not really an option. When asked what happens if we’re later than that, her shocked response was “What could you possibly do past 10:30? Everyone is asleep by then!” Wha? What world do you live in lady? Mt. Rushmore’s evening program doesn’t end until around 10pm, then you have to resist the gift shop that’s open until 11:30 and negotiate the crowded parking lot and drive 20 minutes back to town. There are Keystone bars open late, too. Crazy! The site says it’s a 24-hour desk. Riiiiight. But after our little chat the bizarre lady did reserve the parking spot by the steps for my van with an orange parking cone thingy. Did I say there weren’t any designated handicap spots? We are deep in the wild west woods.

My travel oxygen concentrator died on our last night in Chicago and I was too tired and unsure what to do to deal with it, as I had a large, home-model backup. Plus we were on a set time-line to leave Chicago and get on the road. I also hesitated because new ones are $3,000. Yikes. This trip was already costing a lot, especially with having to replace my transmission at the outset. Thing is, I can only use the portable concentrator in the car, as the other draws too much power. Did I really need oxygen in the mountains? Well, yes, it helps a great deal. With ten days in the Rockies looming, major lack of cell service (bloody AT&T) and lack of major towns for replacement or repair, Robyn talked me through the decision to try and replace mine. She’s right. I don’t want to curtail the trip and have to leave my favorite mountains because of no concentrator. That’s what credit cards are for, right?

I was in spotty cell service heading into the Badlands yesterday so I once again relied on the good graces and excellent people skills of my dear friend Kathy Goodman. She did hours of research from her home in Salt Lake City and found me a medical supply store in Rapid City that could see if my concentrator just needed repair. It was close to where we were in Keystone so we went today. Turns out my old one was too wonky to fix. The guy sympathized with my reluctance to buy an expensive new one and offered to rent one to me if I ship it back, or apply the rental price to purchasing it if I choose to keep it. What a great guy! Jared even gave me a barely used one, and offered to knock another $200 off if I bought it. If you are near Rapid City, SD, Performance Respiratory is the place to go. Tons of machines, chairs, ramps, breathing masks, and a repair shop, besides everyone in there being sweet as heck. The slight downside is that the van’s cig lighters are a bit low wattage so the machine keeps switching to batteries. They only last 2.5-3 hours so Jared gave me two extra and a desk charger as I’ll use all of them while we’re in the mountains and recharge at night. *sigh*. My world. But now I’m good to go again.

Click on image to zoom in to read

So, back to Keystone and beyond to do some of Custer State Park in the Black Hills. We had figured we’d drive in a loop around and then go to Mt. Rushmore’s evening program that evening. Kathy Goodman and her husband Greg had already arranged to meet us on the Odyssey and were flying in tonight to join us for a day at the Crazy Horse Monument tomorrow. We were looking forward to that, as we had stayed with them en route to Yellowstone last year, on Robyn’s last trip over here from Australia, so she had already met them.

We had risen above the plains to enter the Black Hills yesterday evening to get to Keystone. It is the closest small town to both the Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments with some hotels and services. The hills are pine covered and fairly dry. It reminded me of the Sierras in California with granite boulders amongst the pine-needle covered forest floor, winding roads and tight valleys with occasional stunning vistas. They have a unique method of corkscrew roads and bridges to get you up hills and you go through some tricky, one-lane tunnels accessed at a sharp bend where it’s hard to see if someone is coming up the other side. Adventure in driving! The second tunnel framed our first view of far-away Mt. Rushmore. We detoured down a quiet forest service road and got away from the few other vehicles, except for one joy-riding motorcycle guy who said he came up here to just sit on a boulder and listen to the wind in the trees. Nice. We got a good look at Mt. R through a gap in the tress and decided later it was our favorite because we were all alone. Clark and Lewis discovering an ancient rock carving on their way to the Pacific! (You may remember that we are Clark & Lewis setting out to find the Pacific (again) sourced from some silliness on our Yellowstone trip together. We like to get silly.)

Unique corkscrew roads and bridges to get up the steep hill.

