[ Friday, June 27, 2003 ]
Day 108 to Day 121
Maah Daah Hey Trail, western ND. "You're still in North Dakota? What the fuck, man, keep moving already . . ." No, ok, I left - I finally moved on and out of NoDak. But it was fun while it lasted. After returning from Minneapolis, I spent a few more days with mom and dad, which was good, restocked the cooler, tuned up the bike, and drove out to the Badlands to ride the MDHT.
Since I didn't have a shuttle or support, I moved down the 122 miles of the trail by van, from campground to campground, doing out-and-back rides along the way. I did about 70 miles of the trail this way over 5 days. Slight delay one day due to a mid-ride tire failure. After an hour or so trying to fix it, I started wondering if I could kill a small animal with an Allen key if I had to find protein. Finally patched it up enough to ride back to camp.
Didn't see another mountain biker for three days. Almost no one out there. Just a few local ranchers and some camping equestrians. Near the end met a guy (Jeremy) from North Carolina (via Portland), on his way through. He's also drifting around, mountain biking and looking for a new home. Here he is against the NoDak sunset. Hi Jeremy!
Second sublime moment of the trip - 2 a.m. or so in CCC campground - saw the northern lights for the first time in a decade. I had forgotten how awesome it is. Tried to photograph it, but it didn't come out. But here's another night photo I took out there - of something. I can't remember now, a flashlight maybe.
This is what part of the MDHT looks like near Magpie Campground:
After 5 days I decided that I'd had enough of it, and packed up to start heading south, planning my drive, of course, to visit (1) the geographical center of the United States, and (2) the highest point in North Dakota (a butte off of Hwy. 85 - elev. 3506 ft. Wooohooo!) No photos. I hope you're not disappointed.
Devil's Tower National Monument, WY. I get in to Devil's Tower with enough light to hike up to the base and go to the visitor's center. The ranger is friendly. I demand to see the secret alien landing strip. He refuses to acknowledge its existence and acts all weird about it. There's a scene. I storm out of the building. I choose a campsite with a view of the tower and stay up all night straining to hear the haunting 5 note progression drifting on the wind. Nothing happens. I leave the next morning feeling appropriately cheated.Black Hills National Forest, SD. I move on to South Dakota, stop in Spearfish for a minor bike repair (pulling leftover NoDak mud out of my bottom bracket), and camp near the Centennial Trail. It's raining a lot, so I do tourist stuff. Crazy Horse Memorial Mountain, Wind Cave National Park. Wind Cave is cool - they've discovered 100 miles of it. They think - based on airflow studies - that this is around 5% of the cave.
The photo above is an Indian dancer at the Crazy Horse visitor center. Crazy Horse was an Oglala Lakota war hero (he exterminated Custer's 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn). The monument to him being carved out of a huge mountain in the Black Hills is located in Custer County, 4 miles from the town of Custer, on the way to Custer State Park. Neat. It seems like everything out here is named after some dead white soldier, mostly indian-killing genocidaire war criminals like Custer and Kit Carson and their ilk.
At the Crazy Horse visitor center they're flying an American flag - no big surprise, really, but this one was a gift to the center from the military - it flew over Baghad earlier this year. Honoring North America's most important symbol of indigenous resistance to imperialist war, and simultaneously and proudly displaying a distinct symbol of that imperialism circa 2003. Neat.
I camp one night up at a place called Deerfield Lake, and do a fun 10 mile singletrack loop around the area. Only 6,600 ft., but I feel like I've burst a lung. A warm-up for Colorado riding. Here I am in the Black Hills NF.
Rocky Mountain National Park, CO. I arrive at the park around midnight a few nights ago, and weave through a sea of RVs in two different campgrounds for close to half an hour before I find an empty site among the 224 campsites I pass. It costs $18 a night to camp here, and the park entrance fee is another $15. This seems wrong. I had thought that these parks were a part of the public trust, maintained with our tax dollars for the benefit of the common person. Even the National Forest campgrounds are getting expensive ($13 a night in Colorado). They must have raised prices to pay for a few more cruise missiles.
I saw large areas of the Black NF that have been logged. This is an outrage. Moreover, these forests are being gradually privatized, so that we have to pay more and more money to use our own public trust recreation land.
Anyway, go out and sleep in the woods while they're still there! Four months on the road now, I feel at home, mostly. Bad F*cker Highway Department, over and out.
Soundtrack:Prairie Home Companion, other random public radio, and all the same old CDs I started my trip with and can now barely stand listening to anymore
Reading List: We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, by Phillip Gourevitch
Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression, by Bryan D. Palmer
[6/27/2003]
PAY ATTENTION BLACK ROCK CITY
