Travel & Transportation

Scrambled eggs, a couple of fishsticks, and leftover spicy Chinese eggplant; does that sound like a well-rounded dinner? Not exactly hitting all the food groups. But the last meal before we move on to a new place is always an odd combination because I hate to throw away food. Everything was well seasoned, though: scallions in the eggs and on the fishsticks and basil and mint on the eggplant. Using up the windowsill herbs.

I miss some things traveling like this: friends/family/ocean and, even, having houseplants. I miss their beauty and the routine of caring for them. My solution is buying a couple of those living herbs, like basil and mint, that grocery stores sell for a few dollars. And I regrow things from scraps, like carrot tops and scallions. A little indoor greenery, something to tend each day, and flavors to add to our meals, no matter what odds and ends we’re eating. If I have to throw some of these “scraps” away before we move on, that doesn’t seem so bad.

Another odd combination in Billings were all these very small casinos (the size of a 7 Eleven store) mixed in with regular commercial businesses in certain zones. One major stretch of east-west road in the middle of the town had a casino about every 6^th business, on both sides of the road, for 5 miles or more. This isn’t particularly a tourist destination so you have to wonder how all these small casinos are staying in business. I probably should have tried out Lucky Lil’s next to the Toyota dealership while I was waiting for them to fix our car. Maybe I would have made enough money to pay for the new tires. HA! Not likely.

We have a new travel model; rather than head straight to our new destination from the previous one, we might stop along the way for a little exploring. So, from Billings we travelled to Rapid City, staying there for a couple of days, then on to Winner, SD where we stayed for two days, then finally here to Omaha for the rest of October.

We would have gone to Custer State Park while in Rapid City because I and some friends had such a great visit there a few years ago, but it was the big buffalo roundup weekend. They expected over a thousand spectators converging on the area, so we envisioned sitting in long lines to get into and then out of the park. The park service uses volunteers to round up the buffalos. To be eligible to participate applicants are told they must have their own horse which must be: shod, able to react quickly, able to jump downed trees, and willing to ford streams. I would hope the horses are also used to cows at least, even if they’ve never seen a buffalo! My childhood ambition was to be a cowgirl. Darn, if only I had a horse with me instead of a cat.

But Rapid City was still well worth the stop. We visited Journey Museum, a great museum with exhibits ranging from the creation of the geology, the dinosaurs that inhabited the area, the prehistory human inhabitants, the Native American culture, to the coming of the pioneers and the effects of gold mining. Next was a drive through Bear Country USA, where we did see some buffalo, in addition to elk, wolves, big-horn sheep, and many, many bears. Add in a few local hikes, a coffee and walk downtown, and Rapid City was done.

If you ever want to be the center of attention, walk past a group of cows. Their heads follow you in unison as you stroll by. It’s not fear, not looking for food, just pure curiosity. The horses were only semi-interested in us, the chickens just want to play on the farm equipment, and guinea hens are in a world of their own.

In Winner, SD we stayed in an Airbnb old farmhouse on a working ranch. The owners, Joyce and Rick, lived next door and were so informative about ranching, roping and rodeoing. The ranch, and the house we stayed in, has been in Rick’s family for five generations. The house was ordered from Sears catalog and has just a few alterations from the original. A charming old house that could have been my grandmother’s – if she had lived in the west instead of New England.

Ranching is hard, can be iffy financially, and the ranchers don’t view their animals sentimentally. So it was such a hoot when we asked Rick what the guinea hens were for (i.e. do you eat them? or sell their eggs?) and were told that they just thought it’d be fun to have them around. The fowl are noisy, ever busy scurrying around, always in a pack. And they just make you laugh. It’s fitting that the collective noun for a group of guinea hens is a “confusion”! We watched a confusion of them chasing after a flock of wild turkeys that went through the yard. We weren’t sure if the guinea hens were chasing the turkeys out or just wanted to join in with their bigger cousins.  

So, other than the charm of farm animals, why Winner, SD? Winner is just east of the Rosebud Indian reservation where John taught school in the early Eighties. We visited the school, some surrounding towns that John used to frequent, and a friend of his from those days. As much as you hear how depressing reservations are, the parts of the Rosebud that we saw were not as bad as I expected. And the landscape is beautiful. What did strike me, though, were the number of hungry looking dogs we saw roaming around. We Easterners are so used to dog leash laws, fenced yards, dogs being walked (and poop picked up). We just don’t see a lot of dogs roaming loose anymore, even in the country.

Billings has a population of about 110,000, Rapid City about 76,000 and Winner, SD has a population of 2,821. We took all local state/county roads from Winner to Omaha rather than the interstate. There were stretches when we saw a car maybe every half hour but saw hundreds of cattle every ten minutes and nothing in between.

Omaha is a bit of a shock after the vast emptiness of South Dakota and western Nebraska. So far (based on just three days here), it’s hard to get a feel for the character of this city. It’s not as big as Minneapolis but I don’t get the sense of place that I did there. But time will tell. More about that next blog.…