Day 23 (June 6). Devils Lake, North Dakota

Miles today: 0

I had a wonderful “day off” in and around Devils Lake, ND, with Karen.  We went to the large basin lake itself in the morning, before it rained.  A “basin lake” is, as the name suggests, one that is in a natural basin and thus does not have any streams that drain it.  That is, the water that lands in the basin does not end up in the Atlantic or Pacific (or Gulf of Mexico or Arctic), but stays put.  Such lakes are notorious for fluctuating water levels, and in fact Devils Lake has risen by 25 feet in the past ten years.  We saw evidence of this in the form of drowned trees in many locations.  The area is a sort of natural oasis; it is very hilly, almost mountainous, and heavily forested – plus, of course, a string of large interconnected lakes.  There is nothing else like it in the Dakotas.

Me and Karen - Devils Lake Selfie

Most people come to this area for the fishing and hunting, but some come for the animal viewing.  We went to nearby Sullys Hill National Game Preserve, and saw bison and a real prairie dog colony, but missed the elk. We also had a wonderful time talking to one of the people who worked in the visitor’s center, an old Jersey Girl who had recently worked in preserves in Alaska and Costa Rica. 

Free range bison, Sullys Hill NGP, near Devils Lake, ND.  Here they live in the woods!

Prairie dog colony, same location. They are surprisingly loud. 

The town of Devils Lake has a nice little historic district, and we spent quite a while walking around it.  It really does look like “the Dakotas.”  Where’s my six-gun?

Old part of the town of Devils Lake, ND

 Tomorrow I shove off for Canada¸ where I will spend several weeks. Wish me luck!

eCo

Day 22 (June 5). Lewis & Clark Mandan Fort; North Dakota.

From: Bismarck, ND

To: Devils Lake, ND

Miles today: 247

Total miles: 5489

By 10 am I had the oil changed in the cycle, and was on the road under what are becoming familiar conditions: overcast skies, temperatures below 60 degrees, no rain, and wide open two-lane roads.  I rode through the center of Bismarck, with limited success in finding any real downtown.  A couple of government towers (this is the State Capitol), but not much else that I could identify as “the heart of Bismarck.”  I headed north on US 83 for Minot, location of the State Fairgrounds, and close to Minot Air Force Base, which operates gigantic B-52 bombers. 

About halfway there, one of those signs appeared that I could not resist: “Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, Next Left.”  Near the present day town of Washburn, ND, is the location where the Corps of Discovery made winter camp 1804-05 before pushing westward in the spring. Someone has carefully reconstructed “Fort Mandan” out of the same cottonwood trees that L&C used.  (The original is long gone.)  A young man whose name I neglected to record and then immediately forgot took me on a one-person tour (it is early in the season).  After the tour I strolled easily over to the Missouri River itself, which is undeveloped and probably looks much like it did in 1805. 

Fort Mandan, whre The Corps of Discovery spent the winter of 1804-05

The Missouri River, near the site of Fort Mandan.

My guide gave me more interesting information on life in North Dakota in 2015.  (He is a history major at Bismarck State College, he has lived in Bismarck most of his life, and this is his summer job.)  The winters are eight months long here, and the temperature touches 40 below at least a couple of times in that span.  This seems to be a magic number for Dakotans.  November and December are not too bad and are referred to as “Honeymoon winter.”  But by January and February and March the honeymoon is over, and they call it “Hell winter.”  Once I commented on how pleasant everyone has been (a version of Minnesota Nice, I guess), and he replied “we are now” (now that the weather is warmer).  Apparently if you come here in, say, February, people are pretty testy.  He added that it never really gets light in the dead of winter this far north; on the other hand, it is usually too cold to snow, so there is little of that.  He added that tough as Bismarck winters are, at least they have hills to break the wind; Minot and Fargo are on much flatter terrain, and the wind just – just – he had no words. 