A few miles back up the main road and we reached a view point where the scooter could come into play. Good view of Mt. R, probably ten miles away. It looked smaller than I’d imagined it. I guess all the photos or film I’ve seen show it close up. By this time we had only gone a few miles in on the scenic Iron Mountain road but it took 2 1/2 hrs. Hard to gauge these type of roads where you are forced to go slow and want the leisure to pull over. We were hungry and sunset was approaching so we instead of looping, we backtracked to Keystone, passing a small RV trying to haul a huge trailer up a hill and failing. Nutty on this sometimes steep and winding road. Nowhere to turn around either. A truck had pulled over to help. Good luck with that.

Smaller than I’d imagined

We lucked out and found a brand new Himalayan restaurant in Keystone. I haven’t written about our food finds in a while which should give you some indication of their lack luster appeal in this part of the country. We could have eaten out better in Chicago but we were too busy or tired, the same that happened in New York City for me and Devon. We ate whatever was close by when we realized we were famished. I’d already discovered that a great deal of the upper mid-west seems to be held in the grip of the Walmart mentality, and the food options are dull, too. Old school steakhouses, questionable Chinese or Mexican joints or the fast food chains rule. I did have a tasty meal at that Cracker Barrel in Sioux Falls though, because I love southern food and they do it pretty well for a chain restaurant.

Getting bigger!

We finished up dinner quickly to get to Mt. R for the evening program. Lovely dusk. Full on parking. 3,000 people attending at least. We came up past a gift shop and information center and onto the Avenue of State Flags that frames the almost-darkened monument behind, the last deep blue leaving the sky. We split up for a bit and I took the elevator down to amphitheater. My cell phone didn’t work (of course) so Robyn never found me. I watched an emotional ranger give a rousing patriotic talk and then the very patriotic film describing the reasons each president was chosen and lighting up each one as it did so in the now complete darkness. No moon either. The stars around and above were beautiful, the Big Dipper hovering above the carvings. Afterwards the ranger called up all current and retired Service personnel, from the armed forces to fire fighters and paramedics, to thank them for their service. During that lengthy honoring I thought about the longevity of the monument since it is stone. I saw a TV show once that said Mt. R and Hoover dam would be the longest survivors of the American civilization. All else would eventually turn to rust or break down and disintegrate. Like the pyramids surviving the Egyptian Empire. So I’m looking at our legacy to the future. I bought a T-shirt on the way out.

Would we make it back before the elevator Nazi shuts her down? Because we killed time browsing the gift shop for my $44 shirt, exiting the parking lot was easier but I called anyway (on Robyn’s phone…grrrr AT&T) at 10:25 and the woman said not to worry. We’re pals now because we are considerate guests who took the time to talk with her!

Day 10 (7/24/15) Keystone, SD:

We are still lurking in the Black Hills of South Dakota between visits to two monuments of huge stone carvings. I wonder what far off future generations or alien visitors will think of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Will they be our Stonehenge, shrouded in unanswered questions? What will they make of four men’s heads in one place and a huge, pointing man on half a horse in another? Will they look for where he’s pointing? That is assuming there will be future humans that far down the line. Even if climate change does make life difficult for humans, I still think some of us will survive and evolve. We obviously have ancestors who lived through the last 7 or so cataclysmic events, depleting 90% of the species each time as science seems to believe. Here’s hoping Mother Nature cuts us slack again although some of my friends think extinction will be our just desserts for ignoring, disavowing and contributing to atmospheric warming with our greed for fossil fuels and the greenhouse gases they emit.

I awoke feeling tired and ditzy. The altitude was getting to me and my already compromised lungs. I had forgotten to prep with lots of water, electrolytes and altitude tinctures a few days before entering the mountains. The rented oxygen concentrator helps though. So I  stayed in to sleep while Robyn went for coffee and a cave tour. I love caves, but they aren’t very handicap accessible. The Goodmans had gone for an early morning hike at Mt. Rushmore and luckily they were running late so my sleep-in was no big deal. This area is a time vortex!

They came to the hotel and we had a little chat while waiting for Robyn to return from her spelunking adventure. It was so fun to see them. This is the second time I got to see Kathy on the Odyssey as she was in Dallas when I was there and graciously organized the tea party that 13 of our old classmates attended. She is the best.

