Our 2021 Road Trip #33: Valley of Gold, Valley of Shadow

Anne and Makoshika!

Anne in happier times, by which I mean ten minutes into the walk, taken at her request for her Facebook friends back home.

When recounting our disappointments about Yellowstone National Park, at the time two occurred to us: we wished everyone else in the world had stayed home so that we could’ve had the entire park to ourselves; and we wished we could’ve hiked more. We spent so many hours driving from one site to the next that we really didn’t walk a lot of long distances. We knew some exercise would do us a world of good, and yet its hiking trails — which we were pretty sure they had — didn’t stand out to us on their official, main map. It was all about dots of interest, not lines for walking.

Our next stop in Montana satisfied our urge to walk, then exceeded said urge until it began to pose safety concerns. As darkness overtook us at the close of Day Six, we stopped any and all jokes about “getting our steps in” for the rest of the trip.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #32: A Celebrity Signing in Sandstone

William Clark's autograph!

An autograph so rare, it takes an entire national park to serve as its Certificate of Authenticity.

Chasing autographs is usually an activity better suited to our comic cons than to our vacations. This time we had an excuse to peruse one along our path through Montana. We weren’t allowed to take it home, and its signer was unavailable for a jazz-hands photo op with us, but we appreciated the chance for a close look at preserved physical evidence from a real historical figure who’d later go on to costar in a long-running comics series. The giant object containing his personal graffiti was pretty keen, too.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #31: The Montana Montage

I-90 and mesa!

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’…

Prior to 2021 I’d been to 32 of our United States. Plenty of Americans have walked around more states than I have, which is pretty cool for them. Our last six annual road trips took us to new places we hadn’t seen before, but they were all in states we’d already visited in the past. This year we finally crossed another state off the to-do list as we exited Yellowstone into the southwest end of Montana. Pound for pound Wyoming was prettier overall, but the Montana scenery had its charms.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #30: Restaurants Rundown

Pokey's kangaroo dinner!

Lunch on Day Four at Pokey’s BBQ: a dinner of grilled kangaroo (“Just the ugly ones,” swears the menu) and spicy corn nuggets.

Longtime MCC readers may recall our best annual travelogues usually include photos from the restaurants we’ve visited in other states and the foodstuffs we’ve found that we don’t necessarily have back home in Indianapolis. We do enjoy sharing those moments, but you may have noticed their conspicuous absence from this series so far. We had looked forward to leaving home and hopefully leaving the year’s troubles behind for just ten days. The more we drove, the more we had to face reality: it was the same kind of 2021 everywhere in America.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #29: Goodbye Yellowstone Road

Mammoth Hot Springs Upper Terrace Yellowstone!

The view of Mount Everts from Mammoth Hot Springs.

It all comes down to this, our final hour in Yellowstone. Nine hours after leaving Cody 180 miles ago, I was so done with driving. The entire day had confirmed our hypothesis that, yes, Yellowstone is big. Like, really really really really really big. I tried my best to care deeply about the remaining flora, fauna, geological peculiarities, and man-made obtrusions that stood between us and the park’s north entrance, which in turn would lead to respite at the next hotel and check a new state off our lifetime to-do list.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #28: From Sheepeater Cliff to Mount Everts

Yellowstone Huckleberry Ridge Tuff road!

The frequently photographed portion of Grand Loop Road as it vertiginously curves around Huckleberry Ridge Tuff before heading down into Golden Gate Canyon.

The Grand Loop Road around Yellowstone kept going and going and going, and so did we…

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Our 2021 Road Trip #27: From Gibbon Falls to Willow Park

Gibbon Falls, Yellowstone!

At a mere 84 feet high, Gibbon Falls isn’t the tallest waterfall we’ve seen, but it’s perfectly pretty as-is.

After we finally parted ways with the Grand Prismatic Spring, our next few hours in Yellowstone were a blur of frequent stops and pervasive wonders. Each point of interest had its highlights, but few of them have enough photos to merit their own individual, full-length galleries. Honestly, after so many hours on the road in those surroundings, I was in danger of scenic overload.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #25: Burning Biscuit Basin

Yellowstone's Biscuit Basin!

The heated ponds of Yellowstone: nature’s original steam engine.

Sure, Old Faithful was spiffy, but every ounce of its spewed hot water was the same ordinary color. Elsewhere in Yellowstone, organic and inorganic additives commingle in the waters to produce scintillating effects in multiple colors of the rainbow. Maybe not all of them, but quite a few. I wouldn’t have minded some purple, but the land wasn’t taking requests.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #24: Old Faithful!

Old Faithful geyser!

Geysers gonna gize.

It all leads up to this: our opportunity to witness the world’s most famous geyser do its thing. Old Faithful is the main event for any newcomer to Yellowstone National Park, the one feature everyone’s heard of since youth. It’s the center of the public’s average mental image of Yellowstone as just a giant, grassy plain with the one big natural water fountain in the middle. Its popularity and its predictably sporadic yet potentially time-killing nature (depending on how soon we’d arrive before the next show) made it the highest priority to check off our to-do list above all else.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #23: Follow the Yellowstone Road

Yellowstone National Park sign!

One of the park’s less natural formations.

Day Five. 8:45 a.m. MDT. Primary objective reached. FINALLY.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #22: Prelude to Yellowstone

Yellowstone traffic!

National parks: the hot spot of 2021!