One last anecdote from by Mandan friend and his co-workers.  I had discovered a few days ago that the capitol of South Dakota, Pierre, is pronounced “PEER” – one syllable. Commenting on this, he stated that it was important to always pronounce it “pea-AIRE,” because it annoys them. Sibling rivalry?

Continuing north on US 83, I found that the land did flatten out considerably, but not completely.  More striking was the sudden appearance of small lakes (ponds?) everywhere.  Was this the border between non-glaciated and glaciated Dakota?  A later Internet confirmed that this was the case; these are of the same form as Minnesota’s ten thousand. A good 20 miles of the road was through a wind farm.  That makes sense.

Glacial lakes and wind turbines

A gigantic ethanol plant in the distance.  Wind, Ethanol; this does not even count the fracking going on in the western part of the state around Williston. 

Minot also offered little in the way of direct interest, so after slowly riding through what I hoped was the middle of town I turned east on US 2 for the town of Devils Lake.  (The town is located on a lake of the same name)  US 2 is 4-lane divided highway, basically Interstate with occasional stop lights. I did stop for a photo-op in the town of Rugby, which has been identified as “approximately” the center of the North American continent.  They have a monument in a restaurant parking lot (apparently moved from somewhere else a couple of miles away, giving you a sense of the margin of error here). Here is my bike next to it.

Rugby, ND: the center of North America, more or less

I finished the day by pulling into Devils Lake, where I am now. This town has a small airport, and Karen is flying in later tonight to join me here for the weekend.  In fact I’m leaving to get her right now!  (In a rental car, not on the motorcycle.)

Day 21 (June 4). Dakotas. Dakotas and more Dakotas.

From: Wall, SD

To: Bismarck, ND

Miles today: 376

Total miles: 5242

Cleared 5000 miles. 

It was overcast all day, heavy clouds, but it never rained.  I am beginning to suspect that when it is cloudy it is not as windy. Yay clouds! Nonetheless I wore my rain gear all day as a windbreaker.  It worked out fine.

The Dakotas seem to be all hills.  I don’t know why I thought they were flat. And they are green, green, green, at least in early June.  Some farms, but mostly black cows grazing on this delicious grass.  I ate part of one for dinner tonight, knowing that it must have died happy. The Dakotas are, as expected, sparsely populated.  Lots of exits with signs that read “No Services.” Lots of signs that read “Next Services 53 miles.”  In a lot of these in-between places there is no cell phone service at all.  At times like this I am pleased that I have established utter confidence in the Honda NT700VA.  All it does is run.

From Wall, SD, I headed east on US 14 to Philip, where I picked up SD 73 north.  I took this through the towns of Howes, Faith, and then the Grass River National Grasslands to Lemmon.  I’m not sure what the deal is with the phrase “National Grassland.”  It looked like everything else for miles around, including the black cows grazing on it.  All of the roads were two-lane highway, which I had almost entirely to myself.  Some of the larger trucks coming the other way would create a brutal shock wave effect like a small bomb, but this happened only a couple times an hour.  You glance down and the speedometer says 80.  

In Lemmon, no more than a couple of miles south of the border between South and North Dakota, I stumbled on to the Grand River Museum. Dinosaur fossils collected from a local ranch (which in these parts can be huge.)  I walk in – no admission charge – and talk to the nice lady who is one of the owners.  She shows me some of their best pieces; here she is with a Triceratops frill.  Her husband takes people out to dig in the ancient river bed (now a steep hill) on their property every summer.  Amazing finds.

My hostess with bones found on the family ranch.  All of these are real, not replicas.

Finally it dawns on me: they are Creationists.  I myself am not; see my web site on the popular essays of the great evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould (sjgouldessays.com). They have a perfectly modern understanding of dinosaur anatomy and seem fully trained in modern excavation techniques.  They care just as much about dinosaur fossils as I do.   They just believe that these critters are 6000 years old, coexisting with humans.  They have real T. Rex teeth, and argue that their brittleness is an indication that they were actually vegetarian, as they must be according to their reading of Genesis.  My choice, and it was an easy one, was to focus on the things we had in common.  I donated $20 to their museum and thanked my host graciously on my way out, after exploring for over an hour.

