Travel

A Warm Welcome Home

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Kathleen Fox

Sitting down on a two-inch memory foam mattress pad that has cooled to 35 degrees is like sitting down on a frozen two-inch plank. Going to bed on the same mattress pad after it has warmed up to about 50 degrees is more like trying to cuddle up to a sweetheart who has just discovered that for years you’ve been hiding a secret stash of really good chocolate. There’s a little bit of thawing when you get close, but not much.

After a minute or two, the mattress pad slowly starts to regain its frozen memory and shape itself to your shivering form. As it does, it sucks the warmth out of your body like an ice vampire trying to protect itself from global warming. You’d better have a couple of extra quilts and a furry St. Bernard to snuggle with—or at least a friendly spouse, preferably with warm feet.

This bit of research into the effects of subzero weather on an unheated house was inadvertent. After a two-day drive from New Mexico, following a day behind a winter storm so we missed the blizzard but not the cold, we walked into our house to find it at 35 degrees. It was the first time I remember being able to see my breath in my own living room.

Yes, we had turned the furnace down when we left, but not that much. The propane tank was empty. Our fuel supplier has always kept it filled automatically. This year, the combination of a mild early winter and our new energy-efficient furnace had kept us from worrying about the fact that the guy and his truck hadn’t shown up since September.

Fires in the downstairs wood stove and the upstairs fireplace soon warmed the house to a relatively balmy 37 degrees. Meanwhile, we kept ourselves warm by shoveling snow. We were quite comfortable, except for fingers and toes, by the time the propane truck rolled down the newly cleared driveway an hour or so later.

As he waited for 400-plus gallons of propane to pour into our tank, the delivery guy had plenty of time to explain that AmeriGas had upgraded to a new nationwide computer system. Apparently, our automatic delivery hadn’t been made because our address had failed to get into the system. I’m sure, after his emergency trip in the dark on a frigid Sunday evening, he’ll personally type it in and double-check to make sure it’s been saved.

By morning, our memory foam pad felt like a bed instead of a plank. Even so, leaving it wasn’t hard, because we were able to get up to a warm house. With warm and grateful hearts, too. None of our pipes had frozen, so what could have been an expensive mess was merely a chilly inconvenience.

Several days later, the only casualty from the cold appears to be my African violet. It’s a plant that a friend gave me in 1987. Since then, as long as it’s in an east window, it has bloomed almost constantly, brightening my office all winter with its pink-violet blossoms. Now it’s a sad spectacle of wilting flowers and dying leaves.

But I haven’t given up on it yet. If I trim back all the dead foliage and leave the roots alone for a while, tiny new leaves might eventually emerge. Even if they don’t, all is not lost. Over the years, I’ve used cuttings from this violet to start plants for several family members and friends. It has alternative selves all over the place, so I can easily start it again.

And that makes me feel warm all over.

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Signs of Hard Times

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Kathleen Fox

When you own a very small business in a town whose heyday was a couple of generations ago, you do the best you can with whatever you have to offer.

Like the restaurant in a tiny Nebraska town, doing its best in an old building too big for its business. The place may not have had endless varieties of coffee like Starbucks, but they did have the essential 21st-century amenity, high-speed Internet access.

Maybe. Because the sign written on the front window didn’t actually say, “FREE WIFI.” It said “FREE WIFE.”

My partner wondered—out loud, which wasn’t especially tactful of him—whether you got to pick any wife you wanted or had to take whichever one was offered. Or, perhaps, if you could leave one for free.

Then we began to consider the other possible ways to interpret the sign. Maybe it wasn’t an offer at all. Maybe it was a call to action, like “Free Willy” or “Free the Chicago Seven.” Maybe the owner’s beloved spouse was in the hoosegow and he was recruiting help to stage a jail break.

Or maybe the sign was meant as a celebration. Maybe the newly-divorced owner had finally thrown the bum out and was announcing her liberated status. Although, technically, then the sign should have read, “FREE EX-WIFE.”

Sadly, since we had to finish our hash browns and get back on the road, we will probably never know the truth.

The next day, we noticed another struggling business in a tiny shop on a New Mexico street where half the storefronts were empty. Painted on the glass was a larger-than-life skull enhanced with menacing designs. It would have looked right at home on the kind of biker you don’t want to meet in a dark alley, on either his leather jacket or his hairy chest. Two similarly painted plastic skulls grinned in support from the window ledge. Next to them was an electronic sign announcing “Rocky’s Custom Tattoos.”

