Steve and Marlow had the conn for this Sunday drive of scenic landscape worship. As opposed to the Garmin toolishness of Augustus, using paper state maps and Marlow’s old marked-up road atlas they analogue planned the day’s route through three states of national and state parks and sundry attractions.
They had visited these places two years earlier during a cross country motorcycle trip and wanted to see them again. Since Augustus and Rex had missed several of these places during their 2005 trip out west, they stretched out the route a bit. They would now be doing several 500 mile days in a row.
Marlow and Steve planned to swap the lead between them at each gas or food stop. Since it looked like it might rain during the day, they placed the day’s directions inside Ziploc sandwich bags. They inserted the bag with an edge sticking out of left pant or jacket pocket for ready reference access while zipping along the back roads.
Steve led them out of the motel parking lot on the first leg. The morning itinerary went through the Black Hills, Custer State Park, Needles Highway and the Crazy Horse Monument. Steve was flawless as the pack successfully negotiated these roads despite their poor signage.
These are sacred places. Here’s a taste . . .
After lunch, they unexpectedly became three. Steve had an emergent requirement to go south and deal with family matters in Colorado. They sadly bade him farewell and, circumstances permitting, planned to meet up with him after corner #2 during their southerly trip along the west coast.
With Marlow in the lead, the trio dodged rain clouds as they made their way underneath angry skies to the Devil’s Tower. Upon arrival at the foot of the tower and just before Marlow took the photo below, several things occurred:
• a fierce rain and lighting-filled storm wracked the Devil’s Tower totally obscuring it from sight only 300 yard behind them;
• Rex found a nice digital camera that some Canadian motorcycle rider from British Columbia had forgotten in the port-a-potty; and
• unknowingly, Augustus took a bad omen photo which should have been immediately deleted
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