From Lemmon I drove east on US 40, just south of the border, until I hit SD/ND 49 north and crossed into the second to last state I have never been in.  I weaved my way north to I-94, the northernmost Interstate route in the US, and drove east to Bismarck.  That is where I am now. I have an appointment at 9 am tomorrow morning to get my oil changed.  The least I can do for my faithful steed.

The Grand River Museum in Lemmon, South Dakota

Fantastic sculpture in front of the Grand River Museum.  Intended literally?

Day 20 (June 3). Wounded Knee and the Badlands

From: Winner, SD

To: Wall, SD

Miles today: 269

Total miles: 4866

I pulled out of Winner, in central South Dakota, under blue skies but temperatures again in the 50s.  Today I intended to drive due west along US 18 for about 150 miles. One of the things I wanted to see was the change in climate as I moved to western South Dakota.  In fact, it did become noticeably drier.  Officially I moved from the Tallgrass Prairie region to the Mixed region.  You can see the difference.

Central and Western South Dakota.  Left: near Winner.  Right: near Wounded Knee.

After my foray west, I turned north on SD 24 and headed for the creek, town, and battlefield / massacre site of Wounded Knee.  It was here, in late December 1890, that 200-300 Lakota men, women, and children died at the hands of the US Army, along with a smaller but significant number of soldiers as well (many by friendly fire). The long, unpleasant story that led to what was probably an unintended eruption of violence between the two groups is famously documented in Dee Brown’s 1970 book “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.”  (This line actually comes from a 1927 poem by Stephen Vincent Benet called “American Names,” and is not about the conflict; but Brown liked it and so used it.)  Once the killing started, however, it quickly evolved from “battle” to “massacre” as some of the soldiers ran after and killed fleeing women and children. Some bodies were found two miles from where the shooting started.  A few days later, the bodies were collected and placed into a mass grave.  That grave is now a small monument; here is a picture.

Site of the mass grave near Wounded Knee

But there are some odd twists.  The killing occurred at the edge of the Lakota (often called Sioux by others) reservation called the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which is in South Dakota, just south of the Badlands.  It is still there, and so are the descendents of the survivors of that massacre; I talked to some of them today. The mass grave is actually surrounded by another of other single-person graves, with headstones. These graves belong to some of the survivors of the event, or close relatives.  It was quite moving. 

More history happened here.  In 1973, with the success of Dee Brown’s book and another 60 or 70 years of friction between Lakota and whites (and within the Lakota community), a group called the American Indian Movement took over the town of Wounded Knee in order to call attention to their grievances.  The government tried to crack down, and people on both sides were killed, but popular support was with the Indians now.  (For those old enough to remember, it was this situation that led Marlon Brando to decline the 1973 Oscar for “The Godfather,” and in his place sending Apache actress Sacheen Littlefeather to the podium for a short but pointed speech.)  Anyway, things seemed very calm today, even friendly, although the absence of jobs and other problems continue to plague the Lakota. They absolutely consider themselves to be a sovereign nation; I was their guest as I passed through.

From Wounded Knee I drove north on small roads into Badlands National Park, which is actually where I had intended to spend much of the day.  The term “badlands” derives from both Indian and European expressions regarding the difficulty in traversing it.  Geologically, it is an erosion phenomenon.  Deposits laid down at several distinct times – when South Dakota was a shallow sea, and later when it was above sea level but rivers ran over it (depositing lot of mammal fossils) – started eroding away about a half-million years ago.  To the north is fairly flat grassland, and to the south is also fairly flat grassland, but the latter is some 200 feet lower than the former.  The White River, named for its color whenever it rains, carries away the soft clay that comprises slices of 70 million years of deposits.  None of the rocks are very hard; they are really still just compacted clay and mud that come apart in the rain.  The result is formations that truly seem unearthly.  There are a ton of photos out there, but here are a couple of mine.