Yes, I realize we took a lot of chapters to reach our feature presentation. If you thought waiting on the photos was taxing, try driving there. Stopping for fun along the way is how we roll.

Fair warning, though: still no Yellowstone in this chapter. Soon, though. We’re so close! That’s next, in fact! But first, a quick warm-up.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #21: Camp Cliffs Notes

Wyoming stone pictographs!

Pictographs carved by earlier cultures, ideas and stories scrawled across every surface until they were all canceled and replaced by Snuffy Smith.

Our planned route deep into the heart of Wyoming required us to divert in the wrong direction away from Yellowstone and had nearly zero good options for pit stops along the way, save one (1) lone gas station outside Hyattsville with a tiny parking lot and too many cars already muscled into it. We swung off the highway and pressed northeast toward promises of archaeological revelations, embellished outcroppings, and closeness to nature. By the time we arrived at our next stop, we were happy just to have bathrooms again.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #20: The Wyoming Way

Wyoming landscape.

Mountains! Forests! Mountains with forests on them! We were definitely not in Indiana anymore.

From the ancient buffalo graveyard it was a four-hour haul to our next attraction deep in the heart of the Cowboy State. It wasn’t long before we zoomed past the exit to Devil’s Tower, passed the longitudinal coordinates for Woodland Park, CO, and would officially drive The Farthest West We’ve Ever Gone in Our Lives.

(Anyone who’s ever seen the Pacific Ocean or had use for a frequent-flyer program is free to be unimpressed. We humble bumpkins claim our little personal victories wherever we can.)

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Our 2021 Road Trip #19: Oh, Give Me a Dump Where the Buffalo Jump

rafter buffalo!

Officially the highest buffalo statue we saw on this trip. Eventually we’d see a real one at a higher elevation, but for now this would have to do.

Our next stop promised a giant pit filled with centuries of accumulated fossils jammed into one cramped space. In my mind we were about see a Sarlacc but with thousands of jutting bones instead of spiky teeth. My preconceptions may have been unfairly fanciful.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #18: More American Presidents Cornered

Bill Clinton statue!

Something about a Bill Clinton statue in front of a pawn shop feels just right.

Our previous photo gallery featured statues bearing likenesses of twenty Presidents of the United States of America, highlights from the City of Presidents art-walk around downtown Rapid City, South Dakota. Now we present the rest of them because YOU, the viewers, demanded it!

Wait, no, you didn’t. But I don’t feel like relegating 43 American Presidents to the outtake pile, and Anne co-wrote a joke I really want to see in print. So here we go again!

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Our 2021 Road Trip #17: A President on Every Corner

GWBush statue!

George W. Bush and Barney, his Scottish Terrier, making a living as traveling restaurant critics.

Longtime MCC fans have seen photos of more U.S. President statues in these pages than the average citizen will ever see in their entire lifetime. When your wife is a big history aficionado and the two of you share an inclination toward roadside attractions, Presidential art is an inevitable objective in all your vacation itineraries. But prior to 2021 we’d only seen statues commemorating a handful of Presidents — mostly the popular ones, plus a handful of lower-tier Commanders-in-Chief whose museums, preserved homes, gravesites, and peculiar fan bases we’ve visited. One American city was bold enough to ask: why not bring all of them to life?

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Our 2021 Road Trip #16: Rapid City Remainders

Rapid City Native statue!

Hunkayapi (“Tying on the Eagle Plume”), sculpted in 2007 by Dale Claude Lamphere. [UPDATED 11/10/2023, per the comments section.]

IF you’re taking your family on a traditional South Dakota vacation, Rapid City is your target destination. As we found in 2009, its plentiful hotels are a reasonable distance from many tourist attractions — the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Custer State Park, and more. With a slightly longer hop-skip-jump, it’s also a springboard to Deadwood and Devil’s Tower. Rapid City is no Manhattan, but its tourism game is strong.

But we didn’t want to spend our entire 2021 vacation on do-overs. Among our new activities on the itinerary: taking a look inside Rapid City itself.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #15: Badlands Backdrop Bonanza

Badlands goats!

Goats on the run from paparazzi.

Onur first visit to South Dakota’s Badlands National Park back in 2009, it was hard to stop taking photos. The same held true with our return engagement, which is why they’re getting two galleries. This one features a key difference from the other one: signs of life in the photos besides rocks, nature, and geological beauty. Animals! People! Literally signs! And more!

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Our 2021 Road Trip #14: Back to the Badlands

Badlands in a storm.

The Badlands on a stormy day. Somewhere within lurks a 2021 metaphor.

Show of hands: who wants an entry that contains more pictures than words? The sort of blog post you can scroll through in twenty seconds or less and still feel as though you’ve given the author an appropriate amount of attention?

Wow, that hurts, y’all. But maybe we can accommodate.

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Our 2021 Road Trip #13: Dignity Where the Roadside Meets the Riverside

Dignity statue!

We are but worms at the feet of the statue of Dignity.

The three-hundred-mile stretch of I-90 through southern South Dakota is vast. Really, really vast. Until and unless you reach the Black Hills and the Badlands to the west, the flattened landscape across the central and eastern portions can lose their visual novelty to even the most innocent traveling yokel after about the first five or ten miles. Roadside attractions blessedly break up that monotony here and there — some ironically and some with utmost sincerity. It’s more rewarding when you feel compelled to stop for the sake of art appreciation than out of car-happy desperation.

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