THE GREAT PLAINS TOUR
August – November 2012
On our trip last year at this time to Glacier National Park, we left Montana and drove south through the western portion of South Dakota and the panhandle of Nebraska. I was intrigued with the prairie and grasslands of the area. This year I decided to go back and explore the Great Plains States. But I didn’t know what route to take or how to go about it with any sense of direction. Weeks later an idea came to mind. I could search out for the odd and unusual sites to see which would provide interesting photo opportunities. On the Internet I came across Roadside America which outlines just those quirky sites in every state. Searching out the weird would dictate my route. I researched a state a day and when finished I had fifteen pages of ninety different goofy and oddball sights to see among nine states. The plan was set. We’d head east on Interstate 80 till we hit Nebraska then jump onto little back roads and start looking. We would travel north through the Dakotas, over into Minnesota then south through Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and up into Kansas.
We left home close to nine in the morning and drove straight on through to our first place to see, Thunder Mountain at Imlay Nevada. There was no mountain there. It was an “art house” created by a man who renamed himself Thunder Mountain. His purpose it seemed was to build his home in respect to the Native American Indian who had been greatly disserviced by the immigration of the white man. The place could be seen from Interstate 80 and I had passed it many times in past trips. This time I made a point of stopping. I was wandering around the fenced off area when the caretaker, Fred Lewis, came up to me, a nice old fellow around my age who was just a friendly sort or simply happy to have someone to talk to. He offered to open the place up as so I could wander about as I pleased saying just to lock up when I was done. He also said I could go in after dark to take pictures even though it was posted otherwise. I doubted I would last that long being tired from the long day and I was proven right. The next morning I went back in for a few more pictures with the morning sun coming in from the east then locked the gate behind me. I felt Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain at Slab City near the Salton Sea was better done.
We faced a long drive just to get out of Nevada and when we reached the border at Wendover, Utah two hundred seventy-seven miles later I was done. I was having trouble keeping from nodding off all during the day’s drive. I hoped it was just a matter of three hundred fifty miles yesterday plus this day’s long drive. The next two days I logged in three hundred and four hundred miles without fighting falling asleep at the wheel. I just blamed the boring scenery along I-80 although Wyoming would prove to be even more boring. At the end of the fourth day with 1341 miles behind us we were finally in Nebraska and camped near Bridgeport at a State Recreational site. A man-made lake was the main attraction to this campground. A small island sat in the center so boats and jet skies went around and around in an anti-clockwise direction much to our annoyance. Fortunately I was able to find a somewhat isolated spot away from the nuisance and only had to deal with the constant back and forth traffic on a dusty rutted dirt road in front of camp.
We made a hasty get-away the next morning to go view Carhenge, a half hour’s drive north outside of Alliance, Nebraska. Carhenge is a replica of the real thing, Stonehenge in England, only done with junked cars buried trunk first into the ground. It was very impressive except for the graffiti spray-painted on the automobiles. I took some photos and now had a sense as to the actual size of Stonehenge and felt I had no need now to fly over to England. After a cold cereal breakfast we moved on to our next stop−The Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron near the northern border of the state. This was a very well done exhibit of the fur trading enterprise that took place in the west in the seventeen and eighteenth centuries. There was a five dollar admission fee which was well worth it even if the exhibit was all a bit too much to take in for me. I had been noticing bank thermometers reading ninety-five and hundred degrees and thought it must be the sun hitting upon them. Later checking Weather.com affirmed the readings. My Cheap & Free Camping directory steered us to a flyspeck on the map, the town of Cody where the little city park had camping, complete with hook-ups and showers for a five dollar donation fee. We headed there, an hour and a half drive away and found it was now fifteen dollars and they flat out wanted money, no more “donations”. It was fine even if the hot & cold was reversed in the shower and you had to share it with wasps. The heat and humidity was becoming an issue now and the air conditioner did the job keeping The Little House on the Highway cool. That evening we were treated to a small thunder & lightning show.
