History Repeats…

About 24-26 years back, Brenda and I loaded 5 young kids into an old van and headed west.  Well, we didn’t immediately head west, except as far as to the Mississippi River, where we turned north. We followed the Mississippi northwards stopping at the different sites of interest. It was about 13 July, because that is Daniel’s birthday and we let him open one present every 100 miles.

The first big stop I can recall is the place where Jesse James was shot and killed, St. Joseph, MO. We have friends from Africa who moved there and one of my former Ph.D. students teaches in the Uni there.

The next place I recall was the famous SD Corn Palace. In that spot, and I still remember art made of corn, we saw on the visitor’s list the name of a Tuscaloosa physician.

From the Corn Palace we traveled due west to Wall Drug, and then to Mt. Rushmore. Each place was a new and exciting discovery for Easterners who hadn’t been out west.  From Mt Rushmore, we had the MOST NOTABLE experience.

We arrived at Mt. Rushmore pretty late in the day. After getting a good look at the Sculpture, we headed west. It was getting towards bed time but I assumed we’d find lots of lodging options in Sturgis and Spearfish, SD. As we passed through Sturgis we discovered there was a HUGE motorcycle rally going on, and every room was booked.  Coincidentally, that same rally attracted a reported half-million bikers as we passed just south this trip.

No problem, I thought, 28 naive years ago.  We were only a few miles from Spearfish. Much to my recalled disappointment, in Spearfish there was a Corvette rally and every room was booked.

We had no choice but to continue westward not knowing how long it would be until we put our five tired, tired kids, and two tired, tired parents to bed. Finally, we arrived at Dean’s Pine Tree Inn. To my delight, easily recalled, they had a room open. We hurried to our “room” to discover that it was half a small house trailer. It had two beds, and a small bathroom, and a terrible velvet painting of a scary looking woman on the wall. This became the MOST MEMORABLE part of a very memorable trip.  The kids dubbed it “Dean’s Pinecone Inn”.  Daniel slept in the bathtub, David on the floor, Kelly, Brenda and Anna in the bed.  Not sure where I slept.

From there we went to Devil’s Tower, then to Cody, then to Yellowstone, then Grand Tetons, then Jackson Hole. All but the latter we covered this 2019 trip.  This is also the occasion wherein Anna G left the CSU dining hall and walked back to our dorm room—a pretty complex journey for a 2-year old, but that’s another story.

We’ll share some of the 2019 trip in the next several blogs.