We all headed off to the Crazy Horse monument to spend the afternoon. There was an historical film we watched first describing how the Black Hills are sacred to the Sioux peoples. Sioux is a blanket term. The different tribes in the area call them selves Lakota or Oglala and so on, but they all agree that the Black Hills are sacred to everyone, to the point that they would not war against each other there. I find that oddly civilized considering they were occasionally warring. Spirituality trumps desire for war, instead of being a cause for it.

Sacred Black Hills

The film then described how the carving came about. As I understand it, there were a few Lakota tribal chiefs led by Chief Henry Standing Bear (‘Mato Naji’) who wanted a monument like Mt. Rushmore to show “the white man that the red man has great heroes, too.” Korczak Ziolkowski, who had worked with Gutzman Borgland on Mt. Rushmore was approached to do the job. It took him eight years to become enamored with the idea, but he then designed and engineered his vision, and in 1948 set out to the remote spot and began to blast the outer layer of soft rock with the intention of reaching the hard stone beneath to carve. He worked alone while his wife raised their growing family nearby. Once his sons were old enough they joined him in the work. Those years were spent removing tons of rock to shape the basic form. Standing Bear wanted to fund it by influential Americans interested in honoring the American Indian. Later the government offered to help fund the project but Ziolkowski declined, thinking that his dream of having a cultural center, university and medical center would be squelched. Instead his other family members set up a welcome center and gift shop, using the proceeds to fund the venture and basically live on. This is where the story gets a bit odd.

The family have been working on the project now for 67 years but with no more than 7 men maximum ever working the site. Others have questioned where all the money from the attached culture center is going and why isn’t it being used to hire more workers. It’s a non-profit but they pay their staff and the family runs the foundation. There’s an odd exhibit at the sprawling center devoted to the Ziolkowski’s home during Korczak’s lifetime showing great opulence for the times, so one begins to wonder. At present some scholarships are being provided to the local Native children though. The government made a second offer but it was turned down by the family, citing the same reasons as before. The attendance is no where near Mt. Rushmore’s so maybe they are justified in hiring only 7 carvers.

There are other questions raised. Some local tribal members are vocal about carving the sacred mountain and think Standing Bear overstepped his place instigating the memorial. I doubt work will cease though in it’s present state. There is a long way to go; only the face was rendered complete in 1998. Ziolkowski died in 1982 before seeing even that accomplished. Imagine a lifetime of chipping away rock and never seeing the result. He must have known it wouldn’t be finished. I felt like an ancient Egyptian observing a pyramid as it arose, or a medieval traveler passing a gothic cathedral under construction, knowing that it wouldn’t be finished in my life time either. A rare feeling in a world where everything happens quickly and can be delivered overnight.

What the monument will look like in about 100 years. Click on photo to read some of the statistics.

A picture window looking out to the memorial site about a mile away does provide a splendid view of the huge sculpture. It will be Crazy Horse, sitting on a horse, his back and the rear torso of the horse melding with the mountain while he points outward to answer the question supposedly put to him once, asking him where were his people’s lands. His answer was to point and say, “My lands are where my dead lie buried”. The front of the horse will be visible, its shoulders and front legs prancing out of the mountainside, one leg lifted and the other resting at the base where a reflecting pool will lie. Parkland and a Native American University and Cultural Centers will eventually occupy the rest of the Memorial. The immensity is apparent when you read that Mt. Rushmore would fit on Crazy Horse’s forehead.

I was hungry and grabbed a cheap hotdog at the counter, skipping the deserted restaurant. There weren’t hardly as many people here as made the trek to Mt. Rushmore. While in there, a Christmasy, jingling noise steadily approached and then appeared  a mountain of a man kitted out in a bright yellow, white and black ceremonial outfit, with feathers and bells on. He strode over to the cooler, grabbed a coke and left. Wow. Turns out he was the dancer outside on the large patio area and his performance was about to begin. He spoke to the gathered crowd, telling a few jokes about silly things tourists ask him and then the history of his people and the dance he was about to do. First a grass stamping dance commemorating people stamping down the grasses to place their tents. Then a prairie chicken dance, honoring it’s spirit and perfectly mimicking the animal’s signature head bobs and movements. Last was the Snake, or Friendship dance, where he pulled out many audience members to help him in a type of conga line of people holding hands and following his snaky path twisting around the stage. All this with Crazy Horse in the far background, his roughed out arm about to point to his lands.