We came up out of Nebraska into South Dakota on State Route 83. Where it intersected Interstate 90 at Murdo, South Dakota was supposed to be the movie set left behind from the film Dances With Wolves, starring Kevin Costner. Having come across left behind movie sets in the wilds before, I had high expectations for this one. First off, it was not to be seen anywhere around Murdo so I stopped and asked. "Oh that is twenty miles west of here on the Interstate." Hmm...my plan was to see it here, along with a metal art piece then head east to Mitchell for the famous Corn Palace. Well the Corn Palace I was sure would be too touristy for me and all I would probably have done was stand out front and take a corny picture of myself there. So it was west to the movie set. Right off I didn't have a good feeling about this one as there were huge billboards every mile urging the traveler to stop at the "1880's Old Town". When you see a lot of signs beckoning you to stop, this is not a good sign. At least there was that metal art piece of a human skeleton walking a T-Rex skeleton to see. We arrived at the so-called "movie set". It was a major tourist scene completely enclosed behind a ten foot high fence to prevent you from seeing anything except the protruding church steeple without paying your eight bucks. I am sure it was well worth the price of admission, but after touring The Museum of Fur Trade a couple of days ago, I wasn't ready for more of the similar. Plus it was hundred degrees outside and I didn’t want to leave Sinbad inside that heat. The next day was predicted to be a hundred and six! Ha! And I was worried about being cold before leaving home. I looked through a crack in the fence peering up Main Street (my tourist-trap fears were confirmed), ate lunch and headed north to Pierre. We crossed the Missouri River and found a nice State Recreational Area, huge, clean, all to ourselves and with electricity to run the air conditioner. Also, the campground had unexpected free Wi-Fi somehow. I noticed at Big Tim's Café in Pierre, South Dakota they had a $6.99 special for Tater Tot Casserole−I cannot begin to imagine. The evening at camp was terrible. At nine o’clock at night the humidity was so bad I was drenched in sweat doing nothing but trying to read my book. How do people live in this?
The next day was to be the hottest of this heat wave and it didn’t disappoint as it was well over a hundred all day as we worked our way to where Chief Sitting Bull was buried, or part of him, or maybe none of him at all. As the story goes, Sitting Bull was "accidentally" shot in Fort Yates, North Dakota and buried where the “accident” took place. In 1953, members of his Lakota family in Mobridge, South Dakota drove north to Fort Yates at night with backhoe in tow and dug up the bones of their great leader. They were back home before the folks in Fort Yates knew what happened. Mobridge didn't try to hide their deed though. They sealed up the bones in a steel vault surrounded by twenty tons of concrete, burying the lot overlooking the Missouri River, erected a granite pillar with a seven-ton bust of Sitting Bull on top, then dotted the roadways with signs encouraging the traveler to stop and see The Grave of Chief Sitting Bull the Indian Chief Who Defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn. Fort Yates meanwhile laughs at it all for they maintain all that Mobridge dug up were horse bones or maybe a white man who was buried on top of Sitting Bull. They say Sitting Bull was buried with quicklime so that he would rot quickly. Fort Yates soon after covered their grave site with a slab of concrete and a big rock to deter any other grave diggers from Mobridge. This is just one of many stories surrounding the grave of Chief Sitting Bull and the controversy continues to this day as to where the final resting place should be for bones they are not even sure are of Sitting Bull.
I had planned on visiting the Fort Yates site of Sitting Bull's grave also but their grave site was an iffy prospect to say the least. It would require a thirty-mile trek down a road that I would only have to double back on. It was supposedly marked by a small hand painted wood sign leaning off to the side held up by the prevailing northern winds. Then if I were fortunate enough to get that far, the grave was only to be that seven-ton cement slab lying off in the weeds somewhere, if I could even find it at all. I figured if Fort Yates cared so little, then I could too care so little and blew that grave of Sitting Bull off. Instead I went looking for an old school house that was covered by its now-deceased owner with over four thousand cups. I never found the school house and the locals had no idea what I was talking about.
The rest of the day we just poked along to Lemmon, South Dakota appreciating the hard working air conditioner. At Lemmon I did a drive-through scouting out what we came to see saving it for the next day when fresh. Thirteen miles south of town we checked out our campground which had only ten sites. No one was there so we continued on a few miles down a dirt road to see the monument to fur trapper Hugh Glass where the Grand River forks into the north and south branches which unfortunately is now buried under the water of a reservoir.
