Confessions of a Hit and Run Tourist - Day Two

[Riverbrian]

I have recently completed a solo 18 day road trip covering 8 ballparks, 9 games, 14 states, national parks, normal tourist traps and not so normal stops. My fairly new 2022 Kia Seltos had 6,400 miles on it before the trip and the journey tacked on 8,522 additional miles. Some of you may find this interesting and some may say what's the big deal, it's a crazy man with a torture filled vacation plan. I was encouraged to tell the story here by individual day because it would be a very lengthy post if not broken down by day. Some days are not that interesting, some days were more interesting than others and some days need a new adjective, but each day was different and they were days that I couldn't experience in my living room. 

Feel free to comment, shake your head at my moments of stupidity or tell your own experiences of the places I experienced. This is hit and run tourism... I didn't have a lot of time to hit all the stops but I wanted to hit all the stops because who knows if I would ever be back in any of the areas travelled. I researched and scheduled the trip to the minute and followed the schedule to the letter. 

Day Two - July 30 - Belle Fourche, SD to Loveland, CO

Left Belle Fourche on schedule early in the morning around 6:30AM. The Hotel didn't have continental breakfast and that is a moment in your life where you wonder what happened to you. You had big plans for your life, you know that you were meant to live for so much more and here you are in South Dakota, 56 years old and disappointed that the Super 8 that you selected to stay at FAILED to provide a boiled egg or banana that you could take with you as you left. Quick thinking and resourceful as I always am, I was able to solve this problem by grabbing a convenience store burrito while fueling up. Disclaimer: Warning... my food choices are not always going to be pretty. 

I headed straight west out of Belle Fourche for Devils Tower in Northeastern Wyoming. I'm driving the northern portion of the Black Hills now. The Black Hills name came from Lakota Words "Paha Sapa" which means hills that are black. I will go to my grave saying that those hills are without question green in color. The Black Hills are not just hills, this is where a new geographical feature made it's first appearance... mountains are now in view, granted, they were little baby Mountains but the scenery has kicked up a notch. As you enter into Wyoming the curves in the road start increasing and you never know what is around each corner as you blindly travel into each turn, most of these turns revealed absolutely nothing, not even a Dodge Ram or Honda CR-V but then out of nowhere on the other side of one curve in Wyoming on the way to Devils Tower, there appeared a fairly large herd of very large animals. My brain immediately shouts out... "BISON". My brain continues on... "Look at all the Buffalo"... "Hundreds of them". Then my brain started a debate... are they Bison or Buffalo or both? Many of them were in the roadway so I slowed considerably and started to think about how to get past them. I wondered how close I should get to them... should I honk to get them to move off the roadway? Do I leave them be and drive through the field instead? Do I throw my burrito into the field and see if they chase after it? As I got closer you can imagine my disappointment when I realized that they were not Bison/Buffalo at all but ordinary cows. 50 to 100 cows just walking in a ditch and down the highway with no supervision. The Majority of them were in the ditch but maybe 10-20 were using the highway to travel on, perhaps they were like me just going to check out Devils Tower but I admit complete curiosity on why these cows were unsupervised on the road in these large numbers. They were very courteous cattle, because as I approached, the highway cows all moved over into the right lane allowing me to use the left lane to pass them. I waved and said thank you as I passed, there was no reason I shouldn't be polite. 

You first see Devils Tower maybe 10-15 miles away, then it disappears, and then it appears again and then it... you get the pattern. By the time you reach it... or should I say... by the time you reach the nearby gift shop/slash RV park that was filled with RV's in the middle of nowhere... you've seen it. It isn't that much different up close or up closer as it was a few miles back. It's a big rock that Towers over the other big rocks and that's probably why "Tower" is in the name. It is beautiful in it's ruggedness but clearly it was made by the devil so I didn't stay long. I stopped... stood for a second... got back in my car and drove toward Cheyenne, Wyoming.

As you exit the Black Hills area of Wyoming heading south, you enter a seemingly endless area of rolling grassland. The area is hilly enough to bring rolling grassland to a higher level because your view is extended many more miles and this produces a long view of a brownish/gold color that makes you think that Wyoming has to be the biggest state in the entire universe... you know it's larger than Rhode Island for sure as you look at the highway ribbon stretching out ahead. 

I arrived in Cheyenne a little before noon. It is Frontier Days in Cheyenne and I am ready to explore the frontier. You know how people who are experienced at something will sometimes say "Not my first rodeo", right after or before they sew a button on a shirt. People say that all the time but this will literally be my first Rodeo that I am about to attend.     

Frontier Days has been a 10 day annual event since 1897. 125 years of this 10 day event that is attended by 200,000 people every year and they still don't have a sensible solution for parking. The closest parking that I could find was on a regular street 15 blocks from the venue and I had to squeeze into that spot, in front of a house and yard of an 80 year old who was mowing his front lawn at the time. I got out of my car, waved at the old guy, there was no reason I shouldn't be polite and I got the same response as I did from the cows. Clearly this wasn't his first rodeo.