Above this, taped to the inside of the glass, a little white hand-lettered note added, “Mary Kay Sold Here.”

I should have gone in. After all, I’ve been meaning to find a Mary Kay distributor and get some eye makeup. It just hadn’t occurred to me to look for this kind of place. It did make a certain amount of sense, though. If Mary Kay didn’t have the exact shade of eye shadow I wanted, I could have just had Rocky apply the permanent version.

Being a small business owner in a struggling town can’t be easy. In spite of snarky comments from traveling writers, may they all live long and prosper.

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What Crash Test Dummies Won’t Tell You

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

To automotive designers everywhere: Yes, I'm sure you're excited about aerodynamics, safety, sleek lines, and all those other wonderful features that the voiceover people in the car commercials get so breathless about.

But I have just one question. When you finish designing a car with all the latest and greatest technology and breakthrough design, and they build a prototype, do you ever actually drive it? Not just for a couple of quick spins around a test track, but on a real trip. Across South Dakota on I-90 from Rapid City to Sioux Falls, for example.

I thought not. If you did, you might notice a few design flaws you've somehow overlooked.

Take the headrests, for example. Please. Take mine. I know, I know, they're a safety feature, and they have to meet certain requirements as established for the good of the driving public with the help of crash test dummies. If I'm ever rear-ended by a beer truck, they might save me from a broken neck, and I'm sure I'd be very grateful.

But I bet none of those crash test dummies who try out the headrests ever have their hair pinned up with a plastic clip. No matter how you adjust the headrest, the clip hits it, so you're left with three choices:

A. Drive with the plastic teeth of the clip digging into the back of your head;

B. Drive with your neck bent, peering up under your eyebrows to see oncoming traffic, thus endangering yourself and others and arriving at your destination with a sore neck and aching back; or

C. Yanking out the clip and arriving at your destination with bad hair.

Crash test dummies don't need to worry about things like this, since they don't have hair.

Apparently crash test dummies and automotive designers don't carry purses, either. Otherwise, you'd think one of them might have noticed that today's cars have no place to put one.

The front console is full of teeny little cubbyholes and places to plug in all the electronic devices that we aren't supposed to use while we're driving. The space between the seats is filled from seat back to console with arm rests and cup holders and clever little storage bins for more illicit electronic devices and other items, all of which are smaller than the average purse.

The only convenient place to park a purse is in the passenger seat, which is fine unless you happen to have a passenger there. Especially if the passenger either: a), doesn't want to hold your purse on his lap all the way from Rapid City to Sioux Falls; b), isn't someone you'd trust to hold your purse; or c), is someone like a pregnant daughter who doesn't have a lap.

Therefore, you need to stash your purse on the floor, where it's in the way, or dump it into the back seat, where it's safe but out of reach. Except to the two-year-old back there in her car seat, who can entertain herself for miles by tearing all your ten-dollar bills into confetti and making calls to Indonesia on your cell phone.

You can, of course, park the phone in one of the handy-dandy little cubbyholes in the front console. Except then if it rings and you reach for it, you're likely to drop it into the plastic grocery bag you have hanging from the gearshift lever. The bag limits the passenger's leg room and obscures the letters on the gearshift that tell you whether you're in Drive or Reverse, but hey, those are minor inconveniences. Besides, there's no place else to put it.

Because apparently, automotive designers and crash test dummies don't use litter bags, either.

Categories: Just For Fun, Travel | 1 Comment

Mispronouncing History

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

El Dorado. The city of gold. Like so many other explorers, we came close but just missed it.

The name actually translates as "the golden one." According to early Spanish writings, it came from a ritual among a South American Indian tribe where a chief covered in gold dust made offerings of gold objects to the gods.

This got the wealth-seeking Spanish conquistadores all excited, of course, and eventually "el dorado" came to be associated with any lost or rumored place of fabulous wealth. The Spanish never quite found it in South America, which didn't stop Coronado from trekking across a good portion of the American Southwest after it. He made it to central Kansas without finding any cities of gold.

Too bad he didn't have a chance to stop at his local AAA office and pick up a map, because there it was, plain as day. El Dorado, right there on Highways 54 and 77. Even with the map, though, we didn't quite reach it. We just saw the sign as we breezed past at 65 miles an hour, traveling in luxury Coronado could scarcely have imagined.

Of course, Coronado did have the disadvantage of being consistently misled by local people who kept telling him the city of gold was just a little farther down the road. They were smart enough to encourage the demanding and militant Spaniards to move along and become somebody else's problem.