In August of 1823 fur trapper Hugh Glass, a habitual loner, was hunting by himself when he was attacked and horribly mauled by a Grizzly Bear. Two men, one being a young Jim Bridger who later was to become an historical figure in early mountain men lore, were left with him while the rest of the fur trapping party continued on. Hugh’s condition was so grave that the two men had thought he was dead. They took his gun and possessions and left Hugh where he lay. But he was not dead. When Hugh came out of his coma and in terrible pain having been slashed from head to toe by the bear, maggots were already eating the rot on his back. He dragged himself with a broken leg to a stream where he sustained himself on berries and meat from a wolf kill of a buffalo calf, after he drove off the wolves. Fever and infection was his constant companion as he literally crawled the two hundred miles to Fort Kiowa, a trip that took him over two months. Glass seeking revenge eventually met up with Bridger but let him live. For all Hugh Glass had endured, he met his fate in an Indian ambush ten years later along the Yellowstone River.
We had our little ten-site complete with electricity campground all to ourselves and the next morning returned to Lemmon and toured the Petrified Wood Museum which mostly contained an abundance of articles and furnishings from the 1800’s on into the early twentieth century. It was very nice and so was the gentleman curator. Then down the street to the Grand River Museum which held an impressive amount of fossils from the period of dinosaurs all gathered from the area. There was the “alternative creationist” viewpoints displayed along with the scientific. Most interesting and I was especially intrigued with the scale replica of Noah’s Ark, a model that made some sense of what the ark may have looked like or at least could be of a functional design. Think of a massive oil tanker barge squared off at each end and there you have the model in the glass case.
This day was much cooler and the heat wave was done with. We crossed over into North Dakota stopping at the state line that ran through the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation Casino parking lot for lunch. Our first stop was to be the other half of the Chief Sitting Bull Grave controversy at Fort Yates but I had already scratched that. It was time to find a camp anyway.
The Missouri River had flooded its banks the past spring, a hundred year event I was told. Hence the campground I had planned on was still under rehabilitation from the tons of sandy silt that had washed in. The hour was growing late and the impending influx of the masses for Labor Day weekend worried me as I headed to Abe Lincoln State Park which no doubt in my mind would be more popular with the locals. Would we get in or have to park on the streets of Mandan further on? Jared, the camp ranger, graciously provided us with a reserved site as we were “all the way here from California”. This was a very nice shady park that only just recently was up and going again after the flood water damage was repaired.
Now it was Friday and the beginning of the holiday weekend. We were off to Steele, North Dakota to see the World’s Largest Sandhill Crane. When we arrived I was surprised to find that I couldn't get any closer than a hundred yards to it. Police caution ribbon kept me back, along with a fellow missing a few teeth sitting in his car. He was on guard to keep people away from the "crime scene".
The Sandhill Crane stands behind the Lone Steer Restaurant and Motel. On August 12 (not quite three weeks ago) at around nine A.M. a man set fire to the restaurant. He is now in jail. I asked the guard if the arsonist was from around here.
"No, he is from Texas."
"Texas!"I exclaimed."Why would he come all the way up from Texas to burn up a motel/restaurant?" I wondered out loud.
"He was working on a road crew and staying at the motel. He went across to the service station and bought some fuel then set the place on fire" the guard informed me.
"He must have been pretty unhappy about his room or food to do this. How old is this guy?" I asked.
"50."
I looked around then asked if this little town had a fire department.
"Yeah, a volunteer fire department."
"Well, I wouldn't think the response time would be too great. Couldn't they have saved at least part of it?" This is when the story really got weird. He told me they just stood around and laughed watching it burn. Then he added that two other fire departments responded from neighboring towns and they too just stood by and joined in on the laughter.
I was at a loss for words and walked away to take more photos. Just then someone else wheeled in and the guard informed him he couldn't go any further. This fellow, looking all of like an insurance agent switched into attitude mode and words were exchanged. The guard fired up his cell phone. I figured he was calling the owner who had hired him to watch over the "crime scene". Mr. Attitude took a few pictures, said he got what he wanted and then sped off. Within a minute a mini-van rolled in, the owners I presumed, held conference with their hired guard. The owners were of Middle Eastern origin. Well now there's a clue.
The flag making companies are doing a brisk business in this part of America. I had not seen the stars and stripes flying in as great of numbers as I had since I entered Nebraska and the Dakotas. Not that there's anything wrong with that or to imply anything in particular, just reporting what I saw.