First I had to grab some food, I had been living off an early morning gas station burrito and I needed to redeem myself with something more nutritious. So I grabbed a Fruity Pebble Shrimp Po-Boy for 15 bucks at the Carnival midway just a few yards from the stadium entrance. It was indeed a shrimp po-boy sprinkled with a healthy dose of fruity pebbles. It tasted EXACTLY how you think it would taste! It was good... I'd have it again but it did occur to me that I could produce the same effect by dropping shrimp into my bowl of fruity pebbles. 

At the Rodeo... did I mention that this was my first one. I admit that I didn't understand the scoring system being used. I mostly watched and waited for the P.A. announcer to tell me if the cowboy did or didn't do OK. I was told by others in the audience that I was watching the best of the best and if this was my first rodeo that I started in the big leagues. Trying to grasp what was happening with nothing to compare it to, I kind of came to the conclusion that it made no sense to reward the cowboys with all these points, it is the horses and the bulls that deserved the points. Here is another observation... the cowboys all start out of the gate with a hat on... and without fail every single cowboy would lose his hat during the ride... Why wear the hat in the first place? You know it is going to get bucked off.

Speaking of hats... There were a ton of white Stetson hats in the stadium. When I was walking the concourse, I looked down into a section where nearly everybody was wearing white hats. Everybody with a white hat blocking the view of the guy in the row behind him all the way to the top row. An entire section with all heads cocked just slightly to the right or left to see around everybody's big white hat. 

After the Rodeo... It was off to my hotel in Loveland Colorado. It was late and I didn't want to mess around so I grabbed an order of Buffalo Wings at Wing Shack, which is a chain that I have never heard of. They tasted like Buffalo Wings so kudo's to Wing Shack. I ate them in my hotel room because I know that the staff appreciates the once white now orange towels that are left behind. 

I made some phone calls to loved ones, talked about the cows, fruity pebbles and the white hats and went to bed. I'll be leaving at 8:00A in the morning.  

  

[Richie the Rally Goat]

Where’s day 1? I enjoyed reading Day 2 and look forward to catching up on the rest of the trip.

[Riverbrian]

58 minutes ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

Where’s day 1? I enjoyed reading Day 2 and look forward to catching up on the rest of the trip.

It should be there, comments will change the order. 

Thanks... This is a lesser viewed forum so I'm not sure what kind of reach I'm getting with these or if anyone would be interested in the first place. 

They take a while to put together put as long as I know that Squirrel, Ash and you are reading them, I will keep going. 

 

[Squirrel]

12 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

It should be there, comments will change the order. 

Thanks... This is a lesser viewed forum so I'm not sure what kind of reach I'm getting with these or if anyone would be interested in the first place. 

They take a while to put together put as long as I know that Squirrel, Ash and you are reading them, I will keep going. 

 

I put a notice in my status to come read about your journey. Everyone should. If you had done them as blogs (and you still could by simply cutting and pasting them to your blog, adding a photo to each one) they could get featured.

[Squirrel]

13 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

Where’s day 1? I enjoyed reading Day 2 and look forward to catching up on the rest of the trip.

Day one: https://twinsdaily.com/forums/topic/58419-confessions-of-a-hit-and-run-tourist-day-one/?_rid=7

 

[ashbury]

1 hour ago, Squirrel said:

Day one: https://twinsdaily.com/forums/topic/58419-confessions-of-a-hit-and-run-tourist-day-one/?_rid=7

 

Someone with editing privileges to Brian's posts could add a "previous" link at the top and a "next" link at the bottom of each installment.  Of course if he blogifies these posts then that would have to be redone; and then if featured it would have to be redone again?  No good deed goes unpunished....

[Squirrel]

1 hour ago, ashbury said:

Someone with editing privileges to Brian's posts could add a "previous" link at the top and a "next" link at the bottom of each installment.  Of course if he blogifies these posts then that would have to be redone; and then if featured it would have to be redone again?  No good deed goes unpunished....

Well, I tried to feature the day 1 thread, which would put a link to it at the top of the forums page and on the front page, however, the site is set up in such a way, that only threads in the baseball forums can be featured. I think these vignettes are good, entertaining reading, especially now, so the most I can do is comment on it in my status line (and so should everyone, ahem), or for me or you to encourage Brian to create blogs out of them, but it would require posting a photo, one photo, with each blog post.

[Riverbrian]

8 hours ago, ashbury said:

Someone with editing privileges to Brian's posts could add a "previous" link at the top and a "next" link at the bottom of each installment.  Of course if he blogifies these posts then that would have to be redone; and then if featured it would have to be redone again?  No good deed goes unpunished....

I could use some coaching.  

[Nine of twelve]

I drove through Wyoming for the first time this past May. It's easy to understand why it's the least populous state in the country.