Then Chris asked if I wanted to tag along for New Student Day. It was that coming Friday.
Well. I had decided I was going to get out of town at least one weekend every month, and I didn't really have a plan for April aside from load up the Jeep, point it at whatever OnX Offroad thought was open and doable, and go for it. So I said, "Sure, but I'm going to drive separately so I can continue on elsewhere and explore that weekend."
I did have one other goal for the April trip: I wanted to see if I could figure out how to do it without needing the tent. To do that, I needed to downsize so that everything could fit in the Jeep while the bed was folded out flat that I could sleep on it. I had made some outside progress toward that since my last big road trip in a ZJ. I had downsized my cooler-- for the entire Alaska trip, I didn't need anywhere near as much cooler space as I had brought. I had moved the shovel and traction boards to the roof, joining the tire that was already up there. Additionally, I figured I'd have a lot more space if I could avoid bringing the cassette toilet.
That gave me a filter to decide where to go after Laramie: I would go somewhere that had at least a vault toilet in the campground. Of course, I try to also be prepared if the plan doesn't go to plan. I wasn't just going to bring toilet paper in case the vault toilet was out. I picked up a small supply of 'wag bags' just in case the toilet was locked or something.
Anyhow, armed with exactly one criterion as to where to go after I left Laramie, I hit the web to search national park, national forest, and BLM campgrounds. It turns out there are a lot of campgrounds in southern Wyoming that would have done just nicely... except that they're still closed for the season in early April. The closest I found without it being back toward home was Wind Cave National Park, a four and a half hour drive away in South Dakota.
I had an ulterior motive for visiting Laramie: Shannon works there! She's a lead for collections in the university library.
Conveniently, the New Student Day schedule worked well for my plan: I could tag along in the morning for the generic new student orientation, then when they broke for lunch, I'd meet up with Shannon for lunch. She offered me a tour of the library, which I could do while the rest of the family got into the nuts and bolts part of New Student Day where Jessica would register for classes and her folks would learn about how to pay for it, all stuff I didn't need to care about as merely an uncle.
The gas was reasonably priced (for the time), and the bathrooms were large and spotless, but the star of the visit was the Brisket Breakfast Taco. It's burrito-sized, but they also serve a burrito and it's even larger. I considered that, but I've been trying to lose a few pounds so I hadn't had fried potatoes in weeks. I "settled" for the taco so I'd also have some calorie budget for some tater tots, er, I mean, beaver nuggets.
I shouldn't have bothered with the nuggets. I know better. Fried potato becomes quite disappointing when it's been sitting under a heat lamp, no matter how long it's been. The brisket taco, though, was excellent, and I'd do that again.
The rest of the family arrived while I was there, so I passed along my findings about the food and the route to Laramie-- the machine (my phone, in this case, the Waze app) thought that US-287 was going to be quicker than taking interstate highways through Cheyenne, so that was my plan. The rest of the gang did the same, though they were much more efficient about leaving the place than I wound up being, so they were well ahead of me. They were in the grand touring coupé, where I was in a short-geared stick-axled SUV, so I figured they'd get further ahead and I'd see them when I got there.
They had us all park out by the sports complex, so I got a good look at the stadium, and finally caught up with the rest of the gang in the basketball arena where Jessica picked up her name tag and bag of information. We learned a few things about campus and about the college she'll be in. We got to take a dorm tour-- so much nicer than they were back in our day!
I think it will be a good set-up for her. I post this here so that when she transfers out of there in two years to go to some big party school or something I am on record for being an idiot. :)
More seriously, though, I do honestly think it'll be a good school for her. Her end goal is marine biology, and Wyoming's kinda landlocked, off the cuff, you'd think it wouldn't work at all. Thing is, you can't do much in marine biology without a graduate degree, and once you have one of those, who cares where you got your undergrad?
The things that work well: It's a small school in a small town, and she'll still be close to home-- it's less than three hours back to Englewood. It's a full-on research university, but it focuses on class sizes and instruction. It's got a huge endowment set aside for students to study abroad-- one source said the largest in the US-- and it's spread out among a very small campus full of kids-- so chances are very good that Jessica will be able to supplement the wildlife management and biology program there at Wyoming with some classes at schools that do marine biology well. And it's afforable...
After lunch in town with Shannon, (which I spoilered above), we met back up with the family and she gave them a tour of some of the more useful bits of the library. After the rest of the family had to split for Important Stuff, Shannon and I continued the tour, where I got to check out some of the work they're doing in 3D modeling--not just books, but in some cases, a model of the book can be just as important as what's in the book. As an example, a collection of tiny books (postage-stamp sized) was donated to the library, and they're 3D scanning them to digitize their physical format as well as what's in them. I also got to check out their special collections section, where I got to see some of those small-format books and talk with the special collections librarian on what they're looking to do going forward.
I pulled into my campsite just after sundown. I still had enough light that I could pitch my tent and attach it to the back of the Jeep, but part of the point of this exercise was to verify I didn't have to. And it was nice to not have to do that in the dark. I could get straight to making dinner, which was backpacker pizza stew. Turns out I didn't need to bring the table, they had one for me. It didn't take much space, though.
There were deer all over the place. My eyes had been all over the place driving in because it was approaching sunset and the deer were coming out. That was just the opening act; Wind Cave National Park is full of fauna. While I was in the area, I saw countless deer, prairie dogs, and bison. There were a number of pronghorn, a few voles, and some raptor birds I don't know enough to identify. And a cat.
