Across the Prairies
Aug. 12-13
Mount Morris isn't really a mountain, but rather a wooded rise among rolling central Wisconsin hills. Near the outlet of a shallow pond was Clarence's cottage, which he had transformed from what had been a power mill. While working on it, he had found stacks of old handwritten power bills left over from the Rural Electrification Act days when the mill was churning out hydro-electric power. The turbine and generator were long gone, but a circular concrete support for the turbine remained in a portion of the building that extended over the stream.
Clarence had finished most of the other portions of the building as living space, but the part over the stream needed lots of work. Bet and I pitched in, helping to pry sagging timber sills upright while his brother-in-law, Arnie, shimmed the openings to square up the old structure. There was some digging and replacing of rocks that helped to support other portions of the lower wall, and we also helped to replace some of the supporting beams before attaching barnboard to the outside.
We spent a couple of nights at Mount Morris, taking time out to visit my cousin Jon, who was tending horses for the summer at a camp in the area. We also got out on the pond and late one afternoon meandered down the dirt road to a small tavern for a few beers.
By this time, we had lost track of the days of the week, but out visit in Mount Morris must have spanned a weekend because we were soon headed back to Cedarburg in Clarence's van so he could start the work week. Jay, who would go on to become a chef, whipped up some pizza for us and we hit the sack early so we could get an early start on the next leg of our road trip.
Aug. 14
29,609 miles on the odometer
I checked over the bike as we said our goodbyes to Clarence and Ellen. I pulled the plugs to see how they looked and the left one seemed to be burning black and building up black oil, a sign that the valves would need setting. Jay showed up to say so long, and walked along side of me as I made sure everything was strapped on snugly.
"Where's your tent?" he asked. I think he knew we had but a half tent, the old Army lean-to, and he disappeared for a minute or two. He walked out of the garage with a pup tent, neatly wrapped in a blaze-orange bag, and handed it to me.
"I never use it any more," Jay said. "You take it. You need it more than me."
I offered him a modest payment, but he wouldn't think of it and so I found the perfect place for it _ on top of the front fender pulled tight against the fork with a couple of Bungee cords. The lean-to would make an excellent ground cloth, I told him.
The bike fired up fine, and with a wave we pulled out of the driveway and were soon out of Cedarburg and cruising along Highway 60. It was a fine summer's day and we left our leather jackets packed away, me in my slightly torn and frayed pale blue work shirt and Bet in a short-sleeved polo shirt.
Heat that rippled up from the asphalt by mid-morning danced with lazy winds drifting across the prairie, and the occasional puffy clouds that crisscrossed our route seemed to guarantee fine weather as we motored on to Portage and U.S. Route 16.
We passed through Wisconsin Dells and on to LaCrosse, a nice town that seemed to have the perfect name for where we crossed the Mississippi into Minnesota. It also seemed like the right time to stop, put the bike on the center stand and somehow mark the occasion: we were now officially West. Maybe we should have. But the notion to stop, even to eat, seems always to be overpowered by curiosity as you move along, bombarded on all sides by the sights, smells, sounds: What's around the next corner, over the next hill, beyond the curve in the road? Pretty soon, all thoughts of stopping vanish.
All curves in the highway would soon vanish, too, once we completed a short, cutlass-shaped arc hugging the Mississippi to Winona, where U.S. Route 14 took a sharp left and set us on a due-westerly course that afforded barely a wiggle in the road. It started to cool off a bit as we reached Rochester, where we stopped for a short while to get something to eat. Then, with jackets on, it was on through little bergs of Kasson and Dodge Center toward a state park featuring what must be one of the more obscure of Minnesota's abundant lakes.
At least it seemed that way because it was nearly dark by the time we arrived at Rice Lake State Park and we never did get to see what shows up as barely a speck of blue on the map. Bet calls places that show up like that "bird droppings."
It seemed a nice enough place, and for this time of the year, strangely, quite empty with only four groups of campers staying for the night. Bet asked the ranger about food, and was told that the nearest place to buy anything to eat was nine miles away. She summed it up in our journal with this entry: "Goodbye dinner."
But we were tired and it was dark, so we paid $4.50 for a campsite on a tame little hill to pitch our new hand-me-down tent. Jay had kept all the parts intact and it went up fine. Bet spotted a deer as I built a fire, which did a decent job keeping the mosquitoes at bay. We sat and talked, more than once noting how still the air was. The stars shone brightly; it seemed the perfect summer's night. Soon, we entered our tent for the first time, unrolled the sleeping bag and fell asleep.
Aug. 15
29,946 miles on the odometer
The first thunderstorm hit sometime at about 4 a.m., a real boomer that rocked us out of a sound sleep. Jay's tent held fast as rain hit the nylon like buckshot.
"Stay still, it'll blow over," I said in a loud enough whisper to be heard over the downpour. The wind picked up.
"It was so still and quiet earlier," she said.
