Cowboy town

To get to Denver we cut through more mountains beside gushing rivers and blue lakes before descending down into the town of Boulder.

There's a good vibe about this town and it's hip clean streets. The proximity to the Rocky Mountains and the 200 miles worth of biking and hiking trails means everyone about town is slim and into a sport of some kind. The town consists of a main pedestrianised street and a few less busy offshoots. Around every corner are tidy wooden panelled houses and people biking somewhere. There's a bit of an arts scene going on in town and it also attracts some big name bands. Buskers play guitar, one guy has dragged out a piano, around the leafy streets lined without the usual chain stores with the addition of quirky little cafes and restaurants. This would seem a great place to live, not far from the city of Denver, right next to the Rockies, an interesting mix of happy looking folk and decent suburbs. A good compromise between city and back-country living. But they do have some serious winters. On to the home of the cowboys.
A couple of Denver facts for you. It's the Colorado state capitol, the most educated city in America and it has the thinnest populous of all American cities. This is no doubt due to the location of the city to the Rocky Mountains and the hundreds of trails around. Cycling is quite big judging by the amount of cycle shops and the numerous people partaking. There's also plenty of joggers and cycle lanes which make it quite different from the anti-people cities we've come across so far.
Initially Denver reminded me of Manchester, it has a vibrant arts and music scene, nearby mountains and a youthful appearance alongside some grand government buildings. But as it's American it does lack that certain liveliness and hustle and bustle of an English city. But there's still plenty of night-life and people mooching around just not on the same scale.
The first thing you see of Denver are the shining glass office buildings and, when you get closer, the angular shapes of the art museum.
We plan to stay a couple of days when, after unloading the car, it occurs to us something is missing. Laura's snowboarding boots. We'd not taken the snowboarding gear out of the car for a couple of weeks so only now have we realised their absence. We think back to the last time we snowboarded and it was two weeks ago in Idaho we changed into our gear at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't quite nowhere, however, as the Crators of the Moon National Park visitors centre was a hundred yards down the road. Our only hope is that someone passing through spotted the boots and chose not to steal them but to hand them in at the centre. What to do then we'd have to decide, it was after all 700 miles away.
Next morning we ring the visitors centre and amazingly the boots had been handed in and were waiting for us in Idaho. So what do we do? Driving that far would take a couple of days and cost us in petrol and accommodation way more than the price of the boots. We consider the options and decide on the least rational one. After Denver we've got a 1400 mile round trip ahead of us. Besides, we're not exactly in a rush and it'll give us a chance to do some snowboarding again, if the snow is still there.
Right, let's get on with Denver. No, wait. First I have my first haircut on the entire trip. 9 and a half months of hair growth is starting to look a mess. The new haircut definitely has a 'feminine' quality about it but I assure myself it will grow on me, literally.
Into town and an up close look at the jagged art museum said to resemble the Rocky Mountains, I don't know if the person who thought that was demented but it looks good either way.
The capitol building, just as in every other state, is a copy of the nation's capitol in Washington D.C. but this one has 200 ounces of gold coating it's exterior dome. Very impressive and over the top. As usual with government buildings we get a healthy dose of drunken homeless with baked faces and scraggly beards, and that's just the women! We hadn't been asked for change for weeks as our stint in National Parks had been tramp free. Arriving in Boulder and then here changed that. The sad fact of American city life.
We have a quick nosey inside the capitol building but the over elaborate nature of it soon tires. Another way to quickly dull the senses is to venture to the shopping district. Like any developed city in the world you find the same street with the same shops, only the façades are different. Denver has a couple of decent buildings here, the best one of note being a Masonic Temple. A handy, and free, shuttle bus takes the weary from one end of the long shopping street to another aswell as stopping at points inbetween. A tower copied from the design of one in St. Mark's Square in Venice is also here and is said to be that tallest tower west of the Missouri river. I'm sure Vegas would disagree but never mind.
Denver also has a couple of liveable districts akin to the apartments of Manchester, which also explains the higher ratio of foot traffic here compared to other US cities. A huge outdoor sports store is in one district that is also home to a few funky stores and great looking suspended footbridges.
The Mexican part of town is a bit shabby but OK if you want to buy a car judging by the amount of dealers along here. Lakewood on the west side of Denver is much better though. Stylish bars, restaurants, lively theatres and gig venues feed the large student population.
Denver used to be a bit of a cowboy haunt but not much of that seems to remain these days. A lot of modern trappings of major cities have taken a foothold here. But city life here still seems more day to day liveable than any other city I can think of. It's the mix of mountain air, modern and slightly older architecture, youthful student exuberance and speedy access to terrific scenery. Maybe it's the altitude, it's nicknamed the mile-high city for good reason, but I like this city and that's not something I say often in America.
Ok, so we've got a few days of driving ahead of us. Hopefully the car's starter motor will hold out but I'm starting to lose hope. We had to start the car one morning by rolling it down a slight hill first. A big forkout looks on the cards.

