Devil's Tower and Mt. Rushmore

Ugh...

It's happening. I'm becoming a slave to the photo-op.

Entered Wyoming yesterday...

Inside Black Betty's Captain's Quarters last night at a Walmart

Devil's Tower, used in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

Mt. Rushmore, used in "North by Northwest"

No history lessons or attempts at creativity today, folks.

And what's with all of the movie references?

Little Bighorn

In 1876 there was one man in the United States in charge of Indian Affairs. Based on census data regarding Indian populations in the reservations nationwide, he calculated that troops responsible for enforcing reservation boundaries could expect to find warriors no more than five hundred strong.

Though Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and 209 of his men perished one day that summer, leaving much doubt as to his reaction upon sighting the Indian forces, a reasonable guess might be: "WTF?!"

Initially hidden by the curves of the Little Bighorn River, the Indian encampment held between seven and eight thousand warriors, who descended upon Custer and his troops with hell's fury.

Custer, having graduated from West Point Military Academy, remembered his training and retreated to higher ground where he and his troops fashioned breastworks out of their dead horses and prepared for a last stand. It would prove to be Custer's last act on earth.

Today the hill stands as a memorial to the battle, with a visitor's center just south of the hill and the soldiers buried in a mass grave at the top. Custer's body was exhumed shortly after the battle and reinterred at West Point.

The battle site was turned into a national monument in the 1930's, but it took until 1991, by an act of Congress, to approve a memorial to the members of the five Indian nations that fought to protect their nomadic way of life. The memorial was not installed until 2003. It is still not finished.

Shakespeare in the parks

I missed out on Elvis week in Memphis by about two months. Missed the Arkansas State Beauty Pageant by three days. Missed the alien festival in Roswell by a few weeks. I missed the Iron Horse Rodeo in Red Lodge, Montana by about twelve hours.

That's the problem with such a freewheeling travel schedule. Visiting these festivals takes planning, something I'm not fond of. Chancing upon them takes a bit of serendipitous luck, something that doesn't come my way too often. Until last night.

A friend in Milwaukee had e-mailed me about Montana Shakespeare in the parks, but I just assumed my travels with Black Betty would never align with their schedule. But then I pulled into Silver Gate just outside of Yellowstone, and low and behold, there they were setting up for last night's FREE show: "The Merry Wives of Windsor."

I ate dinner at a small cafe where the tatooed waiter kept calling me 'brother' ("Can I get you another beer, brother?" "No thanks, Desmond."), and the show began at 6:30.

"The Merry Wives of Windsor" is based around the shenanigans of Falstaff, the comedic relief character in the Henry plays, and is regarded by most scholars as one of the Bard's "lesser" plays. Trying to follow a Shakespeare play I'm not familiar with is like trying to follow, well, most Shakespeare plays, but the brilliant lead (who looked like Paul Giamatti's character in "The Illusionist") made it more than worth it.

I used to be really into theater in high school and college, which is why I still enjoy stuff like this. The closest I ever came to acting in Shakespeare, however, was auditioning for "The Spanish Tragedy," which isn't even Shakespeare but is of course an Elizabethan revenge tragedy (of course!). I pretty much stuck to modern works by the likes of Steve Martin, David Ives and Eric Bogosian.

After the play, I continued along the Beartooth Highway (US 212) and finally pulled into a picnic area for the night at Beartooth Lake. This is what I woke up to this morning:

I continued along the Beartooth Highway, winding through nervewracking switchbacks high in the Beartooth Mountains, feeling like I was driving through "The Lord of the Rings" set. I stopped for gas in Red Lodge, home of the aforementioned Iron Horse Rodeo, and was swarmed by Harleys gassing up for the long ride home. I thought about showing them my tatoo for street cred, but somehow I don't think they'd be too impressed by a feather.

1,000 bonus points if you name the TV reference in this post.

Yellowstone on a weekend in July

Anyone remotely familiar with American geography may have guessed that my next stop after Butte would be Yellowstone.

First stop was Old Faithful, naturally.

Yellowstone is home to two thirds of the world's geysers, and Old Faithful is known to be the most consistent, blowing every half hour to two hours for a minute or so at a time. The park rangers are able to predict each eruption to within ten minutes, and a thousand or so people turn out on busy days to watch them.


It's easy to think of Yellowstone as a place infested with tourists, choking away the wildlife and ruining any hope for an escape from modern life. This is the lazy man's attitude. The trick to enjoying a place as heavily visited as Yellowstone is to leave the damn car. I know that sounds obvious, but it's amazing how few people take advantage of it.

