Barb and Dave's Western Tour: Back from South Dakota

South Dakota - the Badlands and the Black Hills and all those presidents - were well worth going so far for; but now we had to wend our way back to the West Coast.

By this time, we are pretty adept at getting meals; but it's still pretty involved. A place for everything, and everything in its place:

One last stop in South Dakota: Sturgis, where during the first week of August 500,000 motorcyclists congregate (Five. Hundred. Thousand. People. and five hundred thousand motorcycles. Consider that cyclists adore starting the things up every few minutes, just to see if they still work. Think about that many people and that much noise). (I asked one cyclist if there were really a half a million there, and he said, quite possibly more.)

But, this was not the first week of August; there were hardly any motorcycles, or anybody else, at all.

Where the action was, was in the stores, all of whom had tons of T-shirts and other memorabilia of rallies past. A lot of the restaurants were closed.

Then, off on the open road...

Sheridan, Wyoming: Their do-it-yourself art thing is moose:

Farragut, Idaho: For reasons best known to the Government, a large percentage of the sailors in WW II did their basic training here, several hundred miles from any salt water (they did get to row in the nearby lake). Most of the training, apparently, consisted of marching around and being yelled at.

Closeup of the sailor - the composite sailor is actually made up of a whole bunch of individuals. Deep thought, that.

One new thing from Farragut State Park: Disc golf. We tried it with a regular Frisbie, which it turns out is not near long-range enough.

The ones you're supposed to use are heavier and thinner. It was fun, anyway.

Coming down from the mountains to the Snake River, Lewiston, Idaho. All those pieces of road are actually the same road.

The Nez Perce IndianVisitors' Center (Nez Perce is French for pierced nose; it's not clear how they got the name. They never pierced their noses, at least according to them).

Not being near a whole lot of buffalo, they made their teepees with cedar bark. Remarkably dry, and long-lasting as well.

Chief Timothy: A good friend of the White Man, especially when he ran afoul of other tribes.

Walla Walla, Washington: Everyplace out here has a festival of something or other. The Melody Muffler Shop's proprietor apparently had some spare time on his hands:

Next, down to Pendleton, Oregon, where they make the Pendleton blankets. These were a big deal in early days, ranking right up there with guns , beads and whiskey as things the Indians wanted to trade for.

They weave them a little different, now.

And, of course, Barb bought several blankets, and a mug:

But the star attraction was Pendleton Underground. What with miners and other riffraff around, it was a bit dangerous aboveground after dark, so they had this whole underground city. It started with tunnels built by various merchants from under their stores to the railroad station, so they could carry their good s back to their store without getting mugged, and the money to the bank. Come Prohibition, they carried on other activities...

The Empire Meat Co. Potroast 8c/pound
It was run by a couple of Germans of whom it was said, that whereas the butcher cut up and used every single part of the pig except the squeal, they didn't even waste the squeals; they shipped them back to Scotland for use in bagpipes.

More gambling

And the Chinese. There was a lot of resentment of imported Chinese labor. One reason was that Congress, in its wisdom, passed laws allowing Chinese to immigrate provided that they didn't bring their wives, and that the wage for a Chinese be only half the going wage for a white man. So, if you're a businessman and can hire a white man for $2 a day or a Chinese for $1 a day... So, of course, the Chinese did take work away from whites.

One result was laws in some places that no Chinese could be in town after sundown, on pain of getting shot. Somewhere else, a man was accused of shooting a Chinese, and acquitted on the theory that there didn't seem to be any law against shooting a Chinese.

But, of course, the work was there, and employers needed them. So, after sundown, they lived entirely underground. Bed was a straw mat on the bare ground; they cooked their food with charcoal and ate it here.

Moving on, to western Washington State: the Gingko Petrified Forest (Columbia River in the background):

Up until this discovery, we thought the Gingko - a rather primitive tree - had never been in the Western Hemisphere.

Now, if you really really want to know where petrified wood comes from---

The interesting thing is that if 100% of the wood is replaced with minerals the structure of the wood is lost - you can't see the growth rings, or even really recognize it as wood. It is only in places like this, where only some of the wood is replaced, that you can see the structure - and recognize the species of tree.