In a way, the locals are still misleading travelers. Not with any inhospitable intent, I'm sure. But we might have had trouble finding El Dorado had we relied on the waitress in Wichita who mentioned it. According to her, it was "El Do-RAY-do."

This regional pronunciation shouldn't really have come as a surprise. The previous day we had breakfasted in Beatrice, Nebraska, which everyone in the state knows is "Be-AH-trice" rather than the conventional "BEE-a-tris" or the pretentious Italianate "Bey-a-TRAY-chay."

Later in our trip we encountered Chickasha, Oklahoma, which an unaware northern traveler might assume to be pronounced "Chick-a-shaw," had she not been informed by someone more familiar with the region that it was "Chick-a-shay." Come to think of it, given the spelling, that makes more sense anyway.

We also spent a day in Lamesa, Texas, presumably named for the "mesa" or flat tableland on which it's located. Nevertheless, it's pronounced "La-mee-sa" with fine disregard for the original Spanish that would have it "La-may-sa."

In the end, the joke was on Coronado, who trekked across this country without ever knowing that it was indeed full of gold. It was just black gold rather than yellow, the kind that's now being taken out of the ground by hundreds of pump jacks.

It is interesting to speculate on how history may have been different had the Spanish made it far enough north to discover gold in the Black Hills. If they had, the capitol of South Dakota might be pronounced "Cor-a-nay-do" instead of "Peer."

Categories: Travel, Words for Nerds | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pick a Church in Pickstown

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Pickstown, South Dakota, is the kind of place where visiting fisherman can buy breakfast and bait at the same place, and the waitress has long since grown tired of jokes about what kind of worms are in the hamburgers. Most visitors—and there are plenty of them, come to fish and waterski and have family reunions at the campgrounds and picnic areas along the Missouri River—never explore further than the motels, cafes, and gas stations along the highway.

But when it was young, Pickstown was home to several thousand people. Unlike most prairie towns whose fates were tied to the coming and going of the railroads, it was a boomtown by government design. Built between 1946 and 1949 and owned by the federal government, it was created to house the workers building Fort Randall Dam.

When the dam was finished a few years later, the town dwindled. Now it is home to only a couple of hundred people. Still, if you take a walk on a quiet weekend morning after the fishermen have hauled their boats off to the river, you can see signs of its youth. Sidewalks along spacious empty lots end abruptly where front doors used to be. Duplexes built as worker housing have been remodeled into single-family homes. A few barrack-style apartment buildings probably survive on vacation rentals.

The Rainbow Room on White Swan Street, which occupies the original shopping center, is available for weddings, anniversary celebrations, dances, and reunions. At least during the summer, it appears to be a busy place. When we came in on Sunday morning for our family reunion, one of the refrigerators in the kitchen still held the top of the cake from the previous night's wedding reception.

A couple blocks away is Pickstown's hidden gem—the Community Church. A plain, white-painted building, it was locked when I peeked through the front window on Saturday morning but was open for services when I went back on Sunday. The pastor of the tiny congregation seemed pleased to give me a tour.

The church is a simple, appealing sanctuary with subdued stained glass windows and light oak pews. I suspect collectors would break the tenth commandment and covet its hexagonal light fixtures with their amber glass panels set into ironwork frames. The altar, also of oak, is appropriately plain for a small Protestant church.

Behind it, though, is what the pastor called "the church's secret." A second altar. And a third. All three are set on a revolving platform. The design, apparently, came from military chapels built to be easily reconfigured for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish services.

I'd love to know how many of these chapels are still in use, but so far I haven't been able to find out much about them. There doesn't seem to be one in the only other government town I'm familiar with—Boulder City, Nevada, built for the workers building Hoover Dam. It had a locally-built interdenominational Protestant church instead.

The Catholic altar in the Pickstown church hasn't been used for some time, and it's doubtful whether the Jewish altar has ever been used at all. During the town's boom years, though, Catholics and Protestants shared the chapel. According to Adeline Gnirk in her 1986 history of this area, The Epic of Papineau's Domain, Mass was held at 7:30 and a community Protestant service at 10:30.

In between, however, the Lutherans had their own service at 9:00. Maybe the town was large enough for the Lutherans to have a separate congregation. Or maybe, to the strictest followers of Martin Luther, ecumenicalism can only be taken so far.