After sleeping in my car last night in a picnic area (totally illegal but totally worth the solitude and view of the stars), I drove out to the Cascade Lake trailhead. For an hour I experienced tourbuses, traffic jams every time a bison or elk got near the road, and just general human ugliness. The moment I stepped onto the 2.5 mile trail to the lake, however, the world opened up. I spent the afternoon at Cascade Lake with about ten other people. No one else could be bothered to make the trek.

The place was so still I could easily hear the conversation of two fisherman all the way across the lake. They sounded kind of like sports commentators.

"Great day for fishing, right Dave?"

"You said it, Bob."

"Wind's really died down, huh?"

"That's right Bob."

It's funny how I complain about how lazy people are, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Just like the Grand Canyon, more room for me.

Butte, Montana

While driving to Butte, Montana, I pulled off of I-90 to use the bathroom in a general store. A cantankerous old man with a ZZ Top beard, eight fingers and only half his teeth looked at me and asked, “So what the fuck’s going on in Jersey?”

“Don’t know, haven’t been there in a month and a half.”

He looked at his small black and white TV and changed the topic. “What do you think they should do with Michael Vick?”

“Who’s that?”

He looked at me like I was putting him on, then yelled, “You stupid or something?” I wish I had had the balls to take a picture of him.

I got to Butte later that afternoon. Walking around downtown Butte is to see what towns like Roswell and Tombstone might have been had single events of American history not thrust them into the spotlight, submitting them to the fate of forcing tacky souvenirs onto ugly families and their fat ugly children for the rest of eternity. To see Butte is to see a town that history mercifully left alone. Nothing extraordinary ever happened here, which is its saving grace.

Instead the historic downtown is dotted with new casinos and old sagging buildings, such as the Iona Cafe on Main Street. What was once a grand cafe and more recently an artist's exhibition space, now sits empty while its windows play home to a local poet's work.

Yesterday I took a tour with an old man named Dave who led me around downtown while explaining its history.

In the 1860’s, gold was discovered in what would become Butte. By the 1870’s, silver was discovered. And just as the silver was running out, in 1892 copper hit the scene. During the early 20th century, Butte was the biggest city between Chicago and San Francisco.

We stopped off at the old town jail, in use from 1890 to 1971 when the feds caught wind of the horrible conditions and shut it down. In 1956 Robert Knievel spent time here for reckless driving at the same time a Mr. William Kenoffel was in his own batch of trouble. While standing in court, the judge looked at the two men and scoffed, “Well whadduya know? We’ve got an evil Knievel and an awful Kenoffel.” The name stuck, and Mr. Knievel went on to a distinguished career in death defiance, while Mr. Kenoffel most likely hung around the drunk tank for the rest of his life.


The jail was followed by a speakeasy located in the lobby of the old Rookwood Hotel. In the heyday of Prohibition, the Rookwood Speakeasy was one of a hundred of its kind in Butte. Nowadays the place is occasionally rented out for $175 a night, BYOB. I know this sounds just as tacky as the other towns I’ve mentioned, but believe me, the lack of billboards 50 miles outside of town and dozens of gift shops with Rookwood T-shirts make this place distinctly refreshing.

That’s the thing about Butte. There’s history here, but only because nobody has bothered to come in and modernize the place. For some reason, the town lies beyond the national radar, and the town is allowed to quietly go about its business. In terms of urban exploration, the town is a gem, though those days may soon come to an end as properties are starting to be bought up with plans of renovation. Dave was not fond of this.

“People make fun of Butte, say it smells, but we want people to keep making fun cuz we don’t want to turn into Bozeman – all overdeveloped, strangers coming in all the time.”

Kind of a weird statement coming from a city tourguide.

It's a tough trade off - in comes increased economic prosperity, out goes the crotchety character that makes Butte so alluring in the first place. Can a town have both without selling out to tourists and yuppies?

The pleasure of my stay in Butte was amplified by the company of one Miss Abigail, local shop owner, aspiring singer and actress, couchsurfing host.

By the time I spent five minutes with Abigail I was half in love with her. She’s the kind of girl who will fearlessly describe her childhood experience with the netherworld to a perfect stranger sitting in her living room. A quirky girl. A beautiful girl with curves that don’t quit. A girl who will sit in the morning hours with a cup of tea and let a few tears fall unabashedly down her face while quietly describing her relationship with God. The only person on this trip actually interested in seeing my pictures. And I have a lot of pictures. She's one of the most beautiful people I've ever met, and thankfully I had the balls to tell her so.

It's probably a bit clichéd for her couchsurfers to feel that way about her, but she accepts it with a graciousness that only adds to her character.

Through Abigail I met two Mormon missionaries, searched Butte’s nightlife for viable food options, settled on an old (everything in Butte is old) Chinese restaurant whose proprietor brought a portable DVD player to our table and made us watch his son’s recent fashion show in New York, and sat at a drive in watching Harry Potter through a bug splattered windshield on a starry night in Montana.

