Wonders in Wyoming

I'm writing this on Sunday morning, the start of September, our "birthiversay" month because it includes our wedding anniversary and Linda's birthday. In the last two days, we have seen four amazing places, two man-made, two natural. On Friday, it was the spectacular Badlands followed by that monument to human excess, Wall Drug. Yesterday, it was the magnificent Mount Rushmore followed by the Devil's Tower. Today we'll spend a good deal of the day at Yellowstone, breaking the tie in favor of natural wonders.

It was in the 90s again when we got to Mount Rushmore, and Linda made it as far as the restaurant which was used in "North By Northwest," planted herself at the table where Cary Grant sat just before Eva-Marie Saint pretended to shoot her, enjoyed some coffee, and let me continue onward.

I took the .2-mile hike down to Gutzon Borglum's studio for this photo of his original design, which was much grander than the final version.

The hike up wasn't nearly as much fun, and I was soaking wet by the time I rejoined Linda. The monument is spectacular, and I hadn't seen it since 1970. The surrounding area has become so heavily commercialized that I dubbed it Tackytown. If you go there, close your eyes until you see the whites of the presidents' eyes.

We took a scenic route from there to Devil's Tower, avoiding Rapid City and the interstate and going west on Rt. 16 into Wyoming and north from there. The amazing thing to me about DT is that there is nothing else around there. There is nothing even vaguely resembling that kind of formation, which sits in the middle of nowhere. You bop along the barren range land, round a curve, and there is this enormous monolith surrounding by nothing at all.  

So you have to wonder how it got there. At the Visitor Center is a display showing various theories about its origins, including several proposed by geologists, but nobody knows. Least of all the man standing next to me, a 50ish fellow wearing a Marines cap, who assured me that "the problem with these theories is that they're based on the Earth being millions of years old. But the Bible tells us that the Earth is only about six thousand years old." He went on for another sentence or two which I didn't catch because I was trying to think of something to say that would not cause him to punch me in the mouth. What I wanted to say was, "Why do you even leave your house? The real world must be a difficult place for you." Instead, I simply looked him in the eye, said "uh-huh," and walked away. And I lived to be a smart-ass some other day.

We drove across a good chunk of Wyoming after that, generally heading toward Yellowstone. At Buffalo, we got off the interstate and turned southwest for a fantastic drive across the mountains, down into a long valley, and into the tiny town of Ten Sleep. I wanted to get a room there so I could title this blog "Two Sleep in Ten Sleep," but Linda persuaded me to keep going, so we wound up in Worland. Now it's time for the 150-mile drive to Yellowstone and a night's rest in Cody, where we'll be staying the next three nights (or perhaps four).