We had spent hours here, and left as dark clouds were lowing. Had to nix plans to take one of the Custer State Park drives back to Keystone. Time vortex again! We decided to stop in the small town of Custer for dinner. As we pulled into the parking space in front of a good looking restaurant on the main drag a ferocious hailstorm let loose, trapping us in our vehicles. Ice balls the side of quarters, nickels and dimes rained down upon us, giving sharp reports on the wind screen that startled us and made us giggle when we were relieved to see the window didn’t break. Robyn had already been out of the van when it hit. I was in process and ducked back in, trying to communicate to her to stay under the store front eaves but she thought I was gesturing for her to come back so she got a bit pummeled getting back in. It was exciting though, and stopped after a few long minutes. We had our farewell dinner and then watched a fabulous lightning show outside on the horizon as the storm drew further away. What a great day, even with the sad goodbyes to the Goodman’s.

Day 11 (7/25/15) Keystone, SD to Sheridan, WY:

Bye bye Keystone and weird elevator Nazi who shut her down at 10:30 pm! At least she offered us the choice parking spot as a gesture of kindness. The elevator curfew did stress us out a bit, though. Oh well, c’est la vie and we move on to explore the old stomping grounds of wild west outlaws, miners, and cowboys. We pointed northwest and headed for Deadwood, South Dakota Territory, c. 1875.

The Garmin GPS Locator and my phone charger for the car have decided to act up, or did the borrowed concentrator blow the cigarette lighter? Rats. Thankfully I brought my Rand McNally Atlas and I can refer to that. We are headed north-northwest to Montana today, still winding through the pine forested Black Hills, our first stop Deadwood and the cemetery there to visit the grave of Calamity Jane who finally in death had her hearts desire and is buried next to Wild Bill Hickok. This was a true wild west town and they capitalize on it still. Driving up from the south we encountered road works which meant we entered town slowly on dirt roads just like a couple of rambling cowpokes between cattle drives or green immigrants hoping to strike it rich in the gold fields or rough miners bent on spending their hard-earned gold dust on rotgut whiskey and loose women. Back in the day Deadwood had 120 saloons, 118 gambling halls, 110 beer gardens, 35 brothels. and God knows how many outlaws and gunslingers. Wild Bill was gunned down during a poker game just a few weeks after arrival. His hand held a full house of Aces and Eights, forever known now as the Dead Man’s Hand.

Deadwood

There was Dora, epitomizing the madam with a heart of gold, and poker Alice, a refined British lady who found herself broke and turned to poker to support herself instead of the only other options, prostitution or dance hall dancer. To say that women pioneers had a rough life is very below the mark. Many had small children and/or had to deliver babies en route. The treks were arduous and the dangers constant from weather, flooded rivers, steep hills, and cranky natives. Husbands died in from accidents, disease, or ambush, leaving the wives most often with children. What could she do but continue on? No trains to head back east. If they couldn’t stick with the homestead plan, what was left for them to earn a living? Not many washer women or teachers were needed yet. But brothels and dance halls were in need of female workers. My heart and respect goes out to those poor unfortunates.

We came into the town proper and moseyed up her well-kept main street, still filled with bars and legal gaming halls, although today they seem run by Tribal Indians. How appropriate! Later I learned that Deadwood stayed a bit frozen in time as America aged around it, keeping their brothels open and neglecting to follow laws against prostitution. They saw it, as always,  providing a service to the area, and it kept the economy going. Finally a zealous raid shut them down in 1980 and a later fire both caused the town to spiral in decline. In 1989 they petitioned and won the right to have gambling again, the first city to do so outside Nevada and Atlantic City. It was called the “Deadwood Experiment” and it totally revitalized the city center, a phoenix rising from the flames.

Why there’s Calamity and Wild Bill there!

Lots of motorcycles here and I’d seen many on the road. We were near the town of Sturgis which hosts a huge biker rally every year. So the sidewalks were peopled with grizzled bikers and smokers, local characters and tourists, and the occasional historical actor in 1880’s garb. With the renewed gambling and bars, it seemed a sanitized but not far-off version of the original.

