Above is Bear, the musical dog from Nebraska.

Well, OK, here, by popular demand, is a photo of the melodious midnight tenor at Lake Ogallala, Bear. Early in the morning after the concert, Bear and his owner set off in their pick-up truck to go fishing, and Peachy and I headed North, to Hot Springs, South Dakota.

These springs are more luke than hot, but they bubble up through a gravel layer in the bottom of a large swimming pool built decades ago. They did, however, include a really nifty water slide, so the visit was worthwhile. On the way out of town I noticed small pools in the river, steaming in the cool air, and labeled "Cowboy Soakin' Hole". Less costly, but no slide.

Our next stop was Wind Cave National Park, so named for the noise made by the air moving through the small original entrance to the cave. When atmospheric pressure is high, the air moves into the cave. When it is low, the wind whistles out, equalizing pressure, as it did the day I was there. I am not a fan of caves, but this one had interesting formations called "box work", honeycomb-like arrangement of calcite sheets.

The Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monuments are probably familiar to just about everyone, and the camera battery gave out, so no photos, but I was properly awed, although I must admit to a fleeting wish that someone would clear away the mountain of rock debris at the feet of the presidents (this from someone who admits to being "...not dependably domestic").

We camped in the beautiful Black Hills, in Custer State Park, did the laundry, and enjoyed a buffalo burger to add to the regional food log, but passed up the local beer named "Moose Drool". In the morning we were off to investigate The Badlands.

Badlands National Park was established in 1939. It holds the largest expanse of protected prairie ecosystem is considered one of the world's richest fossil beds, and is one of the most successful reintroduction sites for the black-footed ferret. In addition, it is an awesome place! Some of the rock formations look like dripped sand castles, others are rounded lumps, looking much like giant scoops of slowly melting sherbet. Elaborate wedding cakes and rajah's palaces are other images that come to mind, layers of pink, cream, peach, and grey-lilac rock. Then there are others, dark grey that could be elephants' feet.

Cottonwood Campground welcomed us with shelters against the prevailing wind, swooping bluebirds, and a delightful couple from northern Iowa, two prairie dogs, and one rabbit. In the evening, spectacular stars and the calls of an owl were the entertainment. In the interpretive center I found another term to add to our list: armored mud balls. These occur in the park, and are formed when pebbles are swept along in a cloudburst, rolling downstream, and collecting mud and more pebbles as they go. Many are the size of baseballs.

This is the view of the interior of a sod house built in 1909.

I passed by the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, and the famous (in--) Wall Drug Store. We did look in at the Prairie Homestead, however, to see the sod house built by Ed Brown in 1909. It was dug into the side of a hill, and finished with cottonwood logs, windows, and a roof of buffalo grass. It was cool in summer and warm in winter, in an area where temperatures range from minus 30 to plus 110 degrees.

Thence into North Dakota and more prairie, the very western (read; flat) Platte River, and several impressive Tribal Headquarters. In Fort Yates, the street signs are both in English and a phonetic version of the Standing Rock Sioux spoken language.

In Bismarck I was blessed with yet another extravagant welcome at the U.C.C. church, met friends of friends in Maryland, and was treated to lunch - and the first salad in three weeks. Moving out into the countryside after being in the city, we found more sunflowers, pastures, fields of wheat stubble, and bee hives, and antelope, sometimes grazing alongside the cattle.

There are national parks familiar to everyone, even if we have not actually seen them ourselves. Others are a complete blank, and I had never even heard of Theodore Roosevelt National Park before deciding it would be a convenient place to stop. It turned out to be one of my all-time favorites.

Roosevelt arrived here by train in 1883, when he was 24 years old, to hunt buffalo. He liked the area, bought a share in the Maltese Cross Cattle Ranch, and returned as often as he could for the peace of the out of doors. He witnessed the degradation of the rangeland and the decimating of the buffalo and other species, and in a speech in 1886 he declared, "It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it." “.... so it is peculiarly incumbent on us here to-day so to act throughout our lives as to leave our children a heritage for which we will receive their blessing and not their curse."

