Afternoon in Wyoming

Woke up in Billings, MT, going to sleep in Custer, SD.

In between:

- Got caught up in Custer's last stand in Little Bighorn, WY, where a Native American park ranger described the scene in 1867. Joiner and I walked up the hot and dusty hill where Custer met his demise and imagined the seemingly endless Indian warriors pouring out from behind every hill.









- Had a buffalo burger for lunch (the second day in a row), in -- hee! -- Buffalo, WY. We walked into the place and into a crowd of what I assume were Mennonites: beards, suspenders, denim, bonnets, flower print dresses. One young woman with a baby on her lap looked at me curiously, and I looked at her curiously. The patron before us wore a cowboy hat and boots. The place also had this on the outside wall:









- Puzzled over Devil's Tower, WY, a 867-foot tower of phonolite porphyry that rises out of the landscape like some giant fluted column cake. It was created when 7 Indian maidens, who were being chased by a bear, prayed to the gods to save them. The gods heard, and lifted them up into the heavens on a huge piece of rock. The bear, frustrated, raked his claws down the rock, but the maidens had gone into the sky and become what we call the Pleiades.

You can see the bear's clawmarks, can't you?


















The scientific explanation is that phonolite porphyry is denser than the rock that used to surround it and eventually eroded over millions of years, but there is nothing else in the area that looks like Devil's Tower. Why just the tower? Humph. The bear story is much funner (and makes more sense).

About 4,000 people climb the Tower each year, which is kind of awesome. Some American Indians see climbing on the Tower as a desecration to their sacred site, though, which I can understand. There was a climber who got banged up pretty badly today while rappelling down -- rangers escorted him to the waiting ambulance.

We rolled into South Dakota in the midst of an amazing lightning storm. Black clouds covered the sky for miles and miles, and flashes of light ripped through the sky and occasionally down to the ground for hours. Hours! I kid you not. It was the most spectacular light show I've ever seen (and kind of experienced).

Dinner: Bavarian Inn, Custer, SD. Bratwurst and apple strudel, served by a transplanted Hawaiian woman married to a cowboy -- literally complete with hat and boots, even inside the restaurant -- named Russ, whose grandfather discovered Wind Cave (now a national park near Mount Rushmore). Rosemarie told us that she loved Custer, where you can't buy a pair of socks (you have to drive 45 minutes to Rapid City for that), but where there's an annual biker's fair (last year, there was killin' between two rival motorcycle gangs) and an annual bison herding. There's one lawyer in Custer, she said, and there might be room for more, she hinted when we said we'd just graduated from law school. I'd like to imagine that I am that small town lawyer, in another life. Of course, Custer's only lawyer is very busy right now, what with that biker murder from last year. I'm not sure I'd like that.

Tomorrow, we see Jewel Cave, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse monument, the town of Deadwood, and the Badlands. Whew! It's going to be packed.