You may remember a picture of me in a purple, double baby jogging stroller back in Key West, Florida when my scooter battery died. It could only be stored next to the scooter ramp in the van and it made getting the ramp in and out a hassle. Since strong, young man Sean wasn’t accompanying me anymore to the mountains and it was too unwieldy to ask Robyn to push, I realized it was time to jettison, which we did in Spearfish at a woman’s thrift shop that looked more like her excuse for hoarding. I tried to give it to a women’s shelter but they were elusive. Hungry after these efforts and wanting to eat quickly and get on the road we visited a McDonalds which I’m proud to say is the only time I was tempted to do so on my four and a half month journey.

Speaking of temptation, our next detour to Montana was to see Devils Tower. Remember this from the movie ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’? Richard Dreyfus goes through a lot of clay, paint and paper depicting his incomprehensible dream of a large, lopped off rock mound in the shape of an upside-down trash bin. I had noticed it was near by, either by seeing a postcard or on the map and wanted to swing by. The tourist stop attractions on the Odyssey are very random because I was planning big picture stuff before the trip and left the micro plans to fate. This has worked out pretty well on the whole, letting the days evolve as they wish to within the confines of the miles needed to cover. It meant I didn’t stress when I didn’t get to see something and was pleasantly surprised by the things that presented themselves.

We had our first sighting of Devils Tower miles away, and even from this distance the oddity of it dominated its surroundings. Pulling closer was eerie as it has no equal except maybe the monoliths of Monument Valley, but here it stands alone, a great, round, flat-topped lump with neatly molded, vertical columns of photolite porphyry that formed that shape as it cooled. One theory, and there are a couple, is that it was a failed volcano that erupted up to the earths crust and then lost its oomph to break through, eventually cooling within the cylinder of the volcano tube. The land lifted and softer rock eventually eroded leaving the harder core to stand alone. It’s kinda cool that scientists don’t know for sure.

One of the best parts of the park surrounding DT is the protected prairie full of Prairie Dogs. These little critters once covered huge areas but ranching and farming interests clashed with them and they now only cover about 2% of that habitat after severe eradication. We were able to pull over and watch them forage, sit up to check for trouble and scamper about a bit right by the van. Robyn was enthralled.

 

We wound up to the base through a bit of woods and joined busloads of Chinese tourists in the car park. I made them giggle when I pushed to the front of a very long line as a handicapped person heading for the handicap bathroom stall. I have no shame when it comes to this and people let me! On the way out I murmured “sheh-sheh”, one of only two Chinese words I know, meaning “thank you”. At the first shock at hearing their language, the women grinned broadly and nodded to me. I’m glad they didn’t mind me pushing in, but long lines aren’t fun. The altitude was still getting to me although I had started to feel better from hydrating and the oxygen.

 

We headed back out to the rolling prairie early evening. Large earthen barrows the size of grocery stores appeared and we speculated they were prehistoric mounds from the extinct Giant Prairie Caninesaurus Rex. Haha! At sunset we had a fabulous first sighting of the foothills of the Rockies on the horizon and a bit of Yellowstone beyond which made us all nostalgic as we had taken a lovely trip there last fall. Ah, how I love the mountains! Our dilly dallying in Deadwood, Spearfish and Devils Tower kept us out later then we thought and I realized we wouldn’t make Hardin, MT tonight. Luckily Super 8 let me cancel on short notice and I booked into a Best Western in Sheridan through Hotels.com. Upon arriving we discovered that Hotels.com hadn’t passed on my ADA request so the nice gal at the desk gave us two King rooms instead. Sweet! Exhausted, with not much open or appealing food wise, we opted for some of my emergency soups in our rooms. Handy!

Evidence of prehistoric Giant Canineasaurus Rex

Day 12 (7/26/15) Sheridan, WY to Great Falls, MT:

We had 348 miles to go today. We knew we’d make good time barreling down the road today as this was more flat country on straight interstate highways that let you go 80 m.p.h. which usually mean 85-90 to the traveler, right?

The route through south central Montana was bland, more treeless plains with a slight roll to the them so you get less sweeping vistas. There was little evidence of humanity, the map revealing well-spaced, tiny dots of congregation barely worth calling a town, strung along secondary roads bypassed by the interstate. This I’m sure led to their decline. Once we pulled off to look for gas and went 10 miles in to find everything all boarded up on the tiny 2 block square center. We amused ourselves by considering buying all the shops there and recreating the Wall Drug phenomenon except with craft beers, foodie cafes, and other entertainment as relief from the somnambulant plains. Laughter aside, we did feel sorry for them and admired the perseverance of those who stayed. I got the feeling they had no financial choice in the matter.

