Escape to the Wyoming border

Thunderheads build on the west side of the Black Hills on an early June morning.

Sheridan Lake, Black Hills, South Dakota

Editor’s note: Readers, if you were getting the sense that our still new endeavor had already been thrown on the failed blog heap of history, we have felt that way a few times over the past month. Today’s post is long overdue, and given our lack of cell service, we have to re-examine how we get our words and images on-line in a more timely fashion.

We had only been here a month, and for half of that month we were under quarantine, along with other camp hosts, to ensure that we didn’t bring COVID-19 with us to our Sheridan Lake Campground.

Then May 20 came along and the Forest Service was finally ready to open things up, having agreed with our employer, that we would take all the precautions we could to keep our staff and our guests safe.

We were just getting back in the groove of registering guests, cleaning camp sites and selling passes at the lake beaches and boat ramp when the protests erupted in cities across the nation, and then around the world.

We caught bits of news on radio and TV and online when we left the campground on errands – allowing our cell phones to connect with a stronger signal. The combination of rising COVID cases in Pennington County, mainly Rapid City, the grind of work (our restroom cleaner quit and I inherited a few more hours), and the unease of knowing that violence was erupting, made for a real need to get away.

Peace during troubled times

It is strange to be in such a peaceful place, with the campground noises of laughter, smoke from campfires, and even the hum of generators, while knowing that people were being injured and property was being destroyed. I would describe it as a feeling of helplessness. Adding to the strange feeling were the daily encounters with people who looked so relieved to be entering the campground. It’s part of our job to ensure they are happy so we don’t discuss current events with the guests. We know some of them are getting a couple days of relief from stressful situations.

We didn’t realize until mid-morning on one of our first days off how badly we needed some space to let our minds wander.

All of our recent travel had been going Point A to Point B with a camper, and once parked, we were on the way for town to try to solve our cell signal dilemma or get a post office box, do the grocery store distancing or do laundry. Each trip to town brought an update of more heartbreak and tension, although we couldn’t possibly wrap our minds around the depth of agony going on in communities across our great nation. To say we had even a fraction of inconvenience, compared to some, would be a real joke.

On the road

For a few hours, we fed our senses on the drive west from Hill City, to 6,000-foot-high Deerfield Lake, which holds back the high-country runoff of Rapid Creek from Pactola Lake, which does the same for Rapid City.

At the west end of Deerfield the pavement gave way to sturdy Forest Service gravel roads and the headwaters of Rapid Creek.

If you could miniaturize it, you’d have the perfect sixth grade diorama just like the one my teacher, Mr. McReynolds had us build back at Red Cloud Elementary.

I remember, for some reason, that I allowed too much water into the lake we created, it flooded, and we had a science model catastrophe. It would be much more valuable for sixth graders to spend a day or two at to the top of a mountain range to see where some of their water supply begins.

Cattle graze in the high country of the Black Hills.

Along the way we rumbled over the cattle guards and looked over meadows filled with cow-calf pairs, a bull or two and horses. We spotted the perfect mountain life scene, a cabin nestled against a backdrop of trees. It looked like a summer cabin, not a working ranch, and surely, we thought, it’s too cold up here to live from October to March.

A summer cabin near the Wyoming border. Elevation around 6,000 feet.

We recognized more fir and aspen in the upper reaches. Instead of rocky crags we found round topped hills and then we came to the divide and started going downhill into Weston County, Wyoming.

Relic in the trees

We were thankful for the solid roads in this unknown territory, when a copse of aspen opened up to an old car, its doors missing. A mid 1930s model Ford or Chevy I guessed, fenders riddled with bullet holes that also looked decades old.

An eye-catching old wreck just across the Wyoming border.

On went the brakes so we could pile out and have a look. Bushes were growing out of the engine compartment. No chrome or nameplate to be found, and the right front fender showed repairs from some old collision.

The questions arose: When, how and why did it end up here? Was it along the tree line behind some old house, like those in hundreds, thousands of old iron graveyards across the plains?

Was it a rancher’s go-to-town car, or the old wreck purchased and parked for parts. How many herds of cattle had scratched off their winter coats here?

The pinkish gravel roads carried us past both modest homes and luxurious horse stables and a peaceful campground, and we were a little jealous because it surely didn’t have the traffic and tourist bustle of our place in the heart of the Black Hills near Mt. Rushmore.

The high country leveled out, and just east of the crossroads of Four Corners, Wyoming, I braked again for another relic, this time an old broken wood bridge, perched above a pond. It had the contrast I liked: The strong colors, green, blue and white of pasture, water and the building clouds held back by the mountains.

Angie is accustomed to these quick stops. Again questions: Maybe that old relic in the aspens was a frequent traveler across this old bridge.