Coors is crap

Further toward the centre of America is the almost unmentioned and oft overlooked state of Nebraska. Heading south through Nebraska there are no highways or interstates so it's back road driving all the way. Nebraska is known as a bit of a dull state but contributes massively to the American economy. The rolling farmlands here, that are currently undergoing controlled burns to rejuvenate the land, cultivate much of the beef, pork and corn that America consumes. America loves it's corn. If you've ever tasted American chocolate you may have wondered why it's so utterly terrible. This is because it's main ingredient is corn syrup. This awful ingredient is in almost everything they make and generally complete crap because of it. They have maple syrup, without any hint of maple as it's corn syrup. There's butter substitute, corn spread, there's non-dairy creamer, main ingredient of course corn syrup solids. Look at any chocolate bar and a corn based product will be first on the list. Have a drink of fruit juice and more often than not high fructose corn syrup is in it. I'm not sure if this explains the absolutely dire breads and pastries here but the majority of food is definitely some of the worst we've had on the trip. But saying that we can't afford fine dining here so I'm sure there are improvements somewhere. Oh to be eating in Argentina again.
The quiet back roads of Nebraska provide an insight into the backbone of the country, sort of. To be honest it's fairly bland but at least the people seem friendly enough, judging by the waves we keep getting from the local cap wearing pick-up truck drivers.

In the middle of nowhere we come across an old fort, Fort Robinson, that has a chequered history. This place was a German prisoner of war camp but before that was a Native American prison. Cheyenne Indians were held here when they'd fled their reservations. Some Indians escaped the Fort and were soon massacred in the following chase and battle.
Further down the road laid across the yellow grassy plains we stop off at another National Park. We had no idea this place existed but it provided a bit of a break from the mundane driving. Fossil Agate National Park is home to some ancient fossil finds from animals that exist nowhere else on earth. Animals lived around here and were wiped out by years of drought, or so it's thought, and never to return. The ranger tells us about his meeting with David Attenborough and how this site assisted in the making of one of his BBC documentaries.
20 million year old fossils are all well and good but our real destination is the Rocky Mountains. We pass through Wyoming to get there and yet again reach 'Colorful Colorado', a very apt state slogan.
Coming towards the jagged high peaks of the American Rockies, the mountain range runs into Canada, we follow a flowing river of run-off snow melt and are plunged into a world of shrouded mountain peaks and wildlife bounding around without a care in the world. The clouds move quickly over the mountains and the weather changes from bleak to sunny in minutes. The wind is whipping around us and is chilling to the bone to boot. We stop in a small and quaint enough town on the edge of the park and put off any walks for the day after. As so often has happened in the last few weeks when we peer out of the window the next day the scene has been changed by yet more soft snow.
We walk to a place where many rocks have been deposited from a lake on a higher elevation in a flooding a few years ago. The wall of water created from the flooded lake pushed it's way down the mountain killing a walker and flooding the town we stopped last night, Estes Park, in 6 feet worth of water.
The snow is coming down off and on as we take a long walk through the forest besides a stream that at points is completely covered with this powdery white stuff. Wind blows up and down the valley and we see snow being blown off trees around and on us as well as clouds of snow being pushed into the air across the mountainside. The whole area is stunning. Colorado gets off to a good start, it's just a shame that at this time of year the highest road in America, that traverses the Rockies, is closed due to snow. Seeing the place at this time of year makes up for it though.
So, Coors is crap. It's made here in Colorado and the Rockies are depicted on the beer bottle itself. To be honest I've not had it for years so really I should make another judgement while I'm here but I just couldn't bring myself to it, damn American beer! One last thing that I can't shake off from here was the incredibly annoying driving from the American buffoons here. It's a National Park so no-one should be in a rush to get anywhere but people still drive right up my exhaust pipe even when I'm doing the speed limit. There's frickin deer bounding around here and still these idiots are overtaking me on blind corners, genius!

