(Uploaded a day late, now that we're out of the mountains!)

We knew this would be an interesting day when we rolled out of Rapid City, SD on Route 44 and almost immediately radio-surfed to a station playing Indian chants. A look at the atlas told us we were near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (Sioux) and an eventual break between songs strongly confirmed our suspicion that this was reservation radio. One of the DJs announced the unveiling of the gravestone of Jessie Blackfeather, who died last year, and then played an Elvis song in her memory.

This station and its mix of traditional and modern tunes took us into the Badlands, where we lost reception due to the completely peculiar landscape. The Badlands are a national park system filled with rock formations accurately described by our guidebook as "lunar." At least one science fiction movie scene, in the crappy Heinlein remake "Starship Troopers," has been filmed here. What makes them bad? They were named by the Sioux, presumably because the terrain makes the area pretty inhospitable to crops, people, cows, and people without a camera. The rocks are sometimes pink or yellow; that's fossilization. Rick made me take his picture as he stood on an outcropping where an older guy had been taking photos a few minutes before, and I managed to hold down my breakfast.

Here's a billboard/Here's a plug/We'll nag until you/visit Wall Drug

My generation missed out on the Burma Shave roadside poetry billboards, but we can still view the obtrusive marketing campaign for Wall Drug in Wall, SD. Apparently these signs start hundreds of miles away, but we took mostly back roads, so we only got them for eight miles. We counted 13 of them in that time, though: free ice water at Wall Drug, 5 cent coffee at Wall Drug, Wall Drug 1 mile, Wall Drug 4 blocks, Wall Drug gives you whiter whites and brighter brights...usually when someone's trying this hard and repetitively to sell me something, it's in the form of email messages asking if I want a bigger johnson.

It was on our way, so what the hell. It was a tourist trap of epic proportions, but the coffee really was 5 cents, payable in a wooden box next to the coffee cups. (Terrible, weak coffee, for what it's worth.) It sold all manner of schtick and collectibles (including actual pharmaceuticals), but did not quite compare to the sheer tackiness of Iowa 80, World's Largest Truck Stop. But it was amusing enough, especially the "backyard" of giant animal sculptures (the six foot bunny seems popular), an animatronic dinosaur, and framed newspaper clippings about Wall Drug and its founders -- the gimmick started in the 30s when the wife of the pharmacist posted signs on the road offering free ice water to thirsty travelers. More currently, the US military keeps posting X-miles-to-Wall-Drug signs in inappropriate places (Kuwait, Iraq) and posing for photos with them. Go team.

We saw the daredevil photographer from the Badlands on the way out. Not as good as the time I met my British Airways seatmate three days later at the Tower of London.

New state! New state!

Back on the Interstate, we looped around back past Rapid City, an area which, incidentally, is more overrun by billboards for the Reptile Park and Deadwood, SD than for W*ll Dr*g. Eventually, we extracted ourselves from South Dakota, though the ads didn't stop ("Only 122 miles to Rushmore Bulglum Story!") and entered Wyoming, the least populous state in the country which, like South Dakota, has fewer people than Boston. A 16 oz soda and a 16 oz coffee cost us $1.26 at a gas station. The nice woman at the visitors center gave us advice on roads, recommended enough attractions to keep us busy for a week, and eventually let us go with a large pile of maps and pamphlets. Next stop: Devils Tower.

Devils Tower -- a volcanic monolith that looks like a mountain with the top cut off -- was the nation's first national monument, but it's best known for guest-starring in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Now we know why we've been sculpting this funny shape in grits and mashed potatoes since Ohio ;)

There was a lot of driving left in the day, so we settled in and did some more radio surfing on the way to the mountains. This time, we found a fairly entertaining Bible commentator discussing the carnivore vs. "veggie" debate mentioned briefly in some verse or another (sorry, not up on my scripture). His overall message was to love thy neighbor no matter what thy neighbor eateth, as illustrated by this example: "The meat eater has all that protein from meat and his rage is up, so he punches the veggie. The veggie kicks the meat eater, then the meat eater sics his pit bull on the veggie, the veggie shoots the meat eater's dog...we don't need any of that." I hope this was *intentionally* funny...

In about two hours (no, we didn't listen to Bible study the whole way) Rick was entering yet another competition for the gold medal in Crazy-Ass Driving. The 60 miles through the Bighorn Mountains didn't have as many pigtail bridges as the Black Hills, but definitely involved a lot of twisting, turning, sheer cliffs, and eardrum-popping elevation changes. The scenery was gorgeous, and I managed not to lose bladder control. Though it had been in the 80s all day, up in the mountains there was snow, and plenty of it.

Tabitha had a fit around the time we hit the Powder River Pass, elevation 9666 feet, then another one on the way down. We caught a nice sunset, saw more wildlife up close (elk, white-tailed deer, and a beaver), made it into the last town for 25 miles in any direction before dark, and let poor ear-popped kitty out of her carrier. I'm writing this from Worland, Wyoming, where there is no local call for Internet access, so we'll just have to post this tomorrow from Idaho. Rick's cell phone has been on expensive "roaming" access since western Nebraska. At least we have electricity.

Tomorrow: Back to civilization? In Idaho? Maybe not.