I pondered rather to drive the thirty miles out to Jud to see the murals the town painted only to have to double back to Jamestown. But we needed to kill time so we took the drive. It was well worth it. When you live in a tiny town of seventy-six people in the middle of nothingness North Dakota what better way to spend your time than to grab a paint brush, several buckets of paint and create very nice murals on the sides of the buildings.
We drove back to Jamestown where I decided to call it a day camping at Frontier Town RV Park that just so happened to be our next stop anyway, unbeknownst to me at the time. We had a shady but rustic spot and I decided to treat myself to a buffalo burger at their restaurant. It was small and I should have ordered the fries along with it for I left the diner still slightly hungry. Buffalo burgers taste like beef anyway and not worth the inflated price in my opinion. I walked over to Frontier Town and there was my next attraction–the World’s Largest Buffalo, a huge concrete sculpture. I could now check that off the list.
We bucked headwinds all day long in pursuit of the new day’s freaky features. First was to Ayr, many miles out into the flat farmland to view a “Pioneer Village Caught in Time”. Supposedly it was a bunch of old buildings relocated on Main Street by one resident. Well I saw nothing out of the ordinary in this town of less than hundred people as I slowly cruised Main St. Extra miles for nothing but time not wasted as we were in no hurry yet it was a waste of fuel. Next stop, Fargo, North Dakota.
Most people when they hear the name Fargo they think of the Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 Oscar-winning movie by that name. Most likely few people wouldn’t even know there was such a place before that movie was made. Well the movie made Fargo famous and I just had to go see one of the main characters of the movie–the Wood Chipper. Okay, I have to admit, I was pretty giddy standing next to the wood chipper in the Fargo Visitor Center taking pictures. The few other people in the center weren’t the least bit impressed or interested. One little boy asked his mother what it was and why a leg was sticking out of it? “Oh it was something that was in a movie. Go over there and stand with your father.” The only thing that would have made it perfect was if they hadn’t cleaned the fake blood from it. But I suppose too many overly protective parents complained about it and some cleaning had to be done. Outside they had a “stunt double” on display, another identical wood chipper just in case a visitor stopped by to see the real deal and the visitor center was closed. That was thoughtful.
We drove two hours on into Minnesota not too concerned about it being the Saturday of Labor Day weekend and possibly not finding a place to camp for the night. There was a Walmart to stay at but just across the Interstate from that was a trap shooting range that provided overnight RV parking. It was a big flat grassy area in divided into three parking rows that reminded me of a drive-in movie theatre. For eighteen dollars you got a shower and electricity and we had it almost all to ourselves. It was ideal.
Sinbad woke me up at six A.M. as he does every morning. I hide his food at night so as he doesn’t overeat in the middle of the night and puke somewhere, so I guess it is worth it. I didn’t feel like having any breakfast so went across the Interstate to a McDonalds to get online and make a blog post. There I eventually ate a bowl of cereal before moving on.
Minnesota was like the last three states, cornfields and soybeans instead of sunflowers. But they do have a lot more trees which was a plus for the scenery aspect. I noticed too that everything was neat, clean and tidy. No litter along the roads, towns were perfect and lawns were all well maintained and mowed. Riding lawn mowers are a big item here–well they do have large yards. Flags, parades and picnics are in abundance due to it being Labor Day weekend. I noticed well groomed and dressed kids playing together or riding their Sting Ray bicycles. It is like taking a step back in time to the late fifties and early sixties. I liked it and found it refreshing to see.
Our first stop was to Starbuck, Minnesota which proved to be a big nothing. Was this some kind of joke that someone put on Roadside America - a deer fountain? I see this all around back home. Also in town was The World’s Largest Lefse, whatever a lefse was. On the side of a building was a huge photo of a group of people cooking a big sheet of dough on July 1, 1983. Lefse I learned is a traditional Norwegian flatbread. Then there was the Hobo Statue on my list. Well I only caught a glimpse of the hobo while going through a road construction zone. No big deal. The twenty-five foot tall fiberglass ear of corn in Olivia had all of Starbuck’s silly features beat.