Categories: Remembering When, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Trouble at Exit 192

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

I drive across western South Dakota on I-90 often enough to notice when a gas station changes brands, a rest area gets a new hand dryer, or one of the Black Hills attractions puts up a new billboard. (When you've finished your audio book and the alphabet game is your primary source of entertainment and alertness, those billboards are important.)

Even so, it took me a minute last week to realize what was wrong at the Murdo exit.

The long green car was gone.

For as long as I can remember, Exit 192 at the edge of Murdo has been marked by a huge billboard advertising the South Dakota Auto Museum. The billboard, topped by an impossibly long green antique car, has been one of the landmarks of I-90 travel for decades. It certainly has been there as long as I've been driving across the state.

It probably was there the only time I've actually visited the Auto Museum, but unfortunately I can't remember. I was about six or seven at the time, and the only thing I remember about the trip was being unkindly teased by my older sister and even older cousin. The cars themselves apparently didn't make much of an impression.

As an adult, living in the Black Hills with family in the eastern part of the state, most of my stops at Murdo have only been quick ones on my way to somewhere else.

Last Sunday, though, I noticed the empty space along Highway 83 even before I turned off the interstate to drive into Murdo. The billboard was a splintered mess along the edge of the road, with the green car a crumpled wreck beside it. Apparently the most recent round of severe storms to sweep across the area had been too much for the elderly sign.

Driving past the wreck, I looked as closely as I could while still maintaining the dignity and respect appropriate to the recent demise of a public figure. I've wondered from time to time over the years how much, if any, of the sign had been built from a real car body. It looked as if the front end, at least, was an actual car, but I couldn't tell for sure. Inquiring minds—or this inquiring mind, anyway—would like to know.

In the meantime, I hope they rebuild the sign, and soon. I'll even promise to visit the museum if they do. Especially if the new sign includes the word "antique." Along that part of I-90, particularly heading east, the billboard game really needs that "q."

Categories: Remembering When, Travel | 1 Comment

A Good Day To Be Alive

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Sunday was a good day, because we didn't die.

It happened not long after we had crossed the state line from Nebraska into Colorado. As always, I smiled at the incongruity of the plain brown sign reading "Welcome to Colorful Colorado." We were traveling south on Highway 71, about 30 miles north of Brush.

The cold January day was the first of our planned two-day trip from South Dakota to New Mexico. Visibility, under low clouds and light snow, was about half a mile. When we passed a newly built wind farm, the tall windmills loomed eerily out of the clouds and snow like landing towers for alien spacecraft.

The road was what the weather service would have probably described as "snow packed and slippery." Mindful of the conditions, we were driving at about 50 miles an hour.

Suddenly the rear wheels lost traction. The back of the car slued to the right, then to the left and back to the right. We slid sideways across the width of the road and into the left side ditch, bounced up a steep five- or six-foot bank, spun around without hitting the four-strand barbed wire fence at the top of the bank, and stopped. We were facing back toward the highway, with the nose of the car at the edge of a 10- or 12-foot dropoff.

At least that's how the driver explained it to me after the fact. At the time, all I knew was that one second I was twisted in my seat, rummaging for the bottle of V-8 juice on the floor behind me, and the next second my partner had shouted something like, "Hang on!" and we were sliding sideways. The car was jolting from side to side, all I could see was snow, my head thumped against the side window, my knee hit the front console, and my contact lenses were slipping sideways so I clamped my eyes shut to keep them in place. Then we were stopped, which felt wonderful until I looked out my window and saw how close we were to the edge of a steep bank.

We sat still for a few seconds, then asked each other, "Are you all right?" and decided we both were. We sat for a few moments more and watched our fingers shake as adrenaline flooded our bodies and gratitude flooded our minds. I said, with what seemed to me great calm, "We need to back very slowly away from the edge."

He answered, "Oh, I was just going to drive straight back down." I hoped he was trying to be funny. At any rate, he backed up, drove along the bank to a lower spot, and pulled back onto the highway.

Had the skid happened a few seconds later, we might have slid into the pickup that was approaching from the south. A few seconds earlier, we might have gone off the road at the top of a steep ditch and rolled. A couple of seconds longer, and we would have dived nose-first down the steep bank to the road below.

Those few seconds might have changed our lives forever or even ended them. They didn't. The particular arrangement of circumstances at that particular time and place didn't leave us jammed into a smashed SUV with crushed legs, battered faces, or fractured skulls. We were merely shaken, not shattered. Even our vehicle was left without a scratch or dent, though with a slight wobble about the right front wheel and a souvenir bunch of dry prairie grass caught in the back bumper.