We lay motionless still for a few minutes, but the rain was unrelenting and now I could hear little rivulets running downhill along side of the tent.
"What do we do?" she asked.
"See if we can wait it out. It's just a passing storm," I said. My words of comfort were ended with a flash that brightened the tent to its full orange color, and a crash that seemed to bounce both of us six inches off the ground.
We snuggled a bit closer, as if it would make the storm stop, but it kept rumbling and flashing. A couple of drips plopped on the sleeping bag, but that was no worry. I was glad we had a tent, finally, not that half covering we'd been using earlier. A few more minutes passed.
"Oh no," Bet said. "I'm getting soaked."
One of the little rivulets had found a course on her side of the tent and was now beginning to flood the floor. The wind howled. I was thinking about my bike getting all wet out there.
"What do we do?" she asked again. What she really meant was, let's do something because the present situation stinks.
She was right, because the tent, now dripping rather steadily, was soaking the sleeping bag where it wasn't already saturated by the widening stream at her side, our clothes were getting wet and there seemed to be no letup.
It was time to make a move.
"The restroom is just down the hill," she said. "Let's get our stuff and run for it."
I fumbled around for the camera, which somehow had remained dry, and looped its strap around my neck. Then, with a sweeping motion, I grabbed everything else within my reach and pulled it into a bundle in front of me. Awkwardly, I made my way out of the tiny tent and bolted through the wet darkness for the restroom, which was marked by a single light. Bet grabbed what was left and was a few steps behind me.
By the time we got there, everything was completely soaked. She took the sleeping bag into the ladies' room and hung it over a toilet stall to let the water drain out of it. I made another dash to the campsite and tore the sagging tent down, doing the best I could to pull up the pegs and make sure they were all accounted for. I let it drop in a sloppy plop under the eave of the rest room.
We waited for a while, maybe an hour, hoping for a letup in the pounding rain and the day's first light. With the first faint gray of dawn, the rain eased to a drizzle and the wind died down, and I had done the best I could to repack our gear.
Aug. 16
30,119 miles on the odometer
It's a sunny morning and, finally, all of our gear is dry again. The storm in Minnesota seemed like a distant memory as we glided through the warm air rippling up from Route 14, the road that was turning into an old friend.
Across the state line into South Dakota, where the highway stretched out for endless miles without a wiggle or curve. Through Brookings, Huron and Highmore and finally into the state capital, Pierre, whose name until now had only been an answer on school geography quiz.
We de-biked and walked around town. A block or two from the state Capitol, we walked into a cafe that also served as a pool hall and gun-ammo shop and had something to drink before walking a few more blocks to get some lunch. The city seemed quiet, with little traffic or activity. We were anxious to get on to the Badlands and, with the sun still shining, made our way back to the highway.
A simple washer on my timing mechanism had apparently done the trick and the bike hummed along, at a steady 56 or 57 mph which seemed to be the optimum speed, without a skip or flicker. I reached down every 10 miles or so to check the heat on the heads; it was warm to the touch but never too hot to run a couple of fingers across the metal.
I tightened the damper on the handlebars to keep the front wheel in a steady straight course and, where some correction was needed, just a slight bend of my shoulders would straighten us out again. The sun was high and hot. The prairie farmlands had long since given way to brown, desolate range. Along this stretch I spotted a cafe. I loosened the damper and we pulled in for a short respite from the sun before moving on.
We left Route 14 at Wall at the southwestern part of the state, near the entrance to Badlands National Monument, where we bore south. The buttes, knobs, cliffs and outcrops that came into view reminded me of scenes from Wild West movies. We stopped and hiked into the rocks, peering out over the brown flatlands in the distance.
We drifted on into a shimmering limeish haze as the afternoon sun made its downward trajectory, hoping to find a camping space at Sage Creek. A ranger, a young woman, explained that the site was set up for primitive camping, and the gear we had turned out to be less-than-primitive at best. We met up with another biker who seemed to want company and invited us to camp with him. He had brought along the 10-gallon collapsible water jug, spade and other equipment required to claim a site. After a weak attempt to persuade the ranger to let us in, we politely gave up.
The ranger told us that another camping area in the preserve that had less-rigid requirements was full, so we decided to move on and found ourselves in a place called Wasta. By nightfall, we had found a site for out tent at Bruce's Campground, a kind of overnight ghetto for bikers and other passers-through like ourselves.
A number of bikers had set up camp, including some with elaborate rigs that included CBs, AM-FM radios and two-way radios like they use is small airplanes so the pilot and passenger can talk back and forth. To me, all the electronic devices detract from the basic idea of getting on a motorcycle and riding with nothing but the wind for sound, because it pulls your attention from the new world show unfolding in front of you. Plus, there are fewer wires to fix if something goes wrong.