Four Corners consists of an old motel and RV campground, a worn down but still functioning post office, and across U.S. 85, one of the rock quarries that produce that pink gravel.

A weathered historical marker told us of the Canyon Springs Station and the “Treasure Run” Stage Robbery of September, 26, 1878. A band of robbers locked up the stableman of the station and waited for the shipment of gold from Deadwood on the Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage Line. They ambushed the stagecoach, killing a passenger and wounding two others before they drove the stage into the trees and cracked the specially built “Salamander” iron safe – billed as nearly unbreakable without the combination. The gang got $27,000 in gold bullion, currency and jewelry (a value of $1.75 million in 2010), and legend has it that some of the 40 percent of the unrecovered loot was buried somewhere nearby.

We drove on with two choices: Following the old stage route, U.S. 85 back northeast through the mountains to Deadwood, or veer off northwest toward Sundance on a road that was labeled “Wyoming’s Black Hills.”

Soon we were glad we chose the latter, with antelope paying little attention to us. A chain of mountains gave way to undulating plains, interrupted by some isolated peaks. Near one of the largest, Inya Cara, we saw the sign for Devil’s Tower Honey, and once again we were turning around.

A cookie tin served as the honor box in the small cabinet waiting just inside the cattle guard. We noticed a motion detector off to the right. Just about then a four-wheeler came zipping down to the point of sale.

The driver was Dick Sackett, the beekeeper of Devil’s Tower Honey. He said the farm had been in his wife’s family for generations. He said eastern Wyoming had received ample moisture over the winter, and the grasslands showed it.

By now our stomachs were rumbling, and we had the cell reception to search for sustenance up ahead in Sundance, a town we had only passed by on Interstate 90 last year.

Soon we were enjoying the excellent hamburgers in the Longhorn Saloon, on only our third time dining out since March. South Dakota and Wyoming did not issue shelter at home orders, but businesses and the Crook County Courthouse and the local library were still limiting access.

Sundance, Wyoming is proud of its connection to Harry A. Longabaugh, internationally known outlaw who was born in Pennsylvania and died in Bolivia. He was 15 when he was jailed for stealing a horse.

The statue of the Sundance Kid, Harry A. Longabaugh, was perched on a bench in front of the sheriff’s office. Sundance wore a yellow mask, thanks to someone with a sense of humor.

Longabaugh got his nickname from the town, which apparently got its name from Sundance Mountain, which looms above the town south across I-90. To the north of the town lies the south edge of the Bear Lodge Mountains, a branch of the Black Hills under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service.

According to the guide maps, it is crisscrossed with old mining trails that now attract hikers and hunters.

Sundance looks like a town worth a longer stay. A jewel of architecture, the old Sundance State Bank, sits well preserved on a main street corner. Looking inside, it appeared the bank closed one day and didn’t give way to the usual series of renovations that you find in small town structures.

Gallery: Sundance State Bank in Sundance, Wyoming.

Wild West Espresso, about a block away, was a welcome stop for coffee and a chance to take care of some online chores. As Angie finished up these details, I took a walk around the block and past the bank again for some photos. Coming back south, you could see the northwest face of Sundance Mountain. What did the Sundance Kid think of seeing that when he got out of jail?

The mountain must have had a grander presence before technology and machines brought the ribbon of Interstate 90. We had seen it passing through on I-90 last year on the way to Devil’s Tower, and then it seemed like just another mountain. But with the town’s broad streets in the foreground, flanked by the boxy brick structures, the mountain commanded the horizon. And one final touch I admired: Sundance’s sidewalks were pressed in the appearance of the old wooden boardwalks.

Sundance Mountain looms over the town of Sundance, Wyoming.

Our time in Sundance was running out and we still had to get back in the campground to be available for late arriving guests. Wyoming’s 80 mph speed limit on I-90 launched us on the 90-minute trip.

We were ready to get back. We realized that it was the first time since our April stay in Kansas that we went somewhere just for the sake of going. If you have to be parked and somewhat limited in your travels, the Black Hills are a good place for that. The flip side is that there is so much to see and experience here within a 50-mile drive.

I’m going to close with a poem I dashed out about that old car in the trees. We may have to go see it again before our time here is up. August will be here before you know it.

Car in the aspens

What’s the story behind the car in the aspens?

That we found just over the Wyoming border.

We had cell reception, way up here

So we texted Cousin Bob a photo

What model is it? I asked.

Can’t tell, was his response.

I had posed inside the wreck, hovering over the

Long gone driver’s seat.

Again, text to Bob, who fixes up old cars

If it’ll turn over it’ll run, he responds. Typical Bob

Until we track down it’s make and model on the Internet, we’ll call it the Wyocar