As President he signed into law five national parks and eighteen national monuments, and formalized the U.S. Forest Service and 151 million acres of national forests. After reading the book "Collapse", by Jared Diamond, I am happy that we got a head start on preserving our ecology in the nineteenth century. That is a battle still raging, however, and we - and our children - will have to keep working to protect this beautiful land. Meanwhile, I am going to check out some books from the library and find out more about TR.

Bison roaming the prairies of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

There were bison (buffalo, I still haven't figured out which is preferred), pronghorn, deer, wild turkeys, and "feral" horses along the park road. The turkeys played on a picnic table in our campground, and one evening on a late night trip to the restroom I shone my flashlight into the bushes to check out a rustling noise, and there were five wild horses browsing not ten feet from me. At least they weren't bears!

The only drawback to this visit was the rain, so in the morning I breakfasted at the Cowboy Cafe in Medora, Stetsons, and all, and then we were on our way to Wyoming.

A couple of church signs that caught my eye:

"FIGHT TRUTH DECAY, READ YOUR BIBLE DAILY'

"IT WASN'T THE APPLE ON THE TREE, IT WAS THE PAIR BENEATH"

From the Road: Nebraska, Exploring the West

Nebraska finally seemed like "The West". The corn and beans gave way to pasture, wheat, and scrub that (according to a brochure), hid more than 250 varieties of wildflowers - hence the many bee hives glimpsed along the way. The sky seemed to expand to an even greater immensity, and my feeling of "space" enlarged. Then, almost imperceptibly, pale blue mountains and buttes appeared on the horizon, slowly deepening in color, and suddenly, there was "Chimney Rock", a distinctive rock formation mentioned by almost every pioneer who wrote a journal.

In the interpretive center at the foot of the rock I learned that most of the movies had it wrong: the Indians were more helpful to the pioneers than otherwise, often selling them food, and providing them with moccasins when their eastern shoes gave out. Evidently everyone walked when possible to save the oxen from pulling extra weight, and shoes wore out in short order.

Now fast forward to 2007. Here I am, traveling with 21st century comforts, and yet every once in a while I lose my patience when it is cold, or raining, or the road takes the long way around to get over a mountain pass, or my clothes and/or person need washing, or .... you get the picture. I am, not coincidently, in the middle of reading "Centennial", by James Michener, and feel very wimpy when I compare my journey to the treks those hardy souls endured.

In Gothenberg we visited a genuine Pony Express Station, and, adding to my tally of regional foods, I enjoyed a really good steak. In Oshkosh we happened on a brilliant kaleidescope of color in a backyard dahlia garden, enlivening the otherwise grayish brown landscape. Alliance is the site of "Carhenge", which was fun, but not amazing, and the photos were disappointing. All along Route 30 we accompanied trains going at about the same speed. I never did manage to count the number of cars in each one, but that is probably just as well, since we stayed safely on the road. Most of the cars were heaped with coal, but there were others that provided some wondering.

At Lake Ogalala we camped beside a retired wheat farmer and his handsome and well-behaved dog, "Bear". Bear spent the afternoon quietly curled up next to his pick-up truck, but in the middle of the night, when the coyotes began to sing back and forth in the nearby hills, he piped up with a melodious tenor reply. In the morning his owner said that, while Bear had a pedigree, "...as long as your arm", his opinion was that there was defrinitely some wolf in Bear's ancestry.

We traveled along the Platte River, as had the folks on the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Pony Express Trail, and the California trail. We even saw traces of the Oregon trail, sunken into the ground by the heavy wagon wheels and the feet of innumerable oxen. The routes needed to go where there was water and grass for the animals, but one historical sign said that the mosquitoes were fierce along there for both the animals and the humans.

Harking back to the dahlias that were so enchanting, one of my favorite quotes (by whom I do not know), is "God laughs in flowers".