The Boeing Factory

After leaving Seattle, I decided to see the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, about a half hour outside of the city.

At the Future of Flight Center, armed guards remind us five or six times that electronic equipment of any kind is strictly verboten (hence the lack of pictures for this entry), after which a hundred or so people are herded into a small movie theater. The first movie is a montage of video clips of all the various planes, jets and helicopters that Boeing produces, all set to inspirational music, as if to say, “Are we kickass or what?” The second video is a seven minute time lapse clip showing the construction of a 747 from start to finish: “No seriously, we kick ass.”

We are then divided into two groups and placed on large buses to be taken out to the main factory, the obvious pride of Boeing. The factory is the largest building by volume in the world. The building is so large it could fit 911 basketball courts or 75 football fields. It could fit all of Disneyland and still have room left over for indoor parking. It is so gargantuan, dear reader, that it has been known to generate its own weather system. And I’m not just engaging in wanton hyperbole for comic effect. These facts are all true, all provided by our perky tour guide Melody. Think Kelly Ripa after a 20 year meth addiction.

The building is truly vast, containing all the equipment to send engineers into a Dionysian rage, but the trademark clouds and rain are missing. Apparently the problem was corrected years ago by installing an air circulation system in the ceiling. Heating is provided solely by the one million lights and the busywork of the employees, while air condiitoning is provided by opening the hangar doors. Many of the site's 27,000 employees get around this building by use of company-provided bicycles. The place is truly a testament to American ingenuity.

I also learn that the practice of naming their planes 707, 737, etc, stems from the fifties when the marketing department thought it would be catchier than just 700. It was also noted that 7 is considered a lucky number in many countries.

“And in case anyone wants to buy a plane from us today, it’ll run you about $280 million. We take cash, checks and most major credit cards.”

The group politely chuckles.

The highlight of the tour is also the climax. We board the bus and are driven back to the Future of Flight Center where we huddle in the rain by a door. Melody tells us, “remember, if the plane isn’t Boeing, you shouldn’t be going,” and swings open the door to an impossibly vast gift shop that rivals its factory neighbor.

Seattle

Seattle is a well known city in the northwest corner of Washington, a town that gave us Microsoft, the grunge scene, and Starbucks. Of little note to the layman, Seattle is also home to Christina Wills, a childhood friend who I haven't seen in five years.

I have to tread lightly here, lest I embarrass Christina (or myself for that matter) should she or one of her friends read this. You see, Christina was my first love back in the eighth grade. Hell, she basically introduced me to the concept of love at the plucky and complicated age of thirteen through nothing more than her amazing personality. Ok, the looks didn't hurt either. I was a teenage boy afterall.

The last time I saw Christina, we were both living in Germany, I in Berlin and she in Tuebingen. I had stayed up all night at a Paul Van Dyke concert and decided to take a 6:30am train down to surprise her for her 21st birthday. I was half delirious from the lack of sleep and the thought of surprising her, and she was half drunk from a rather early start to the party. As I got to the top of the stairs to the common room of her apartment building, she was surrounded by friends. She looked at me quizzically at first, which gave way to elation. It was a look I'll never forget.

Then again, it's hard to forget a girl like Christina. Five years pass with only a handful of letters and e-mails and I still find myself itching to get to a rainy city in the northwest.

As nice as couchsurfing is, it's a great change of pace to stay with someone with whom I have an actually history. This is the girl who passed me notes in 8th grade English, who I teased for dating Matt Eckhouse, who accompanied me on my first trip to Germany in 1996.

It's amazing how far apart Christina and I have grown, which makes our reunions all the more implausible yet deeply gratifying. She is now a corporate woman working for Microsoft while I am just another twentysomething vagabond still working my way to a career. She has to beat the men away with a stick while I... ha, well let's just say I have a lot of free time most days.

Ok I'll stop gushing.

In Seattle I saw the fish market where they still throw fish like in that damn fish video we had to watch at camp a few hundred times.

I also saw the sunset over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains from the Golden Gardens, as well as the original Starbucks.

On a side note, I remember an opening monologue by Jay Leno a few years ago in which he described a news story that Starbucks would be opening 2,300 new stores worldwide. He paused, the master of comic timing, and suddenly exasperated, yelled "WHERE!?" The answer is two blocks down the street from Christina where a new one is "coming soon," bringing Seattle's Starbucks tally to somewhere around 5,000.

I also took the ferry to Bainbridge which Christina tells me is "quintessential Seattle." Walked around Pioneer Square, ran around Green Lake, lost a pub quiz last night but gained a free T-shirt from the doorman when he found out I was from Jersey, gave out a few dozen more business cards and compared the place incessantly to Portland.