A day in the life

What's an average day on an American road trip like? As the last couple of weeks have been spent almost entirely in National Parks it's hard to say 'average'. But as this run of visits is almost over I thought I'd write an account of an almost typical day before heading into the middle of the country that everyone tells us is not worth stopping the car for.
We start the day like every other, at a motel that isn't at all bad. In comparison to England it's incredibly cheap too, at just over £20 for the room for the night and a sort of continental breakfast.
After a bit of cereal and toast for breakfast, whilst trying to ignore the 4 month saga of presidential election news on tv, we go through the daily process of shifting our bags and other such items into the car.
Once the car starts, it's been having a bit of trouble of late, it's off into town.
Rapid City springs another surprise on us as it is home to a part of the Berlin wall on display in a park Downtown. It's an interesting exhibit and on the face of it an odd choice to be one of only a handful of places in the world to have a section of the wall on display.
It transpires that the wall is here due to the various secret missile defence locations in the South Dakota plains that apparently symbolise peace and the protection thereof. We knew one of these missile control centres was near to Badlands National Park but we couldn't find it. It's certainly a good place to hide a missile compound in amongst the endless plains and farmlands.
Like every other day we fill up with petrol. It's true that in America petrol is a lot cheaper than good ole Blighty, about two thirds cheaper, but there is usually a much larger distance to drive here. Everything in the west is spread out so each day a few hundred miles on the clock is no surprise. Even so petrol here is rising daily and is becoming a constant bug for the American motorist. Unfortunately for all their complaining and thinking that they're the most influential country in the world they are helpless when it comes to petrol prices. They've tried to lower petrol prices for the last 7 years by appealing to petrol companies but these pleas are happily ignored year in year out.
So on the road we go and towards one of the nations most famous monuments, Mount Rushmore. Unlike other national parks or national monuments Mount Rushmore is free to get in. But like most things here all is not quite what it seems. We have a national parks pass so an entrance fee wouldn't bother us anyway but it turns out that this pass doesn't cover us for the parking charge implemented at the site. Now this is the ridiculous bit. To see one of the iconic examples of Americana and images of the men who made this country free you have to pay $10 to pay to park in a car park that was subcontracted by the parks service to be built and run. You could say fair enough and pay the $10 to park in the awful looking multi-storey car park or you could consider why you're paying at all. At least 3 million people visit this park every year. The parking fee is said to cover the maintenance and construction of the car park. So that means it costs $30 million a year to do this. Somehow I don't believe it. As we've discovered on this road trip America is the land of the free, but you have to pay for it.
So, we park down the road for nothing and take a 15 minute walk in the sunshine to enter the monument.
There's no denying it, Mount Rushmore is impressive in many ways. To even conceive the idea of blasting a mountain and sculpting faces of famous presidents into it is one of immense audacity and vision. The execution of the project is equally stunning. 14 years of explosions and meticulous carving created these likenesses of four US presidents. The original idea was to bring in tourism to the Black Hills of South Dakota and you have to say that it fulfilled this goal spectacularly. It probably wouldn't have worked as well if the first idea to create typically South Dakota based characters faces in the rock, such as Wild Bill.
I normally don't like too much interference between mankind and nature when it comes to beautifying an area but it certainly works here.
The heads of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln all look great and are huge in scale. You can take a short walk to the foot of the monument for a different perspective and read a bit about the process aswell as a bit of American history in the visitors centre. Sculpting this thing in a mountain of this size looked incredibly tricky from the pictures on display and needed a few helpers who all fell under the controlling eye of master sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
From here we continue south, we're nearly in the middle of the country now and a plan to where we go now is becoming more and more vague. There's so much to see in the west and we've seen soo much of it that it's almost left us thinking what do we see from now until New York on the other side of the country?
We briefly stop off at another National Park, Wind Cave National Park, but can only go into the caves with a ranger and it's too late in the day for that.
So we pull up into a small town, Hot Springs, and settle in for the night in a standard chain motel. A walk around the main street and along the river is a nice relief to being stuck in a desperately barren town for the evening. It still ain't great but ain't bad either. We end the day with a sandwich from Subway, living the high life I tell thee. Not bad for a day's work but a long driving day is ahead before we enter our last national park and major city in a while. After that, who knows!?