Along our trip, communication was a tap, an arm pointing to some vista, a yell ("I'm hungry. Stop at the next place.") We always had plenty to talk about at the day's end, usually in a bar in some strange town where we knew nobody and nobody knew us.
Unfortunately, there was no bar at Bruce's, which amounted to a little summer-only town with only a general store. But it had a phone, where we phoned home to find out about our job prospects. No news there, but we were too tired to express any disappointment. We had covered more than 400 miles that day, so sleep came easily.
Aug. 17
30,528 miles on the odometer
A bright sun awakened us at 6 a.m. and we were soon packed and on the bike, passing through Rapid City before baring south on Route 16 for Mount Rushmore. The sculpted rocks gleamed against a brilliant blue sky, providing a postcard-perfect view of the four presidents' likenesses. We took the nickel tour and stretched our feet before saddling up again, now bound for Wyoming.
Route 16 carried us on our gradual rise into the Rockies as we bore northwest, stopping once in a roadside saloon in a tiny town perched on rocks overlooking a broad valley spoked here and there with oil derricks.
I stood at the bar to stretch my legs, and the Bet sat. The bartender, a young woman, seemed fairly disinterested in her two customers, probably because she would see so many bikers headed through this way on their way to the upcoming motorcycle rally at Sturgis, near Deadman Mountain back in South Dakota. I couldn't quite discern whether her disinterest reflected envy that she couldn't be out there riding like a free bird, or relieved because was safe inside. Maybe neither, and she was just plain disinterested.
We had stayed true pretty much all the way to our intention of staying off interstates, but out here where there weren't many roads, it's not easy to do. At Moorcraft, we picked up I-90 and headed due west to Buffalo, a crossroads about midway across the state. From here, the Rockies were in plain view, a breathtaking sight as the range played out across the horizon. The air had taken on a bit of a chill and clouds were gathering across the sky as we stopped at a cafe to eat, rest up and get out our jackets.
While gassing up the bike after leaving the cafe, we started talking to another biker on a 500 Honda while he was tying down an Igloo cooler that was awkwardly perched on his rear rack. Dana, from Connecticut, was traveling alone and seemed to be glad to have met up with some company. Bet asked if he'd like to ride along with us, being that his general destination was Yellowstone National Park too.
Now off the interstate, we continued our ascent into the mountains along U.S. 16, passing through Crazy Woman and grazing the lower edge of the Bighorn National Forest, where we crossed the Powder River Pass at 9,666 feet elevation. The Beemer was running fine even as snow appeared on the mountains and the temperature dropped. I stopped to pull a spot of Jack Daniels from a half-pint bottle I had packed, and wrapped a bandana around my face to protect it from the cold mountain air. We followed the ins-and-outs of the roadway cut into the rises above Ten Sleep Canyon. The sheer drop-offs and magnificent peaks along this chilled trail affirmed that we had discovered what biking is all about. I looked back at Dana; he rose a fist and smiled back.
Past Ten Sleep, we entered another crossroad town, Worland, where the highway patrol has blocked off some side roads because of snow in the higher elevations. Our direct route west was stopped cold by mountains and weather, we kept on U.S. 16 and blitzed into the town of Basin, a tiny place that couldn't have changed much since the old days of the West.
Along the trail, it had become something of a custom to stop in the town saloon toward the end of the day to hear what people were talking about and ask where a good camping spot might be. So was the case in Basin, where Connecticut Dana accompanied us as we walked into a place called Bonnie and Bud's. Before our first beers were gone, we were told that the town park, diagonally across the road from where we sat, sufficed as a legal camping area.
"Just pick a spot, and it's yours for the night," the bartender told us.
It was cool outside for an August night, in the 50s, and we set up the tent while Dana picked out a spot and set up our gear. The little town park turned out to be quite a busy place for a mountain stopover. We met a pair of young Israeli men who were traveling cross-country in a convertible, I think they said a Mustang.
Bet, Dana and I stopped in a cafe in town before returning to Bonnie and Bud's, where country music was on the jukebox and a crowd had gathered for the evening. The place was warm and friendly, with old barn boards along the walls and decorated with old wagon wheels, lanterns and the like.
In the bar, Dana struck up a conversation with another biker, a short, blonde farmer whose name was Don and drove a 750 Honda with fairing and saddlebags. Don, from what he pronunced as called EYE-oh-way, was also headed for Yellowstone and was also camping at the town park. He asked if he could join us and we welcomed him along. One thing about riding in a group, especially out where we were: If you break down, there was always an added hand to get you back on the road.
It was beginning to turn into the road to Oz. Connecticut Dana seemed a little more comfortable having Iowa Don along for the hitch, and the two of them seemed to hit it off quite well.
We stayed at the bar for a while, figuring a few beers would ward off the cold, before heading back to our campsite.
I covered the bike with the old lean-to, and in the tent bundled up my leather jacket for a pillow as Bet did the same with some of her day clothes, and we slept nicely in the cool, cloudless mountain air.