Formations in Badlands National Park

The Badlands and the nearby Black Hills (formed by the upwelling of a magma dome millions of years ago) are quite distinct from the rest of South Dakota from space.  Here is an edited screenshot I took from GoogleMaps.

South Dakota from space, courtesy of Google Maps

Day 19 (June 2). The Ashfall Fossil Beds of Nebraska

From: Lincoln, NE

To: Winner, SD

Miles today: 330

Total miles: 4597

Nebraska, at least eastern Nebraska, is a lot hillier than I expected.  I would call it hillier than the Flint Hills, and it got progressively more hilly as I moved north toward South Dakota.  There were certainly lots of large farms, but there was plenty of pastureland as well.  I tried to stick to smaller roads; I started with US 34 west out of Lincoln, then NE 15 north over the braided Platte River, then west on US 275 to Norfolk, then NE 13 northwest (diagonal!) to US 20, and then finally north on a small road to one of my prime destinations on this trip: Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park. 

About 12 million years ago (the Miocene, for those keeping score), the supervolcano that currently resides under Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming blew, spreading significantly more ash than Krakatoa did in 1883, which led to the “year without a summer” in many regions.  (At the time, the hotspot was actually under Idaho; plate tectonics and all that.)  This grey blizzard blew across what is now central region of the US (see the map), depositing an average of about 6 inches of ash in eastern Nebraska. 

Display of the ash fallout from the Miocene eruption in Idaho.  The Ashfall site is identified in yellow letters.

Living in eastern Nebraska at this time were five different species of horses, a number of camel species, and, interestingly, rhinos.  At one particular spot was a water hole about 10 feet deep, and maybe 100 meters across.  The cloud came in, and then wind blew the stuff around like snow for weeks. The animals breathed this stuff; it is essentially microscopic shards of glass that get embedded in your lungs.  The dying took an extended period (as is evidenced by the way the fossils are stacked on top of each other).  Six inches of ash is not enough to bury large animals, but – and this is the key geological feature – lots of animals hung around the waterhole during this period, and were eventually buried in it.  The wind kept blowing the ash and eventually filled in the waterhole, entombing hundreds of carcasses.  Since the rhinos are on top, it is assumed that they died last.  Their skeletons are amazingly preserved.  Here are a couple of shots.  Ten million years later, after some other periods of deposition and then erosion, humans stumbled across the site.  It met all of my expectations.

Scenes from the Rhino Barn

Amazingly complete 3-toed horse

The morning had been chilly again; overcast and in the mid 50’s.  By the afternoon it cleared up and warmed up.  Also, the wind picked up. I didn’t really think about the gusts of wind I would be facing when I planned this, but I was wrestling with the bike all afternoon. 

From Ashfall I resumed by trek west on US 20, then north on US 281 out of Nebraska and into South Dakota.  (South Dakota is one of three states – now two – that I had not been to.)  I am in the town of Winner tonight, and tomorrow I hope to go further west and view the badlands, if the weather permits.  One final note on this subject: in a lot of public places where there is a TV, it is often set to CNN if not sports.  Here they all seem to be set to the Weather Channel.  I find myself paying a lot more attention to it than I do to CNN.     

Days 17 & 18 (31 May and 1 June). The Flint Hills of Kansas

From: Tulsa, OK

To: Council Grove, KS, then Lincoln, NE

Miles today: 96 & 185

Total miles: 4267

More overcast skies when I got up, but no rain.  I pulled out of Tulsa and northeast for Claremore, Oklahoma, to pay tribute to the legendary Will Rogers.  His memorial is there, near the ranch he lived on.  For some reason I was expecting a statue and maybe a small display of his life.  No, the memorial is a 26,000 square foot museum with everything about him you could imagine, including clips from some of his “talkies.”  Tribute has been paid!  There is, of course, some irony here.  While he famously “never met a man he didn’t like,” and while he thought all politicians were basically clowns, he was a staunch Democrat and spoke at the 1932 convention for FDR.  This large museum makes plain his feelings about Republicans (at least the 1930’s variety), which is not good; yet today Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in the union. 

The Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Claremore, Oklahoma

It is unmistakable that I am now in the Great Plains.  Point the cycle due north (or east or west), set the throttle for 70, and sit back.  Few trees; lots of grassland being used as pastures.

My next objective was the Flint Hills National Scenic Byway in Kansas (KS 177).  I took US 169 north across the border with Kansas, cut west on US 160 (through Independence, KS) and then US 400, using KS 99 to connect the two.  Then US 77 north to El Dorado, and US 54 back east for a little while to catch the southern edge of KS 177.  This road does not officially become the Flint Hills Scenic Byway until the town of Cassoday, and stops being the byway about 50 miles later in Council Grove.  During this journey it passes through the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, just north of Strong City.  I am pleased to report that the heavy stratus cloud cover finally broke up into fair weather cumulous about the time I started on KS 177. I did stop at the National Preserve (it was closed, but I walked down one of the trails a ways), and then stopped for the night at Council Grove.  This was actually a lovely town with a well-preserved historical district; it is on the Santa Fe Trail, and has one of the “Madonna of the Trail” statues in it.

The next day (Monday, June 1), it was 57 degrees at 9 am, but the sun was shining. I continued to ride north on 177 to Manhattan, Kansas, the largest city in the Flint Hills.  There I spent a very nice morning exploring the Flint Hills Discovery Center that is located there, along with Kansas State University (the Wildcats; 25,000 students).  I spent the rest of the day riding north to Lincoln, Nebraska, mostly along US 77, which was two lanes most of the way.  Lincoln is another college town, home to the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.  That is where I am now. 

OK, so what is the deal with the Flint Hills? And “Tallgrass Prairie” for that matter?  Right. The Flint Hills are a Physiographic region mostly in eastern Kansas.  Unlike most of the state, which is really flat, this is gently undulating “Hill Country” and so in fundamentally attractive. 

Having said that, it is a subtle attractiveness that is easy to miss at first glance.  I did.  South of Independence, I pulled off at a site that said “Scenic Overlook.” When I got there, I almost said “OK, where is it?” out loud.  But then you get it.  It’s not the same with borders, but here are some pix.

Flint Hills, Kansas

OK, so it’s a bit hilly.  What else?  Well, the biome there is “prairie,” like pretty much all of the Great Plains.  Biologically, the American prairie comes in three flavors: Tallgrass, to the east where the elevation is lower and the rainfall is higher; Shortgrass, to the west where the elevation is higher and the rainfall is lower; and “mixed” in between.  Here is a map. 

Great Plains Biomes

The thing is, virtually all of the prairie in North America has been converted to farmland, and this is especially true for the wetter tallgrass zones.  Except in one region: the Flint Hills.  Here, limestone with chert (aka flint, a form of quartz) is very close to the surface, so it is not practical to plow it. Instead it is used as pastureland for cattle, which are trucked in from as far away as Texas.  (This has been going on for quite a while; the original “cowboys” would drive cattle from Texas up through the flint hills of Kansas specifically so they could fatten up on the grass that grew well there, and was not fenced off and farmed by “homesteaders.”)  Thus, the look of the Flint Hills is one in which the sky touches grass instead of trees.  It is actually a striking effect. 