We drove—slowly—on to Brush through the increasing snow and decreasing visibility. After eight or ten miles, our fingers had nearly stopped shaking. We checked ourselves into a motel. We went for a walk through the snow to exercise the adrenaline out of our systems.

The next morning, under frigid sunshine, we had the car checked and the wheels aligned. Then we drove on south, slowly, carefully, and gratefully.

It was a wonderful day to be alive.

Categories: Living Consciously, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Jingle Bells, Christmas Socks, and Hot Cross Buns

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

The concert was one of the fringe benefits of staying with the grandkids for a couple of days. It's been so long since I attended one that had almost forgotten how much fun an elementary school Christmas program could be. (Oops—excuse me—holiday program—just a momentary slip into political incorrectness there.)

This particular performance featured the fourth and fifth grade band, orchestra, and chorus. Unfortunately, then, we missed some of the classic school program highlights: first-graders waving enthusiastically at Mom and Dad, second-graders forgetting to sing, and kindergarteners picking their noses or making wardrobe adjustments in the front row.

Still, there was plenty to enjoy. For one thing, we got a glimpse "backstage," as it were, being entertained before the performance by the necessary preliminaries. Girls—decked out in party dresses, shiny shoes, and hair ornaments—admired one another's outfits, giggled, and whispered. Boys—decked out in clean shirts—did their best to look cool and blasé instead of scared to death. Kids held their instruments high and flashed brace-enhanced grins while proud parents took pictures. Rows of violins and violas lined up for tuning up by the orchestra teacher.

Then the show was on. The first number by the band, all of whom had just begun learning their instruments at the start of this school year, was "Hot Cross Buns." I remember it well from back in the days when my kids were starting school band; evidently the curriculum hasn't changed much. Then came the obligatory "Jingle Bells." It was note-perfect, with four rows of fourth- and fifth-grade feet tapping in precise if slightly ponderous rhythm.

Half a dozen of the band kids had the unbelievable self-confidence to perform solos. One of them was a tall, slender girl with elegant cheekbones and a serious expression who played "My Favorite Things" on the marimba. Making a couple of mistakes didn't set her back; she kept her focus, finished with a flourish, and finally gave us a big smile that appeared to be a mixture of triumph and relief.

Next up was the chorus, whose members were in tune, polished, and obviously enjoying themselves. At the finale of their featured number, something called "Christmas Sock Rock," each kid tossed a pair of socks into the air and let them land helter-skelter in front of the stage. Their skill at this was hardly surprising, since no doubt all of them had practiced it at home for years.

The fourth-grade orchestra, beginners all, were naturally a little wobbly about the high notes. They all, however, were intent on their music and taking their instrumental responsibilities quite seriously.

I was pleased to note that both my granddaughter the violist and my granddaughter the violinist were among the most focused. That probably means more concerts in their future—and, if I'm lucky, in mine.

Categories: Living Consciously, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Rocky Mountain High

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

How pathetic is it to be hiking in the mountains and be overtaken by a three-year-old girl in pink plastic shoes? Not only was she forging steadily onward and upward in her little Crocs—the backless kind, yet—but she kept talking the whole way without needing to pause for breath.

In our defense, we had to stop and rest several times because one member of our group wasn't feeling well. Another extenuating circumstance was that we were hiking at 10,000 feet. (The little girl, I'm sure, lives at that elevation.) Living in the Black Hills, I tend to think of myself as dwelling at altitude. Since our house in the foothills is at about 3500 feet, however, and since the highest point in the Hills, Harney Peak, is a modest 7242 feet, I guess I don't live quite as elevated an existence as I might like to think.

But we were on this steep, boulder-strewn trail for a higher purpose than to feel competitive with tots in Crocs. We were there to see St. Mary's glacier, which must be the smallest glacier in the world. It looked like a dirty snowdrift lying for about 100 feet along the side of a mountain. Not exactly spectacular, perhaps, but still worth the hike.

Going back down was much faster than the climb up; we even passed the little girl this time. Of course we were much too elevated—in the spiritual rather than the alpine sense—to feel at all superior about it. We had places to go, things to see, and other mountains to climb.

To drive up, anyway, on what is billed as the highest paved road in North America. It hugs the side of Mt. Evans for about 14 miles, two just-barely-adequate lanes with no shoulders and no room for sissified frills like guardrails. The steep drop-offs were awe-inspiring in more than one sense. I tried hard to believe our driver when he claimed he kept his eyes open the whole way.