I had started feeling pressured to catch up on my travelogue on Facebook, of which I was at least 10 days behind. I had been using my imagined responsibility to the audience there to spur me to write in my spare time, although the whole process was enjoyable. Writing was now often done in the car during lack luster scenery, because writing up my impressions of the day for an hour at bedtime had become too hard. I was increasingly tired now on the trip, unable to do a full recharge rest before continuing. I only had energy to enjoy the day’s activities then hit the hay at night. Plus I was missing out on the few interesting things to look at and goofing around with Robyn, so I gave up travel writing and started just taking notes and be in the present. My last posting was a brief note explaining to everyone on Facebook they’d have to wait. The response was very supportive.

Freed up now, I turned my attention to fixing the Garmin and cell charger. Turns out the ends of both of them had come unscrewed and the parts were still laying on the carpet by the 12-volt cigarette lighter outlet, found inexplicably all the way down at floor level and hard to reach. In this case the short fall and carpet saved the parts and I was able to reunite them with their respected devices and presto! They worked again! It’s s satisfying to identify and fix a problem, isn’t it?

Since we were into eating up miles, we skipped a Native Peoples pictograph cave I’d read about in a brochure touting the limited attractions of the area. I love pictographs though, and have seen Anasazi ones across the Southwest. It was just too far from the interstate highway. We had another nostalgic moment for last year’s trip we took together when we saw the turn-off for Yellowstone and the Tetons, and fleetingly wished we could take a wild detour to see them again, but…no.

Rockies in the distance

We turned left onto Hwy. 87 and the topography got a bit more varied. We were again in the watershed going down to the great Missouri River above whose banks the city of Great Falls sits. Once there we gratefully pulled in to the hotel down near the river for the night, only to encounter atrociously slack staff who seemed unable to conceive of basic customer service. I attribute that to bad management. One girl was eager but very young and inexperienced. Besides clueless management, we speculated that the mind-numbing flat plains had had a great slowing effect on the populace here. Maybe all the smart ones fled the area? LOL. Reminds me of someone’s explanation of why New Englanders are considered stubborn and reticent. They figured it was because the adventurous ones left back in the day and moved west, leaving the cautious behind. I’m generalizing of course, and we were just joking around to relieve our frustrations at the staff.

The best relief was a great dinner at The Celtic Cowboy restaurant. Yelp came to the rescue yet again! We split orders of Irish Corned Beef and Cabbage, and Bangers (sausages) and Mash (potatoes), and quaffed some great beers. In my distrust of the hotel staff, I had taken my scooter key after leaving the scooter at their front desk (long story) and unwittingly dropped the key under our table at the restaurant. Luckily the nice manager there dropped it off at the hotel for me when they closed. Here’s an example of our hotel staff: they never called me to let me know when the key arrived, even though they knew I was waiting for it to get my scooter to go to the pool. No malice on their part, as we had been overly friendly, thinking perhaps they were just grumpy before, but they just weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, ya know? I don’t suffer fools willingly.

Once I engineered being reunited with my key, we enjoyed the best part of the slacker hotel – no closing hours on the pool! The only weird thing here was the sign telling those with recent diarrhea not to enter the waters. Ewww! What?? I suppose someone might not connect the fact that there may be lingering germs even after they wiped, but this is a new public sign to me. We were in a chain hotel, so all of them must have this now. After a slight hesitation we took comfort from the fact of high chlorine levels. The hot tub was cracking hot and the pool nice and warm, so much so that I ventured into the pool which I never do because usually it’s not warm enough to stop my Raynaud’s from kicking in. That’s when my core gets cold and pulls heat from my extremities, causing my fingertips and toes to turn blue from lack of blood. If I’m not careful to keep warm I could eventually lose them like frost-bite victims. But I’m careful.

Gloriously, we had the place to ourselves, so we felt free to hum a few versions of the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, fresh in our memories from Devil’s Tower. Haha! The acoustics were excellent. Dee-dee do-do baaaaahhhhh…