This brings us to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.  It is an old cattle ranch that was donated to the Government (the Nature Conservancy also played a role), and it is one of the few places where you can see what eastern Kansas (and all of the Tallgrass Prairie biome) looked like 200 years ago. Basically, it looks like knee-deep grass (at least at the end of May) with a bunch of other plants thrown in. (Some of these are sunflowers, thus producing Kansas’s nickname.) Maintaining a prairie is not a passive operation; they do a controlled burn at the end of April every year, and have actually brought in the original “big herbivores,” bison, to mow it.  (Prairie is an ecosystem, not just the plants.)  For me, it was just really cool to see what this part of the world looked like for thousands of years, not that long ago.  I have often heard it said that no creation of man can be seen from the moon.  I bet if the prairie that has been converted by man to farm land were painted, say, electric yellow, it would be unmistakable.  I consider this transition an example of Terra-forming.   

From the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas

Before readers think I’m being morose about what man has done to the planet, let me add an important point that I got from the great Flint Hills Discovery Center in Manhattan.  First, prior to the end of the last Ice Age (about 10,000 years ago), Kansas was apparently deciduous forest. (The ice sheets varied in extent, but generally covered a lot of Nebraska but not much of Kansas.)  When the ice retreated, the environment became much dryer and grasslands spread, reaching their maximum extent about 8000 years ago.  There were Paleo-Indians here then!  About 5000 years ago, the environment got a bit wetter (much like it is today).  It is known that the indigenous peoples burned the prairie every spring to stimulate new growth, which in turn attracted bison and other game animals.  The consensus, at least as stated in the film loop at the Discovery Center, is that if it were not for this human activity of annual burning, all of the (low, wet) tallgrass prairie would have converted back to woodland by now.  It may only exist because of humans!  (Having said that, trees have a hard time in the subset of the tallgrass prairie biome called the Flint Hills because of the very thin soil.) 

Day 16 (30 May). Oklahoma

From: Mena, AR

To: Tulsa, OK

Miles today: 226

Total miles: 3786

When I pulled out of Mena in the morning, the sky was blue.  It was the only blue sky I saw today!  A scenic route called the Talamena National Scenic Byway starts in Mena, Arkansas, and runs 54 miles along the ridgeline of the Ouachita (“Wash–i-tah”) mountains to the town of Talihina, Oklahoma (hence “Talamena”).  When most people think of Arkansas mountains, they think of the Ozarks.  The Ouachita are not the Ozarks.  The Ozarks are actually a dissected plateau (more on this when I get to West Virginia), but the Ouachita are “real” (folded and faulted) mountains.

The Talamena is a lot like the Skyline Drive in Virginia, both in terms of road twisties and scenic views.  I got some nice shots before I reached the fog, and saw several other motorcycles out on it.  About halfway through, at one of the few crossroads (US 259), large barricades appeared with signs stating that the rest of the road was closed due to high water.

The Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas

The Talamena Scenic Drive

US 259  took me out of the mountains, and now the sky was covered in a deep layer of stratus clouds. These were low and grey, but not threatening like yesterday.  It occasionally misted (less than a drizzle), but it never rained. It was cool, though, about 65 degrees.  As I drove though Oklahoma countryside, mostly farms and pastures, I could see standing water on many of them.

Only in part because I couldn’t get that stupid Merle Haggard song out of my head, I cut over on OK 9 to US 64 and went through downtown Muskogee.  It looked like it used to be an industrial town (tied to the oil industry?), but it looked pretty run down now.  So did some of the other towns I passed through, like Haskell and Bixby. 

Not so Tulsa, though.  Tulsa has become a major city, with a skyline and everything. It also has the key identifier of good economic health in 2015: ten miles of strip malls, car dealerships, restaurants, and apartment complexes before you could even see downtown.  This place would give Northern Virginia a run for its money.  I’m happy for them; it beats the alternative.

In Tulsa I was joined for the evening by my lovely daughter Babs (aka Diana).  She drove over from the Oklahoma City area where she works.  We walked around downtown some, but Tulsa’s downtown is the kind where people work but don’t live, so it was pretty dead.  We went back to the hotel for dinner, and talked long into the evening. 

Babs visiting me in Tulsa