We saw a mountain goat, only a few feet from the road, who paid no attention to the visitors taking his picture. He was too busy stocking up on calories for the winter ahead. From the thickness of his coat, he was well prepared for the cold weather to come.

At the edge of the tree line we got to walk through a stand of bristlecone pines, some of them 2000 years old. With their stubby wind-twisted branches, gnarled trunks, and scant bark, they're an amazing example of endurance through minimalist living.

The last stretch of the road was closed for the season, so we didn't make it to the 14,000-foot summit. The glacial lake at 12,000 feet, however, was still well above the tree line and was rewarding enough. The views were magnificent: aspens glowing golden in the sunlight, a shimmer of snow across the steep side of the summit, and a panorama of neighboring mountains. I needed a thesaurus to find other words for "spectacular," "awesome," and "wow."

Even the grandest of views, of course, can't make one forget indefinitely about the more mundane needs of life. As I approached the women's toilet, someone who was just coming out said, "I'm not the one who was smoking pot in there."

I believed her—just as I hope the next woman in line believed me when I said the same thing to her. But from the overwhelming reek of marijuana, someone certainly had been indulging in there. With acres of rocky slopes and ridges to disappear behind, her choice of a smoking site didn't make much sense.

Actually, it made no sense, in that marvelous spot near the top of the world, to smoke anything at all. Lock yourself in a toilet for a furtive joint? Or enjoy a magnificent view on a perfect October day? Only one of those is a real Rocky Mountain high.

Categories: Living Consciously, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No Fair Skipping the Q

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

If you're going to entertain yourself on a trip across western South Dakota by finding the alphabet (in order, and no cheating by skipping the Q) on billboards, I'd suggest starting well east of Kadoka.

That's assuming you're traveling from east to west. Going west you're heading toward the Black Hills, with its tourist attractions eager to catch the attention of I-90 travelers. Going east, don't bother with the game, because the billboards are so sparse that between one and the next you'll forget which letter you're looking for.

The challenge of the billboard game, of course, is finding the rarer letters: X, Z, and the infamous Q. The X (as in "exit") isn't a problem along the Interstate. The Z is rarer but not impossible, thanks to the CraZy Horse carving and occasional other amaZing attractions. Q can be more of a problem; thank goodness for Quick stops, antiQues, and Quiet campgrounds.

The hardest letter to find here, surprisingly, is J. This is why it's important to start east of Kadoka, where there is a sign advertising the Flying J truck stop near Rapid City. (Back when it was a Conoco, J's were really scarce.) For the discerning, there is also an inconspicuous J near the bottom of a billboard at the Kadoka off ramp. If you miss either of these, you might as well start hoping someone passes you in a Jeep.

During a recent trip across the western half of the state, I noticed quite a few new or freshly painted billboards for Black Hills tourist attractions. Based on this as an informal indicator of economic health, South Dakota is doing well.

I do have a few suggestions, though, for tourism businesses. As long as they're refurbishing billboards, how about making a few additions? Wall Drug could advertise its Zany cowboy Quartet and Quirky back alley and let us know the roaring T-Rex will make us Quiver in our flip-flops. The 1880 Town could add a Quick-draw contest. Reptile Gardens could promote its Jumping cockroaches and Jungle flowers—or maybe they could add a Jaguar or a Zebra.

You may think by now that I am a fan of billboards. Not so much. I do think they have their place—which probably includes the long stretch of Interstate across western South Dakota.

Still, creative travelers don't need billboards to entertain themselves. My daughter used to keep herself occupied by counting road kill, which she wrote down in a notebook under various categories: pheasants, deer, rabbits, raccoons, skunks, and UFO's (Unidentified Flat Objects).

Even someone who likes billboards might have to admit that there are way too many of them along the last few miles east of Exit 61 as you approach Rapid City. The road is littered with billboard after bigger billboard after enormous billboard, flashing lighted ads, and such an ugly clutter of signage that you can hardly find the exit. It isn't exactly the best way to welcome travelers to the beautiful Black Hills.

It reminds me of a parody by my favorite poet, Ogden Nash:

I think that I will never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.

Maybe some of the Exit 61 signs could be removed and spread out along I-90 eastbound. Only, of course, if they have plenty of Q's, Z's, and J's.

Categories: Just For Fun, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

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