Shalom for now.

From the Road: Emptied Cup for Grace-Catching, and a Little Piece of Holland

Lake Rathbun, Iowa, was the perfect place to recuperate from bruises. There was no one else around besides the kindly campground hosts, a few fishermen in row boats contemplating infinity (isn't that what fishermen do?), birds, more butterflies, and a pale green praying mantis who perched on my head one morning. The sunrises, sunsets, and stars were remarkable, and the weather just about perfect. There were even hot showers - and I mean HOT! One had to keep moving to avoid scalds. The lake was built and is managed by The Army Corps of Engineers, and I really appreciated being there.

Iowa lingers in my memory as more miles of corn and beans, good scents along the way (goldenrod?, asters?, corn?), the first earth-sheltered houses I had seen on the trip, (if I were going to build a house, I would certainly consider earth-sheltered), and two cities that hinted that I "... wasn't in Kansas OR Iowa any more".

Pella, Iowa looks like it came straight from Holland. Even the car wash looks Dutch. There were flowers everywhere, no litter anywhere, and signs with interesting things to eat. Lunch was a superb sausage/vegetable soup and a Dutch Letter, a pastry in the shape of an elongated "S" shape, and, for afternoon tea, a Dutch Pillow or Handkerchief (yet another pastry). There is a huge windmill, wonderful figures that perform every two hours in concert with the town clock, and an amazing Dutch Miniature Village on the second floor of the windmill. In the Spring Pella hosts a tulip festival, and that would definitely be a sight to see!

Not too many miles North of Pella is the city of Elkhorn, also boasting a windmill, but this time from Denmark. They also have a reconstructed tenth century Smithy's hut, built of logs,with grass and small flowers growing on the roof, and a copy of the statue of the Little Mermaid in the Town Park. It was fairly obvious that these cities represented pockets of Dutch and Danish folk who are proud of their ancestry, and are actively involved with preserving many of their distinctive ways of life. Of course I had to sample the Danish pastry, also.

One afternoon as I headed West, the dark clouds billowed overhead, but the horizon in front of us was brilliant with sun, and a wall of rain falling between us looked like a curtain of beads shimmering. By the time we reached the "curtain", it had evaporated, and we sailed through into the light. To celebrate, I stopped and ordered - shame! - a cheeseburger. At least I passed the fries by.

Another lake, a swoop of swallows, wild sunflower hedges along the road, three Canada geese in a "gefuffle" (as my mother used to call an altercation), and a heron with a voice like a rusty spring.

In Harlan I backed up to photograph a painting on a shed that was most likely an offshoot of the Barn Quilt Project. This effort was begun in Grundy County, Iowa, and was planned to refurbish barns more than 50 years old that were disappearing from the roadsides, tempt tourists onto the smaller highways, and engage townspeople - and especially youth- in something that celebrated a regional art (quilting). Much of the material and labor for the projects were volunteered, and 8' by8' quilt patterns were painted on the sides of barns. that had been repaired and repainted. This enthusiasm helped preserve many old barns, beautified the roadsides, and brought more visitors to towns bypassed by the big super highways. A win-win situation! The Barn Quilts have now spread to Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee.

In Centerville, Iowa I found a wonderful library. It occupied an older, three-story-tall and elegant building, had a whole closet of books for sale (one of the joys of this trip has been the books encountered along the way), and, in the basement children's department, an old cast iron, claw-footed bathtub, lined with shag carpet, piled with colorful pillows, and the perfect cozy place for children to snuggle down and read. I was sorely tempted to try it out, but when I had finished buying the books, it was occupied by three giggling 5-year-olds. Oh well, another time.

"Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall." Annie Dillard in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

This may express why I am so immersed in the trip that I am slow in writing posts and letters.

A couple of new license plates:

"GAS HOWG" - on a huge RV

"ROSE PEDAL" - on a red PT Cruiser

Shalom.