The coffee was OK, at least. Good enough that I didn't even try the spring water.
It's otherwise a nice looking little town sitting there on a small river (Fall River, IIRC), with a little waterfall and turn-of-the-previous-century buildings. Looks cute and historic, but a lousy place to look for breakfast.
After doing some exploring, it was finally time for my cave visit, which was really cool-- and really cool, because it's a cave, so it's always fifty-something degrees. This one is fifty-three. Wind Cave is one of the largest cave complexes in the world, large enough that its air pressure is independent of the prairie around it, which is how it "breathes" and gets its name. If the air pressure outside is low, wind comes out of the cave. The local Native Americans would hang small ribbons in front of openings of the cave to determine if it's breathing in or out when the air was slow.
Wind Cave also has formations that are almost unique to it-- box formations hanging from the ceiling where calcite got into planar cracks and then the limestone eroded out from around it.
I did spend a lot of the hour-long tour hunched over. The ranger, who was "five foot zero", said there were two places in the cave even she had to duck. I didn't bother counting how many times I did.
After the cave, the ranger asked where we were headed next. Someone said, "To the mammoth site," and the ranger said that's one of her favorite places in the area. This was sufficient recommendation for me, so I headed back out to Hot Springs again.
After I learned a bit about mammoth fossils, I headed back out. It was mid-afternoon, and I figured a) I hadn't been off-pavement yet, and b) I didn't want to do dinner in Hot Springs, it had disappointed me enough for breakfast. OnX said there were some trails that'd be the equivalent of "bunny slopes" in the ski world up near Custer, SD and I'm not an experienced off-roader, so that sounded about right to me. Getting there would also take me off the main route of US-385, which was also nice.
Traffic was heavy...
...and yet, it was a great drive. When I got to the unpaved bits, it got even better. Soon, I was on a forest service track that went up Custer Mountain rather than staying down near the river valley.
There were a few spots where the road had been rutted out to where I had to be careful of where I put the wheels so I wouldn't bottom out. There were a few spots where rocks on the trail tried to rattle the rig around, but it was nothing the shocks couldn't (mostly) deal with. A few spots looked like they could have been treacherous had there been significant rain recently, but the forecast didn't show that 'til tomorrow. All in all, a nice little spot to explore that was just difficult to make me think I might be finally learning something.
I eventually got to Custer, and thought, well, it's about time for dinner, I should find something here instead of head back to camp and rehydrate a backpacker meal. I drove down the main drag, trying to figure out which was the place the locals go. Custer's very near Mount Rushmore, so it's something of as tourist town and it wasn't yet tourist season yet, but I figured the locals knew what was what... but everything seemed to be deserted. Not much in the way of cars in front of any restaurant-- but then I found everyone. They were at the Dairy Queen. Dairy Queen? I mean, sure, it's the midwest, but why's everyone here? What do they know that I do not? As it turns out... nothing. And the fries were mediocre, too. I didn't need much after weeks without and then those terrible beaver nuggets, and DQ didn't even deliver on that. As Amy pointed out to me via text: The midwest is not known for its cuisine.
Before the cave tour, I had considered doing a short hike called "Prairie Vista", which was roughly a mile round-trip, but everything ached and I figured it'd be unwise to do that before I had a scheduled walking tour, so instead I took 200mg of ibuprofen and cooled my heels in the visitor center before the tour. After finally sitting down for a while in the Jeep and the ibuprofen caught up, I was feeling pretty good, so on my way back to the campsite, I stopped off by the visitor center and walked the Prairie Vista loop. It needed to be done. These signs weren't going to read themselves, and there's a fence in the way so the bison can't do it, either. I had to.
When I got back to camp, it was still pretty warm. The radar map suggested we were going to get hit by some thunderstorms. This made for some good breeze, and I had screens over all the windows of the Jeep, so this was nice, but I wasn't sure how long I could get away with it as the skies grew more and more leaden. The fan did a pretty good job of circulating the air so when I did finally button everything up before the rain, it was pretty comfortable. I might want to get some vent visors like Amy has on her RAV4 to allow more circulation without getting rain in, but it was still pretty good as is.
I didn't have any plans the next morning other than not stopping at either of the two nearby towns for breakfast. A truck stop about an hour down US-385 solved that problem nicely.
I had no plans on the way back. I was willing to stop for whatever I saw on the way home-- I'd rolled out of bed around 0600 and was only about 6.5 hours from home, so I had time-- but I didn't know what to expect. Near Scottsbluff, I found a spot where the railroad had a chicane because when they were laying the track, they came across the grave of a woman who died on the Mormon Trail.
Not far after that, though, I found Carhenge. It's an art installation recreating Stonehenge (sort of), and some artists have been invited in to paint the cars. Some other cars are stuck in the ground and have time capsules installed in them.
I found it interesting that many of the cars still had engines in them as they stuck out of the ground. I would have figured it'd be easier to move the durn things if they didn't have a thousand pounds of engine and transmission in the nose, but perhaps when you've got earth moving equipment, maybe you don't have engine hoists.
Many of the cars made excellent bird's nests, aside from the fact humans keep walking by so they have to fly off. Except when they don't, like these two pigeons.
Eventually, I made it home. Wind Cave is no longer a national park that I've never been to.
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