Listing Through Life

My wife came down with a cold on Wednesday, so I volunteered to let her sleep late on Thursday while I drove into Custer and bought pastries for breakfast. I used the opportunity to tour the town. Many businesses and most street corners had painted buffalo statues, some of which were impressive and some of which were just gaudy. I took a Red Chair photo with the one that stuck out the most. I made no effort to photograph them all, nor have I included all the photographs I took.

I liked the town. It had two great restaurants, the residents were friendly, and it wasn’t pimped up like Deadwood and Keystone. It was on this morning that we began having trouble with a couple of our tires. Every morning, a dashboard light would indicate that we were losing pressure. We’d fill them up, and they’d be fine for the day, but the next morning the light would be on again. I thought perhaps it had something to do with the altitude, but as the week went on and the problem didn’t go away, we decided to have it looked at. I talked with the waitress at Baker’s Bakery on Sunday morning and she told us to take the car to Leo, the local tire guy. I asked if he would be open on a Sunday, and she said, “If he’s not, just knock on the door.” (We didn’t do that, and we made it all the way home. Our local tire guy found nails in two tires, which I find strange. I wonder if some kid at Mount Rushmore put nails behind our tires as a joke.)

Incidentally, the street visible in the background of several of the buffalo statue photos is purported to be the widest Main Street in the United States — wide enough for oxen pulling a wagon to make a U-turn.

There is more to Custer than gaudy buffalo statues. There’s also this odd bust of Lieutenant Colonel Custer himself, in celebration of the 1874 Army expedition he led into the Black Hills to look for a location for a fort and search for gold. His unit, the 7th Cavalry, camped on the site of Custer. They found gold, which caused a huge gold rush into the region which had been promised to the Sioux Indians. Partly in response to this invasion, the Sioux went to war with the U.S. One of the battles of this war took place on the Little Big Horn River, where Custer and his troop were wiped out.

If that odd, pink monument isn’t weird enough, there’s also a much larger monument to Horace N. Ross, the member of Custer’s expedition who discovered the gold which led to all the kerfuffle.

On the way back to the lodge, I made a quick side trip down to the shore of Sylvan Lake. I passed through a state park check station and was vehemently flagged down by a woman in a ranger uniform. She came storming over to the car and saw my state park pass on the dashboard by the steering wheel where I had put it to avoid gumming up the glass. She leaned in the passenger window and said, “I need to see that.” She ripped it from my hand, tore the backing off and pasted it to the windshield on her side of the car. She looked at me and said sternly, “It needs to be here so we can see it.” I said nothing and drove meekly on. Three minutes later I passed her going the opposite direction. She waved and smiled like we’d been friends for years.

We drove by Mount Rushmore on Tuesday evening on our way from the Badlands to Custer State Park and I took a couple photos from the road through our bug-splattered windshield. Roosevelt and Lincoln seem particularly chummy from this angle.

We decided we wanted to see it in the daytime and also watch the lighting ceremony at night — but we only wanted to go there once. Our solution, of course, was to drive the 17 or so miles from our lodge late in the afternoon and stick around. This was a good plan except that we picked the one day when it was cloudy. It even rained a little off and on. This made it a poor day for taking photos, but I soldiered on.

I left the Red Chair in the car while we scouted the place. This was stupid. We’d no sooner walked the half mile from the $11 parking garage to the overlook than I realized I’d better get my photo soon before it got too dark. I walked back while my wife wandered through the visitor center.

When I finally got back to the viewing area, I put the chair on the wall and looked for my best shot. A couple was standing nearby, waiting for the elevator to the lower level. The guy asked me what I was doing, but didn’t seem that interested when I told him. He told me he thought I was putting the chair on the wall so I could sit and watch the show.

As I walked back to the car to put the chair away, I tried several other shots, none of which turned out. For one, I put the chair in the middle of the main walkway and laid down on my stomach for a photo. I saw a couple guys looking at me, but didn’t think much of it. But then they began walking toward me rather deliberately. As I headed for the garage, they followed. I paused to look for one more shot and to find out what they were up to. One of the guys approached and asked me what I was doing with the chair. When I told him, he seemed disappointed too. From what he said, I got the impression he thought I was up to something that might make him famous.

