Spring                                                         New (Emergent) Moon

Left Denver and drove into Wyoming snow and 50 mph wind along 25. The snow looked like ice cream dots pelting down from the sky and there was only small accumulation. Signs advised no small trailers due to the wind and the big rigs wove back and forth. Kate steered a straight course through the buffeting. She drives now because it helps her back and neck.

We couldn’t connect with the Wavin’K ranch so we left the area without meeting any staghounds, but we know who the breeders are and did talk to Mike Bilbo (yes, that’s really his last name.) of Rancho Fiasco (and, yes, that’s really the name of his place.). Seemed like a nice guy but he was in Kentucky at a terrier breeders get together.

We left 25 at the Guernsey, Wyoming exit and drove through Wyoming, then South Dakota countryside, often in the rain and from Hotsprings, South Dakota on it rained constantly. This is beautiful, but stark country. That’s definitely a western landscape aesthetic, the repetitive hills and swales, grass and scrub brush, rock outcroppings here and there, bare. About the only agricultural purpose is cattle grazing and we saw some of that. Most of the land looked uninhabited, though much of it belonged to this ranch or that one.

Also part of the landscape here are missile silos. You can see them off the road, surrounded by mean looking fence and with various objects sticking above ground. This is lonely country and here men do a job for which they have trained, but will probably never be called upon to execute. It’s not hard to see why morale would be an issue.

The Black Hills are beautiful and emerge slowly when coming from the south and west, gradually gaining height. Trees begin to show up more and often. Rock outcroppings are more frequent. This too is stark, bare land, a variation on the Wyoming aesthetic.

At Rapid City we found I-90 and began our journey east. We stopped, improbably enough, at the Wall Drug exit. We’re in a Best Western just seven miles north of the entrance to the Badlands which we’ll drive through tomorrow morning. Home tomorrow late afternoon, early evening.