Wyoming to South Dakota

This will be my parting entry--it's only a temporary parting! Mark and I are traveling over the Labor Day holiday. When we return I'll post one more entry about our Western trip; we visit Mt. Rushmore, where the flag is flying half-mast because of the events of the week. We also drive through The Badlands on an overcast day. I had been there when I was seven and had memories of all the spectacular, unbelievable colors, but either 25 years had altered my memories or the sun needed to be out in order to see the array. We only saw simple shades of brown. I'll include pictures.

We left Yellowstone on Thursday 13 September, just two days after the terrorist attacks. We were hoping to get to our motel in South Dakota in time for the ‘Friends’ premiere. We had no idea of the magnitude of loss. We were soon to notice how unified and patriotic our nation—or at least the farmers in Wyoming—had become as a result.

Upon leaving the northeast entrance/exit to Yellowstone, we were bid farewell by the exiting committee (the cows). We followed Rt. 14 to Cody: “The most beautiful 52 miles in America” said President Teddy Roosevelt, who was instrumental in the declaration of so many of our natural lands and National Parks. We occasionally passed large farms with flags flying conspicuously. I commented to Mark that I hadn’t seen an American flag flying at a residence since the bicentennial. It was nice to see.

Scenery along Route 14 east of Cody was even more breathtaking than Roosevelt’s proclaimed “52 miles.” We stopped at small-town museums in Buffalo and Johnson County as much to stretch our legs as anything else. The Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum had dioramas of battles between settlers and natives and other American Indian artifacts. The first jeweler who moved into the county bought a cash register from NCR in Dayton, Ohio and a safe from Hamilton, Ohio. They were both on display.











On eastward to Devil’s Tower National Monument.










The welcoming committee (prairie dogs) greeted us upon entrance to the park.











We stepped into the Visitor’s Center so that we could say, “We’ve been to Devil’s Tower,” and we paused to watch a devil—a daredevil—ascend the basaltic form, but, as I said earlier, we wanted to catch the premiere of ‘Friends’ so we hurried on our way.

We got to our room at Lantern Inn between 6:30 and 7 p.m. We settled in while Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News talked about the tragedy. We’d wanted a pizza all day so ordered one for dinner from the local place, which was the only dining option in little Hill City, SD. Hill City was so little, in fact, that there was no delivery so Mark and I drove to get it.

We got back in the room a bit after 7 p.m. and expected Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy! to be playing, but Dan Rather still introduced clips of people showing pictures and pleading for their loved ones’ beyond-all-hope, miracle survival. We realized that there had been no commercials, and the magnitude of Tuesday’s events sunk in. We watched the television as we sat on the bed eating pizza. Tears streamed down my face.

From an essay I wrote a year after the event—

I cannot not watch. Survivors are interviewed. Family members of the missing hold up pictures for the camera. Victims recuperate in hospitals. Scenes of the towers collapsing are still shown over and over. A man in a business suit jumps from an upper floor of one of the towers. I sob at the desperation he must have felt.

With the bed shaking from my sucking in breaths—like someone sobbing does—Mark said, “ We’ve seen enough.” It was the same things over and over. Luckily the small motel had cable so we watched a movie before we went to sleep.

I still think about that man who jumped. I imagine his thoughts: "OK. I have two options, and the best one is jumping out this window hundreds of feet from the ground." Would I do it? Would you?