We moved on to Walnut Grove to view Laura Ingalls sod house, but first there was a tour of their museum. For six dollars I walked through the various rooms and buildings all the while trying to keep ahead of and avoiding the annoying kids of the oblivious parents who seemed to be locals from around the area. The only redeeming factor was that excerpts from her writings accompanied the pioneer home artifacts so as to give one a real sense of the work involved living the pioneer lifestyle. The Ingalls “sod house” proved only to be the site of where the house stood, or so they want to lead you to believe for it could have been most anywhere along Plum Creek and who would know the better? The property owners wanted five dollars to look at a weedy creek embankment. I turned around and left thankful that I had taken a picture of an old photo of the site while back at the museum. This stop was a total waste of time.
A little bit of apprehension set in as to where we would spend the night for all campgrounds were filled with locals for the holiday weekend. One in Tracey thankfully had a grassy field overflow area for eight dollars. This was more than fine with us. With no lunch I was hungry when I turned off the engine just before five P.M. I went to sleep at dark and later awakened at ten by the sound of explosions. A nearby town south of us was shooting off fireworks, so I got up and watched the spectacle through the window for twenty minutes when they finally ran out of ordinance to shoot up in the sky. It was a pretty good show though and I fell fast asleep soon after.
I wasn’t hungry so we pulled out right after my morning cup of coffee. Some miles later I stopped along the road near Hadley to cook up some eggs and bacon then moved on for Chandler to view their battered water tank from a F5 tornado back in June of ’92. The little town left it as a memorial of one of the few things left standing after the tornado blew the town away. Just before reaching Iowa at the town of Blue Earth we came across a fifty-five foot tall fiberglass statue of the Jolly Green Giant. This was not on my list of sites to see and was a nice surprise find. Across the border to Britt, Iowa where the National Hobo Museum resided but unfortunately it was closed for the season and wouldn’t re-open until the hobos caught a boxcar ride back to Britt in May. I was disappointed. Eighteen miles further up the road was McIntosh Woods State Park where we found a nice quiet shady spot albeit it a bit battered, littered and abused from the Labor Day crowd.
The next morning we were off a few miles down the road to Clear Lake, Iowa where Buddy Holly, J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson and Richie Valens had their final performance before tragically dying in a plane crash later that night on February 2, 1959. I took a wrong turn and accidentally came across the venue itself, The Surf Ballroom, on the way to the crash site. The Surf Ballroom is still a functioning venue for performances and was utterly awesome. It had a big stage, huge hardwood dance floor, seating booths around the dance floor perimeter. All the lighting was off as I walked around exploring. I wanted to stand on the stage. As I was setting up my camera to capture the moment a lady who worked there came in. She turned on all the lights just for me. There were loads of photos and memorabilia to all the entertainers who had performed there. But the early rock and roll trio was the biggest draw for visitors and tourists alike. After I was able to tear myself away from the forties style ballroom I drove the few miles north of town and hiked between the rows of corn to the crash site a quarter mile in. There stood a memorial plaque and an assortment of gifts left behind by visitors in memory of the trio.
After viewing The Surf Ballroom and crash site, the plan was to head east in Iowa but I had grown tired of looking at cornfields for all the past week. I needed to make some cuts from my itinerary. I scratched the Auto Thrill Show Memorabilia and Museum in La Porte City. I could live without seeing that. Further on eastward was Dyersville where the actual baseball field in the cornfield for the movie Field of Dreams (another Kevin Costner flick) still exists. Although I liked the movie I am not a baseball fan and figured the long haul to Dyersville wasn’t worth it just to stand on a baseball diamond. I mean, no way would that provide the rush for me as did standing next to the wood chipper in Fargo. Then even further on was Le Claire, Iowa resting along the Mississippi River and visit the Antique Archeology store where the History Channel TV program American Pickers originates from. I am a huge fan of the program but what would I do once there? I’m too cheap to buy anything and what...have my picture taken with Daniele? I’m afraid I would embarrass myself staring at all of her tattoos, so all of those targets on my list went by the wayside.
I resigned myself for just the short ten mile trip east of Clear Lake to Mason City and see the First National Bank of Mason City that John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and their crew robbed in March, 1934. Three miles into the drive I looked over my notes while driving. The last line read: “Now an apartment complex but the bank name is visible on the building”. Whoa! I pulled over and re-read that. I didn’t want to see an apartment complex! How did I miss that? I made a U-turn and headed south on the Interstate for our next destination, The Bridges of Madison County. Yes, I am more of a romantic than a baseball fan.
