Custer's Last Stand

...or if you prefer, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull's glorious victory. We visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeast Montana. It's a pretty place with rolling grassy hills, a verdant valley floor and distant snowy mountains. It's also a solemn place. People there walked slowly and talked quietly out of respect for the dead on both sides and maybe some sadness that the Indian tribes eventually lost their traditional way of life.

As it turns out, the battle took place exactly 141 years ago on June 25-26, 1876. I'm glad I got to see it.

Smack Dab In The Middle

The geographic center of the United States is near the town of Belle Fourche, South Dakota. It used to be in Kansas but with the admission of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959 it got pulled to the northwest.

Kinda makes sense.

No Quarter

The line of cars just to get to the parking lot of Mt. Rushmore was half a mile long. We had places to go and things to do so we skipped it.

What's really cool is that there's a turnout on the main road where you can see just George Washington's profile. At first I thought it was a giant quarter stuck on the side of the mountain.

Now I have a little bit of a beef with Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie North By Northwest (1959). In the final scene where Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are climbing down the presidents' faces, they start from a forested plateau. In real life the back side of Mt. Rushmore is another rock face. They must have filmed on a Hollywood sound stage. Who knew?

Black Hills Of Dakota

We spent two days exploring the Black Hills in South Dakota, a favorite area of mine. We saw deer, elk, bison and even one or two prairie dogs. We also hiked to the top of Harney Peak (7,242 ft.) which you can see in the picture. It's the highest point in the state.

On the way back down we passed several search and rescue people carrying a stretcher up the mountain. Someone must have been hurt. I am a very empathetic person so, even though I didn't see the injury or know the person, I got a little bit upset by all the commotion.

Nebraska

If you head out to the North Platte Valley in western Nebraska, you'll find several natural landmarks used by westward travellers in the 19th century. Two of them are right next to each other, Courthouse and Jail Rocks near the town of Bridgeport.

It's a little scary that people back then thought of courthouses and jails going together, as if one invariably led to the other. Frontier justice I suppose.

Prairie Wind

You know what's really smart? Harnessing wind power to make energy. The plains of eastern Colorado is a great place for it since there's plenty of wind and open land out here. These high tech wind turbines are an increasingly common sight in areas like this. They provide zero carbon energy and I've heard that there have been some innovations to protect birds from getting smacked by the turning blades. Good for everyone.

Our late afternoon drive through the Pawnee National Grassland and into western Nebraska was scenic and special.

Rocky Mountain High

Behind me you can see three of Colorado's fourteeners, part of a group called the Collegiate Peaks in the Sawatch Range. Left to right we have Mt. Princeton (14,204 ft), Mt. Yale (14,200 ft) and Mt. Harvard (14,421 ft). I think that if I was a philanthropist I would say that anyone who climbs to top of any one of those mountains gets a full scholarship to that college.

I want apologize for all the haze in the photo. No, it's not caused by an activity that recently became legal in Colorado, it's from a forest fire in the area. Kinda disappointing for photography.

Dad says that the John Denver song after which this blog post is named has more than one meaning.

Across The Great Divide

Independence Pass in Colorado (12,095 ft.) is the highest point I've ever been to. The reason I look excited in the picture was due to the wind, which was really strong. The view along that winding road up here was pretty thrilling too.

Colorado National Monument

These red rock canyons near Grand Junction, Colorado are spectacular, as is the road up here, built in the 1930s with pickaxes and dynamite by workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Every bit of infrastructure here is delightfully old school. And get this: the campground restroom is on the National Register of Historic Places. I have the photo to prove it.

Green River

I love seeing the transition from the browns and tans of the Great Basin to the red rocks of the Colorado Plateau. It happens rather suddenly as you travel through Utah.

Our lunch stop took us to a shady riverside spot in the town of Green River. Nice on a hot day. It would be cool to float down this river all the way to Lake Powell. I've tried rafting before, though. It's not really for me.

FYI: This is not the same place Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about.

The Loneliest Road

U.S. 50 across Nevada has the reputation of being the "loneliest road in America." Actually, it wasn't so lonely because there were lots of bicyclists. It must have been an organized event because there were special signs and support vehicles along the way.

According to Dad, back in the day you would see about one car every half hour. I think he's exaggerating.

100

A milestone: this is the 100th blog post of my blogging career. Just sayin...

For extra credit, can you guess how many of my blog post titles are also song titles?

Answer: 19 (do you know which ones they are?)

Elks Lodge

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in northwestern California is not only home to many tall old growth trees, it also has a resident herd of Roosevelt Elk. Here, I'm keeping a safe distance watching them chill in a beautiful green meadow. After all, they look gentle, but they're wild... and big.

On The Beach

Memorial Day weekend. We drove out to the coast and caught some rays... No, really it was foggy which I liked because it's been hot in Davis. The power of the ocean is something I never get tired of.