The Drive West

The beginning of the trip did not start off the greatest. Not surprisingly, I broke my 34th pair of cheap Walmart sunglasses while putting them on a mere 4 minutes after starting. Lucky for me this was a super-cheap pair costing me $6 instead of the normal $10! I set the cruise at 8 mph over the speed limit and hoped I wasn't being too greedy and by 7:50 I crossed the border into Minnesota.

An hour later I broke my long-standing promise to never buy anything in that wretched state (It's a Packer-Viking thing) and pumped a full tank of gas, which at 20 cents a gallon less than Wisconsin's seemed like the proper thing to do. By now I was cruising I-90 at about 78 mph and making very good time and doing my best to do as many miles as I could before getting too tired. I decided to sleep at the rest area just west of Luverne, MN. Two minutes later I ran over someone's white dog. I think it was a dog anyway. All I know it was big enough to make my truck bounce around a little bit. At least it wasn't a large enough animal to take out a headlight.

I got to the rest stop at 11:30 PM and asked the attendant what kind of animals they have running across the interstate. He didn't know but kindly offered me his flashlight to check for damage. There was none but I did find a few clumps of white hair stuck to parts of the undercarriage. After brushing my teeth and arranging my gear in the back of the truck I quickly dozed off and slept until 5:30.

I was off and moving by 5:45 and in 20 minutes was in South Dakota. Cool. All I had to do was speed through the prairie and I'd be in Wyoming before I knew it. I got more gas just east of Sioux Falls which was just pennies more than in Minnesota but still a bargain compared to Wisconsin. A little past 8 AM I was in Chamberlain, and shortly after that entered the Mountain Standard Time Zone at 9:15. A few minutes later at 8:25 I stopped for a breakfast of GORP and an apple.

By 10:06 I was in Rapid City and could sense I was getting close, I figured it would be about 3 more hours to Buffalo and another to get to the trailhead. I entered Wyoming before 11 AM, was able to see Devils Tower at 11:30 and got my first view of the Bighorns at 12:17. They looked huge, impressive, and much larger than the northern Rockies of Glacier. I was glad to see that there was still ample snow on the rounded peaks despite the 100 degree heat they had been having in the surrounding valleys.