It was nice straight drive down Interstate 35 through Des Moines and to Winterset in Madison County. I stopped at the visitor center and received directions to a grocery store, the city park campground and some of the covered bridges we could see driving The Little House on the Highway. The heat and humidity was an issue once again but not as bad as that evening along the Missouri River.
In the morning I was able to see four of the six covered bridges, three of which were used in the making of the 1994 film Bridges of Madison County after the short novel of the same name by Robert Waller. One location looked to be an iffy prospect with The Little House on the Highway and country gravel road it had to negotiate. The other was west of us, not the direction we were traveling. It seemed the bridges were all subject to vandalism and/or arson. It is a shame that they’ve had to install security cameras on each bridge. That doesn’t discourage the graffitists though. I was going to seek out Francesca’s farm house, from the story. Then I met up with a couple from Denver at one of bridges. They had a better map than I which had Francesca’s farm marked on it but as they informed me, “The house is no longer there”. That was a shame.
We crossed into Missouri where right off year round fireworks sales was big business. I wondered what their fascination with fireworks was. I hoped to remember to ask. The first stop was the grave of Pete Kibble’s foot in the Oakwood cemetery in Milan. It seems that Pete lost his foot in a railroad accident in 1917. He had his foot buried with the intention of joining it when the rest of him died at some later date. But Pete wound up hoping out west to find his fortune and never returned. Finding the cemetery was one thing but I wondered about my chances of finding the actual “grave”. All I had to go on was “southwest of the flagpole”. Within minutes I found the small tombstone “Pete Kibble’s Foot 1917”. I was really surprised and smiling even more so than the wood chipper. This trip was like a scavenger hunt but a whole lot more fun. I put a bouquet of fake roses I found lying in the grass into the ground and took a few pictures, still smiling the entire time.
Next, an hour drive away to Linneus, Missouri where a neighbor’s brother’s farm was and I was going to surprise her by taking a picture of the mailbox for her. I got close on the country roads but the route became narrower, just wide enough for the RV between cornfields. I had already run into one neighbor and any further on I am sure it would be a situation so I backed on out of that adventure. It was an hour drive to Tindall, Missouri but I was getting tired so opted for Crowder State Park just outside of Trenton and would do my great-grandfather’s town and little store, if it was still there, tomorrow.
I didn’t expect much at Tindall (pop. 65) except memories but I hadn’t counted on the destitution and squalor. It was sad to see this once cute little farm town as now something on the “other side of the tracks”. Junked cars left where they died amounted to more than cars that actually ran. My great-grandfather’s store still stood and that was the only satisfying feature of the visit even though it looked to have been closed up for decades. His home, if it is the same house, had been vastly remodeled into a two-story abomination with columns in front. It sounds nice but it wasn’t cared for. My Uncle Bill’s house I wasn’t too sure of either but if the home I saw was it, at least its present owner made an effort. The cute little white house we stayed in next to the store was worthy of a burn exercise for the fire department–if there were a fire department. There wasn’t. If something catches fire here, it is history. I couldn’t find anyone around to talk to. On leaving town I slowed to take a trailer trash photo and was stunned to find a sign WILLIAM R. BERNIKING my great uncle Bill! It was so weathered and worn I was unable to make out just what kind of business he had. I knocked on an open door of a nearby home but there was no response. In the end, the sign made the six-mile venture to Tindall worth it.
We took the road west to visit Jamesport, supposedly the furthest west Amish settlement. A cute little town catering to the looky-loo tourist the Amish draws in. I liked watching them drive their buggies down hilly roads, a dangerous endeavor I must say with cars whizzing around them at fifty-five miles per hour.
We moved on to Marshal where there was to be a statue of Jim the Wonder Dog but I was unable to locate the park and really didn’t care that much for this oddity anyway. If it were Fritz the Wonder Cat, then yes. But the route took me through Chillicothe which was a gold mine of very well done huge murals. I took photos of all. After Marshall I went the fourteen miles to Arrow Rock State Park and called it a day well before three P.M. That afternoon we were treated to a thunderstorm which eventually brought rain. That was fine for The Little House on th