Black Hills, Deadwood and Badlands

South Dakota has a couple of surprisingly famous landmarks and one excellent national park. First off we drive through the Black Hills along a scenic byway alongside gushing rivers and rugged cliffs. Trees line the top of the canyon and we pass the odd frozen waterfall, yes it's still that cold.

We pop out of the surrounding scenery into the town of Deadwood. This was sensationalised in a recent TV series of which I saw nothing but I do remember it starred the guy who played Lovejoy in the series of the same name in the 80's. Anyway, this town is infamous for Wild Bill Hickok and the gold rush. Cries of 'there's gold in them there hills' and so forth spring to mind.
Wild Bill was the sheriff of the town and an avid gambler, explaining somewhat the cheesy casinos along the small main street. Before his time the land around the South Dakota black hills was Indian owned. The government gave them rights to the land but once gold was found here everything changed. People rushed in from all over the world sparking vain attempts by the government to stop the influx with the military being involved. This lead to fighting between Indians and the new settlers for years. This is pure Wild West with gunfights, Indians, wagon trains, drinking and gambling. You know, the good ole days. Wild Bill ended up getting shot in the back whilst sitting in a casino and is buried in the cemetery just above town. The wooden houses off the main street and dotted along the steep side streets are decent looking but the main street itself is a bit tacky. The streets around it look a lot better though.
This also seems to be a haunt of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, we passed through the village of Sundance just before here, as well as Calamity Jane. Believe it or not Butch Cassidy was a citizen of Salt Lake City, his parents left England due to their Mormon beliefs. And where did they leave behind in England? Preston. Well I never.
We carry on through rolling hills of yellow prairie grasslands to Rapid City. I like the name. We take a stroll round the deserted streets the next morning and realise why no-one's about, it's Easter Sunday and everybody's at church. Classic. For heathens like us this is great. The lack of loudmouth lumps for a few hours is a nice break. Rapid City itself isn't too bad either, brick buildings and bronze statues of former presidents adorn each corner. We turn down a back alley that is full of graffiti, seemingly allowed by the council and renamed 'Art Alley'. Some great stuff and some terrible but at least it brightens up the look of a normally gritty alleyway. It's in stark contrast to the clean streets and general uniformity of the place, good stuff.
An hour out of town is Badlands National Park. For the hour we drive we see nothing but the wide plains of South Dakota rolling off into the horizon. All of a sudden we're in Badlands and the landscape is drastically changed into a vast canyon of epic proportions.
We do a couple of short walks before the hordes arrive from church aswell as taking in some of the great viewpoints. There's an array of landscapes here from quiet rustling prairie to multicoloured hills to natural arches and canyons.
There's also a bit of natural history here in the strange fossils they've found here from animals who lived in the region around 20 million years ago. These animals are said to be related to various animals living today such as the modern day horse and wolves but died out in a series of drought ridden years. Whatever happened, these animals never returned.
This place has a similarity to the bizarre landscapes of Death Valley, but a bit colder, and I like it all the more because of it.
Badlands is a huge and, for today anyway, fairly quiet national park that is definitely worth a visit. Whether you'd ever find yourself in South Dakota I don't know but it does also have one of the world's most famous monuments, which we visit the next day.

A close encounter

Into Wyoming once again and to the small town of Sheridan. It possibly is better looking now that a layer of snow has been laid overnight upon this Western town. The brick fronted buildings have an air of the cowboy about them and the bronze sculptures dotted around not only attest to this but also to various things related to Wyoming life. The main sculpture being the onlooking life-size cowboy standing admiring the main street.


Flakes of snow continue to fall as the icy wind goes through us, it's time to get in the warm car and move on.
It's a slushy ride on the freeway as the unexpected snow has caught out the snow ploughs. After a while it begins to clear up until the snow all but disappears a couple of hours down the road.

