Away, I'm bound away...across the wide Missouri...
It started with the Corn Palace and ended with me leaving my suitcase outside my car in front of my motel room. Happily, the sandwich delivery guy in Sheridan, WY noticed it and brought it in with my sandwich. Even more happily, the populace in Sheridan, WY is honest and let it sit out there for over an hour.
But along the way, it was all about songs. As I rounded a bend in Chamberlain, SD and gasped at the flat landscape now descending into a valley, and beheld what I thought was a lake--but was, in fact, the Missouri River--I broke into Shenandoah. Then, in the Badlands, I saw the buffalo. Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play... And finally, sitting in the Badlands Bar in Wall, SD, in a leatherette booth with a cheeseburger and iced tea, looking up the length of the dark bar and back to the pool tables, all packed with tourists and locals, and considering the image of Jenifer in her solitary booth with her bookish glasses, solemnly squirting bright yellow mustard onto her sesame seed bun, I burst into one of these things is not like the other... OK, well, that one I sang in my head, not wishing to have the Harley guys swagger over for a confrontation.
I can safely say that the Corn Palace and Wall Drug gave me my fix of Americana for the year. Holy moly. Now I know why we're in Iraq, because the number of RVs I saw today alone necessitates all kinds of oil. It was enough to make me want to turn around and head back to the Corn Palace, to beg them to convert that thing into ethanol, and fast.
Beautiful, dramatic thunderstorms as I crossed into Wyoming, and the 7,340 bugs that met their end on my windshield as I crossed the prairie were washed away.
Favorite sign of the day:
SAFE HAVEN SMALL ANIMAL HOSPITAL. HUNTERS WELCOME.
Tomorrow, the BIG mountains.
No comments:
Post a Comment