Long overdue picture post 9: Presidents on a hill and a real Country Store in a Ghost Town

The drive from Fort Collins to Keystone, SD (the closest town to Mount Rushmore), was as poster-child of a cross-country drive as it could possibly get. Long stretches of lonely, empty roads. The train line, with Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) trains carrying some primary resource or the other - outbound; and containers with (possibly Chinese) manufactured goods - inbound. And long stretches of seeing no one. The landscape in Wyoming and South Dakota was dotted with abandoned farms. Very different from (also) abandoned farms in the North East. One of the chief differences being wind-mills that stood rusting alongside the homesteads. There was very little agriculture, mostly grazing. The vistas were long and wide and the views dramatic. Perhaps not the same scale as in, say, Arizona or Nevada. There were too many rolling hills in this part of the country. But still large expanses.
The story of Mount Rushmore itself was fascinating. There is a lot available on it. What was fascinating to us, though, was going there in February. Keystone, the closest town, had a population of 311. In summer that swells to 6000, not counting the tourists. Only two hotels were open. And no places to eat. Not even a McD.
The innkeeper, instead, suggestd that we go to the only place that could serve us something to eat at 8 in the evening - the Country Store. This place turned out to be quite a relic. It has been functioning non-stop, in the same place since the 1920s. There is even a gas dispenser "grandfathered" in, that sits on the verandah in front of the store. The current owner, Walt, "knows the Black Hills like the back of his hand". I wish we had a little more time to hang out with Walt, probably go out to real ghost (mining) town, together. He is a unionized iron-worker, who is from the area and has come back there after having roamed around some. You will see pictures of Walt farther down this post. And of his wonderful pizza-maker.

Not quite on the hill-side, yet.

Irreverence, in the face of monumentality.

The gents.

A collapsed mine shaft, at an abandoned mine, at the edge of town.

Ghost town, mainstreet of Keystone SD, with nary a soul in sight. Thankfully that meant easy parking and no lines. Apparently not the standard in summer.

Walt's pizza maker. He brings it out, "all the time", he said. A little service he provides. You can stand and chat while this is going on.

Not the kind of Indians, Walt was used to seeing.

The gas dispenser.

I was not kidding about the population. This swells to 20x in summer.

Night vision.

The traffic light at Lusk. The store in the center of town was...a Radio Shack.

Beautiful and rugged Wyoming. Except that I got a ticket, the only one on the entire trip, right around here.

Long overdue picture post 8: From the CA stateline to Ft. Collins, CO

The trip back to the east coast ran into snow very early on. Although we were able to get through the high mountain passes in north-eastern California (having NE and CA in the same sentence, seems strange for a New Yorker) safely, we hit snow again on the high plateaus of Nevada. Had had a half a mind to stop at Reno and head to a Casino, but decided to stick to our plan, which had us overnighting in Salt Lake City.
Did not happen.
Instead we ran into a complete whiteout as we gained altitude. The roads were very treacherous and night was falling fast. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and took another close look at the map. I had, in the original planning, seen this dot on the map - Elko, NV - that dot turned out to be our sustenance on that snow-crazed evening.
Left the highway, started looking for hotels off the interchange (was too small a town for hotel listings on our trusted Lonely Planet guidebook) and finally settled, mainly on the basis of a pool and hot-tub on offer, for Shilo Inn. Loved it.
The next morning, we took off early for the now much longer drive to Ft. Collins. En route, we stopped at Salt Lake City - the original destination from the previous evening - and visited the Mormon HQ. There we were shown around by two lovely young ladies - one from Taiwan and another an Aussie of Chinese heritage. Much to their disappointment, we chose not to leave our address on record. They were very hospitable, although we were somewhat intimidated by sheer outnumbering of tourists by the tour guides and also their somewhat pointed questions about religious practice in our home (which as those of you who know us will testify, is next to absent). Given that the kids really did not know what to respond with, I had to step in and say that whilst we were very open in our respect for all religions, we would rather not discuss the subject with them.
From then it was the rush to Fort Collins. Given our routing, consistent with the first trans-continental railroad alignment around these parts, Cheyenne would have been the place to camp for the night. However a colleague of mine from the US Green Building Council's Program Committee and a dear friend - Jana McKenzie - is a Ft. Collins resident and I have heard many stories about it. So, given that its only a 35 mile detour (on a 8000 mile scheme of things its not a lot), we decided to go there.
I am very glad we did. It had just snowed and downtown Ft. Collins looked just magical. We also got to stay in a wonderful heritage hotel - The Armstrong Hotel (http://www.thearmstronghotel.com/), Jana's recommendation and a wonderful hotel - eat dinner at Rio Grande (mostly drink), I got to visit the offices of EDAW where Jana works as the Managing Principal and finally we got this enormous western breakfast at Silver Grille Cafe. All in all, Ft. Collins was memorable.
There was also a little something else that happened. But more of that in the next post.

Silver Grille Cafe, the home of the hearty Fort Collins breakfast. Cinnamon rolls are a house specialty.

Trying out the tripod, right after checking out of the Armstrong. Locals there are, often, academics, Ft. Collins being the home of Univ of Colorado. I thought I saw some looks with that MIT sweatshirt on me. As it turns out there was an MIT alum club in Colorado, before it became a state. Because young engineers were heading there from Cambridge, MA to work in the mining and metallurgical industries.

One last shot of that beautiful evening.

The office was in an old converted space downtown and clearly the designers had some fun while doing the conversion. The one thing I really liked was the memory of a staircase that had been preserved, not only in the outline of the steps, but in the handrail, still around.

Fort Collins' mascot - the fat tire bike.

Dinner (and a lot of margarita) at Rio Grande.

Our magical introduction to downtown Fort Collins. With, we learnt later, new LED lights for the trees and a fresh input of powder. Could be straight out of a Norman Rockwell image, if you ignored the big SUVs and trucks.

The young Mormon ladies who gave us a tour, perhaps a little disappointed that we did not fill out the forms for "more information".

The organ at the home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Our trusted companion, the Lonely Planet Guide. After being very used to opening it up in strange cities and countries, it was quite a change to read it for recommendations on places to see, eat and stay in - all over the USA!

In Utah, approaching the Great Salt Lake. There were signs asking sleepy drivers to pull over and you could (and we are not saying if we did or not) set the cruise control to 100 mph. This on the road. If you chose to go onto the flats themselves, you could do much better.

A whiteout. You can see the shoulder of the road, but there is no horizon line between the land and the sky. Only snow.