The next port of call is a national monument named Devil's Tower. It's shown on the Wyoming state plates so we've seen it in a smaller version for some time.
It's basically a square-ish rock that sticks up from the surrounding flat ground seemingly out of nowhere. Up close it's even odder. Geologists say that the earth around the rock was up to a mile higher than it is today and the result we now see is a once buried lava chamber. The rock looks like it's pushing up into the air and isn't what I expected at all.
It's also one of the only places on earth that has this type of rock formation. The rock has cracked into hexagonal columns, some can be seen on the floor near us, as water has seeped through the cracks. It's no wonder Steven Spielberg chose this rock as part of the location for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We take a walk around the base of the rock seeing it in different lights and angles, the sun is shining but the path in places is still covered in thick slippery ice.
On the edge if this park are thousands of prairie dogs. These look a bit like a rat that stand on their back feet. They live in dug passageways and always seem to be on the look out for something. It's amazing how none of them seem to run out onto the adjacent road but they don't.
We drive on from the bucking bronco and odd rock state of Wyoming to a state I knew absolutely zero about, South Dakota. Not before passing yet more oddly familiar named towns along the way.

Where are we?

Around Yellowstone it dips into different states in which we float in and out of and can sometimes lose track of which one we started in. But we're still in Montana and on our way East, not before a rest stop on the freeway in which we get offered free hotdogs, home-made cookies and hot drinks. Excellent stuff and all in the name of god and Easter weekend. Good on 'em, nutters. At least they weren't ramming the lord down our throats like the insane preachers on tv everyday. Not a day goes by without hearing about the lord in some capacity or other and it grinds. No other country seems to do this and yet it's America that seems to want the whole world to be part of the Christian church.

So, on into the wide plains passing ugly looking industrial factories and equally ugly looking towns that serve these factories on the way.
What is the state of Montana famous for? Hmm. Well before arriving I had no idea but once here I realise I had heard of one thing here, the Battle of Little Bighorn. This is the site where Indians hammered American soldiers and was also known as Custer's Last Stand. Although General Custer seems to be somewhat famous around here and to be held as a kind of hero, almost every state park in the area bears his name, he was actually killed early on in the battle and was reported to be a bit useless.
We visit the battlefield just as the place is closing so have to rush round the large hilly site. It seems an odd place for a battle but it's hilly nature would be good to retreat into.

It resembles the green undulations of a train set, I presume General Custer was the fat controller, but a bit brushy looking rather than lush English green.
The story, as I briefly got it, was that the Indians were sick of the poor land and conditions of the reservations they were forced onto and off their land. They decided to slip away from these reservations and the Americans didn't like this. They planned on rounding up the Indians and placing them back into the reservations whether they liked it or not, which of course they didn't.
The whole thing comes about after years of oppression from the Americans. When the first Europeans landing on the East coast of America it was the befriending of the local Indians that saved them from starvation. They were shown how to cultivate crops on this land and so forth. Once the white man had his foot in the door it was time to turn on the Indians, snatch their lands and chase them out of town. White man speaks with fork tongue you know. This went on through the years in the 'trail of tears' in which President Jackson evoked a law enabling the westward movement of the Indians onto the baron and somewhat uncharted lands. It also meant that anybody had free reign to slaughter Indians if they attempted to take back their lands. And so this went on for years as the Americans were unsure of what to do with them. Reservations were set up and the Indians were corralled into them to keep them away from what the Americans considered their god-given land, i.e. the whole continent of North America. Land was afforded to Indians, then taken away when gold and the like was found. Many stories exist of battles between the Indians and the invaders and generally they get the rough end of the wedge in the Western movies of Hollywood.
So, it was here that the Indians won one of their most famous battles against the Americans even though they were severely out numbered.

The U.S lost the battle but won the war in the end. Reservations still exist today and now and again we see tv programmes about the poor quality of life on the harsh landscapes. But these mutterings are barley prevalent among the constant complaints of hardships from the former black slaves of America. I still can't help thinking the Native Americans are largely ignored in modern history and are poorly represented in every department of US society. Much the same is the aboriginal scenario in Australia and I doubt anything will be resolved or balance readdressed in the short term. Many countries throughout the world have had the same issues over history and some still are fighting over land today. In relative terms the formation of America is still a new country, therefore the scars from the last few hundred years of bloody history are still real.