June 30, 2009 Race to Cody

Rapid City Journal; Heidi; Devil’s Tower; Nowood and Nopeace; Race to Cody

They had a nice article on the front page of the Rapid City Journal about our trip to see our grandfather’s commission, with pictures as well of us with Lori Potts, the lady who tracked us down. It’s the June 30, 2009 edition if you want to check it out.
When I went to check out, Heidi met me with a highlighted map of the route we should take to Cody, and a shortcut over the Nowood Road to meet back up with Route 16 in Wyoming. In addition, she had handwritten turn-by-turn instructions to get us to Cody. I couldn’t believe the work she put into this and gave her a big hug. She is very special. Then she made a copy for each of us. Again we met someone who treated us with incredible kindness, really going out of their way to help us. This is not the first time with her as she has been most helpful with whatever we’ve needed during our stay. She’s so efficient she should own Holiday Inns in 5-10 years.
Following Heidi’s route, we took Route 34 to the Wyoming border, a secondary road with a 65 mph speed limit. The route changed to Route 24 in Wyoming but the speed limit stayed the same. After 70 miles of a 380 mile trip, we reached Devil’s Tower, which, I am told, is the landing site of the spacecraft in the movie, “Encounters of the Third Kind.” It is a large rock outcropping sticking straight out of the ground and looks very evil and forboding. After taking a few pictures and getting water (it was heating up fast), Bob found a photographer who takes oldtime photographs and convinced us to dress up in Western garb and have out picture taken by a wagon with Devil’s Tower in the background. We ate while the pictures were being developed. By the time we were on the road again, it was almost 2 and we still had over 300 miles to go. When we got to Gillette, we were met with ferocious windstorm and some rain - Billy said that he talked to a driver later when we gassed up in Buffalo and he said that the storm turned into a tornado and he had heard the siren go off.
We left Interstate 90 at Buffalo and followed Route 16 to Ten Sleep (that’s not a typo) - the route took us from 94 degree temps to 45 degrees and thousands of feet higher than Buffalo going through the Big Horn mountains. On the west side,we traversed a mini Grand Canyon and descended for 18 miles back to warmer climes still in the high 80’. Once we got to Ten Sleep we took a shortcut on a road named Nowood. It followed a valley and thunderstorms lurked on both sides of the valley, only about 1 mile away. I hoped that we might avoid them but the lightning so near was a little daunting. Up ahead I saw a white line from left to right and finally concluded that it was a line of heavy rain. Once the sprinkles started, I pulled over to put our rain gear on again. Too late. The storm hit with ferocity - heavy rain, hail and very strong winds. We hunkered down behind our windshields by the side of the road and waited it out. Once it lightened up, we proceeded cautiously in the lighter rain and finally got out of the storm, a little wet but clear at last. It was a short reprieve as the rest of the trip was taken up in outracing storms and just missing storms - unbelievably black clouds that descended all the way to the ground like a large black curtain had fallen. You couldn’t see through it at all. Paraphrasing:
Dark clouds to the right of them,
Lightning to the left of them,
Volleyed and thundered,
Into the valley of Basin rode the gallant three riders.
We are now in Cody at the Holiday Inn having arrived at 8:30, and are planning an early trip up the Bear Tooth Scenic Highway that climbs to 11000 feet, followed by a trip to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole for tomorrow.
Good night. A tired boy, Nat