West by Midwest

In my ongoing quest to get to all of the states, I'm now in the final stages: turning flyovers into drive-throughs.

I flew into Omaha Saturday and spent the night just over the border in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It turned out that my hotel was attached to a casino and nothing much else, so after checking the interwebs to find no attractive local attractions, and knowing I had a lot of driving to come, I went to the Hy-Vee for provisions and called it a night.

I have to say that driving through the working class suburbs nearby, I was reminded quite a bit of where I grew up. And all the people I've come across on this trip fit that mold as well. Everyone I've talked to has been lovely, I'm not insulting them, it's just that they're all very much like... my family. My family who I find increasingly difficult to understand from the relatively well-off, liberal, only-have-problems-you've-invented-for-yourself, yuppie world in which I reside. I guess I'm saying that I just no longer get most of America.

Anyway. At some point I had looked at a map and decided that 600 miles was a reasonable amount to drive in one day, so I set off at 10am Sunday to accomplish just that. I spent the first couple of hours going north along the Nebraska/Iowa border, then turned west on I-90 to go about 350 miles across South Dakota. The view was the same for most of that time: straight, flat highways without a lot of cars on them, farms, distant horizons, dark rain clouds, billboards for upcoming attractions... although neither Wall Drug nor The World's Only Corn Palace secured my patronage with all their miles of advertising. Even the Badlands looked mostly the same... at least the little bit I saw when I wasn't being pelted with rain so hard that I couldn't see out the windows.

It reminded me of a conversation with my cousin (who grew up visiting Nebraska annually) and his fiance:

Fiance - "I've never been to Nebraska, I can't wait to go!"
Cousin - "Yeah, there's a lot to see in Nebraska."
Me - "And if you just stand in one spot and turn in a circle, you can see it all."
[silence]
"Y'know, because it's so flat?"
[silence]
"Hope you enjoy it."

Shrug. As far as I could tell, I was right. Then I hit the Black Hills, which looked totally different. They were the kind of green rolling hills with livestock grazing lazily on them that you see in exotic places like New Zealand. Scotland. Idaho.

As I continued uphill to see Mount Rushmore, the rain kept pounding harder and the fog kept getting heavier (or the clouds lower?) to the point that visibility was just about the worst I've ever driven in. When I reached the national monument, I realised there was no way I'd be able to see anything more than a few yards from my face, and I wasn't going to pay the $11 parking fee to stand in sideways rain trying to photograph the side of a mountain through fog. Instead I stopped at the 'profile view' pullout and took a look. I saw clouds, a bit of rock, trees, and a mountain goat munching on shrubs at the side of the road. Maybe it was one of the bighorn sheep the signs warned me to watch for. I didn't care, I had been driving for 8 hours already and I was over it.

I turned back for the last part of the journey to my hotel in Deadwood, SD, which included a very familiar soggy drive through winding mountain roads lined with tall evergreens, and awful traffic due to road construction. My relief at arriving was short lived; Deadwood immediately struck me as a terrible place. It's a strip of casinos and tourist trap souvenir shops, neither of which appeal to me. After calming down over a chicken sandwich (the first food of the day not shoved in my mouth with one hand while I piloted a motor vehicle at 80mph), I decided to try joining them instead of beating them, and put $5 in penny slots. It took about 2 minutes for the money to disappear and for me to head upstairs to rest up for another full day's driving.

Today I needed to make the journey to Billings for my final night before flying home, which would have been just under 300 miles straight across on the interstate... but what fun would that be? Instead I drove more than 150 extra miles, meandering around on small, one-lane highways. The first portion of my journey took me through the northeast corner of Wyoming, and the small town of Aladdin, which with its population of 15 must keep the local road sign maker on his or her toes. I then headed up into North Dakota where the land started to look less like Scotland and added in more desert-like features of low scrub, red earth, and jagged rock formations poking up everywhere, until I arrived in the town of Bowman. I had seen online that they had some kind of pioneer/cowboy museum there that seemed worthy of checking out, but when I arrived, it just looked like kind of a joke (and not in a good way), so I decided to save my entry fee and keep driving. 0 for 2 on tourism.

The last half of the drive turned me back west into Montana, where the rain showers finally gave way to sun. I can't say how glad I was to finally be driving on dry roads again. Yes, I'm from Washington state and a champ at driving in torrential downpours, and OK, there was a cool moment going up a mountain into a cloud where I could see the far off droplets coming directly at me like a million little stars, but mostly I could've done without it.

Truth is, I really do prefer the small highways with their scenic views and lack of traffic, where I can sing along to my iPod on the car's sound system and actually appreciate the land around me. Where I saw a few antelope wandering around in a field and a pheasant pecking at something on the road side today. But after a couple of hours, the romance wears off, and I'm left with nothing but repetitive landscapes, RVs too slow to stay behind but too wide to see if I can pass safely, having to pee with nowhere to stop, and the miles left to go ticking down too slowly. I'll admit, this time I was happy to get back on a major freeway and into Billings.

But tedious views and long days behind the wheel aside, Cat Stevens reminded me of something very important today when he shuffled up on the iPod as I cruised along in the middle of nowhere:

"There's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to find out."