I wandered back without the chair and toured the visitor center while my wife watched the film. We made a quick trip back to the restaurant for ice cream, then found seats in the arena and waited for the show. It was 42 degrees out, and raining. We were wearing light jackets. Several people made comments as they walked past, but we didn’t care. It had been a hot summer and two days earlier it had been near 100 in Wall. We enjoyed being cold for a change.

The show began at 9:00. A ranger came out on the stage and gave us a Presidential trivia quiz about the four men carved into the mountain. We then saw a video that made no impression on me whatsoever. The ranger, who was from Virginia, gave a talk on how wonderful Thomas Jefferson was, then had all the veterans in the audience come down to the stage. While she walked along the line asking each their name and branch of the armed forces, the lights came on and lit up the carving.

We sang the “Star Spangled Banner,” and then several of the veterans joined the ranger in a flag-lowering ceremony.

It was all supposed to be very moving, and it was in a way. But I couldn’t help reflecting that the government that mentioned God several times and “our Creator” once during the ceremony is very antagonistic about any mention of God in most other instances. And the government that had this moving ceremony honoring the men and women who fought for our freedoms just mandated that I have to buy health insurance. I could go on.

On our way back to the lodge, we had to take a narrow, winding road. The sky was overcast and the night was pitch black. Because the road was so twisting, our headlights only occasionally shone on the road in front of our car. I found myself hesitating to allow the lights a chance to catch up with us. Suddenly I saw something white flash up ahead. At the same time, my wife said, “What was that?”

I slowed to a near-stop and put on my high-beams. On one side of the car, a brown and white cow was standing just a few feet off the pavement. That’s what she saw. On my side of the car, a jet black cow with a white patch on its face was standing on the pavement in the oncoming lane. That’s what I saw. I’m not used to meeting free-range cows in the night. It was somewhat startling and I drove even slower the rest of the way.

We spent six nights at Sylvan Lake Lodge in Custer State Park. The lodge was nice — situated on a hill above the lake surrounded by towering rock formations, centrally located in the Black Hills. Our room, not so much. It was tiny, barely 12×12 with a small bed with a hard mattress. There was only one chair, and that one wasn’t very comfortable, so lounging in the room was unpleasant. About halfway through the week we “borrowed” a chair from the hallway lounge and that improved things a little bit, although it also made the room even more crowded. There was a cozy lobby with comfortable chairs and mounted animal heads and an artist-in-residence, but it doubled as the bar and was always packed with people drinking.

The view of Sylvan Lake from our room. The one afternoon that we spent any amount of time in the room, we had the window open. Somebody was playing Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca” at full volume, which was a bit incongruous, but pleasant.

I took my first walk around the lake on Wednesday afternoon. It was overcast and a bit raw, but except that it made my photos dark, I didn’t care.

On Thursday morning, I wandered around by the lodge while waiting for friends to arrive (after driving all night from Chicago).  Later in the week, we discovered that the lodge was only a mile or so from the main rock formations along the Needles Highway. Many of the same sort of formation could be found around the lake. The concrete dam that formed the lake was wedged between two of these formations.

On Sunday morning, we strolled around the lake. It was a beautiful day, but somewhat crisp and with a sharp breeze. There was a wedding taking place, and the bride was freezing in her sleeveless dress. Moments after I took this photo, her father stood up and gave her his suit jacket to wear.

The wedding party had the reception, and stayed overnight, in the lodge. They were complaining about the cold and trying to get the staff to light a fire in the fireplace, but since the entire area was suffering from extreme drought, there was a strict no-fire policy.

The dam is visible in the next photo, a bit to the right of the yellow tree. There’s a narrow walkway with a railing on the top of it.

When it reaches that end of the lake, the path climbs the rocks, then dips down below the dam. The lake is reached again through this natural crack in the rocks.