Bozeman, Badlands, and the World's Smallest Biker Bar

Most of last week was wonderful, and the part that was less than wonderful was not nearly as bad as it could have been. Tuesday (June 16) found us still in Bozeman - we had decided to take an extra day there to look around and recover from the drive on Monday. We spent some time catching up with email and making sure that everything was charged up for the next day, and then we went out to explore the town a bit. We really liked Bozeman - there's a terrific community co-op grocery store with a nice coffee shop upstairs - and the downtown area was especially nice. Lots of old brick buildings with interesting businesses, lots of bookstores and restaurants, lots of people walking around or eating on the restaurants' patios and obviously enjoying themselves and the beautiful summer afternoon. We had dinner at MacKenzie River Pizza Co. which is a Montana chain and is very very good with many interesting choices. Afterwards, we followed signs and small children wearing balloon hats to the farmer's market, which was more like a street fair since it was very early in the season  for produce. There were food stalls, crafts and prepared food, a climbing wall, and...alpacas! The place was packed and there were children running around everywhere, it really seemed like the whole town had come out to see friends and check out what was offered for sale.

The next day was, to be honest, not quite what we were expecting. We got out of Bozeman at a reasonable time and we were planning to camp at Custer National Forest  which we figured was about 4 hours away, leaving us plenty of time to explore the area. We got to the forest just fine, but the campground we were planning on staying at didn't have water and we would have had to go back to the last town and through a 30 minute wait for road work to get supplies. And it was starting to rain, and we are wimps. So we pushed on. There were lots of RV parks but no campgrounds as such...on we went...into Wyoming and South Dakota...more road work...and so on. We had pretty much decided to get to Rapid City, SD and look for a hotel there but when we got there all the hotels were full of realtors since there was a convention in town. I think it was about 7 by now and we hadn't really had anything resembling lunch so we were getting a little tweaky. 11 miles east of Rapid City is the lovely hamlet of New Underwood, and the exit sign for New Underwood has a bed on it next to the knife and fork sign, so I said 'WE'RE STOPPING NOW' and lo and behold, there was the motel right off the highway. Next to the "World's Smallest Biker Bar". We were too tired and hungry to care and, to be honest, the motel could have been MUCH worse - we did get a good night's sleep (mostly because the bar wasn't open that night) and all the lights and water faucets worked the way they were supposed to. Still, we were up and out of there by 7 the next morning, which is a record for me.

We went on eastwards and very shortly came to the turnoff for the Badlands. This is a place I've been wanting to visit for a long time and I was incredibly pleased to be there. After you enter the park there are several overlooks off the main road where you can park and get out to look at the scenery, and the first one we stopped at made me want to just stay there all day and watch the light move along the peaks and crevices. We stopped at a few more overlooks and then went on to the campground where we were able to set up our tent right away, and one of the rangers stopped by to give us some information about the various hikes and trails in the park. The hike we ended up doing was long and it was hot and extremely dry, but there were hardly any other people around and the landscape was...stunning. We have a lot of pictures and I'm planning to put a few of those up in the next post. One of the highlights of that day - after the mountains and the frogs and the views and the sunset and everything else - was sitting in the tent watching a lightning storm move by several miles south of us. I can't wait to go back and we're already planning to spend a week there sometime and really explore in depth.

Friday morning, we reluctantly packed up and headed for Minneapolis. We were really glad to finally get out of South Dakota but as soon as we got out of the car at the first Minnesota rest stop, we remembered that the Midwest is humid this time of year. I had phoned the person we were staying with but had cleverly forgotten to account for the time change into Central; even with that we arrived in good time and Michele (who I hadn't seen in 11 years!) met us with margaritas and dinner. We had a terrific time conversing and catching up, and we were just thinking that we might settle in for the night with a good book, when I checked my email and found out that this was the first night of the Young Irish Musicians' Weekend. Faced with such a dilemma, we did the obvious thing: dug out the instruments and headed for the pub. We met several fine musicians from the area and also got to play with Daithi Sproule, Liz and Yvonne Kane, and Eliot Grasso. It was a great night of music and we got to bed around 1:30 am - just the thing after a long day of driving!

We're currently in Madison, WI, staying with William's brother Pete, and we've had a wonderful and VERY warm week here. Details soon...