Life and such: Day Five - Wall (SD)

(Warning - there is some kvetching in this post)

Day five was a sightseeing only day. Technically, it was terrible. And I do mean technically. The badness started early in the morning. I had written a lovely blog post. Some people’s writing gets better and better the more often they do it, mine usually peaks on the first draft and gets a teensy bit better with editing. The internet was flaky in my room and I should have known better, but I blithely went to add pictures to the post. And kazam! Kazowie! A modal window on top of my post that I didn’t know how to remove. I went down to the office where the internet is strong and tried everything I could think of. I even surfed some pages that showed me how to open the console in Firefox, but I didn’t know enough javascript (any) to allow me to get rid of the window and save my post. Sigh. Grrr. So I clicked the tab closed and lost an hour’s worth of work. Well, it felt like an hour’s worth of work. It probably was less. But still...Yay and good morning!

I did have fun in the office, though, chatting with various other hotel guests and the counter person, Hazel. Turned one guy onto the possibility of getting extra points for his stays, commiserated with another about the sketchy internet, chatted with a third about this and that...But all of this put me behind again. Glarp.

Back in the room, I started mom on the road to up-and-about-ness. And got my GPS out of my car to program the first stop. Low and behold, the GPS no longer functioned. At all. Nada. Zilch even. I tried every trick I know to get it to work - no reset button, so various long holds of the power button, using the power cord, not using the power cord. Letting it sit for a long time. Etc. Nothing. Rien! Nichts! Poop! Since I have become entirely emotionally dependent on the GPS (that is what not having a relationship will do to some people) I was irked to say the least! Yet we headed off into the West anyway. The trip must go on.

First stop was a surprise for mom. She had seen a billboard for Bear Country USA and had been surprised to find that there were places that one could drive their cars through to see animals up close. She forgot about it off and on and I didn’t tell her that was our first destination. Despite the lack of the GPSs reassuring guidance, we made it in a timely manner to our destination. It was ludicrously expensive but certainly a good experience otherwise. There were maybe 15 different habitats and many of the animals were visible a stones throw away. The largest was the beer enclosure. And the bears certainly had no fear of cars. I swear that I have bear fur on my car from one of the bears rubbing up against it! Of course, as soon as I turned the camera on, the battery indicator started flashing red. And despite my efforts the night before (or because of them?) and the crash of iPhoto, the memory card thought that it was 98% full despite only having one or two pictures on it. Yay! So I was a little less profligate where picture taking was concerned. Poo. Oh, and the path was not intended for people with cars with standard transmissions. I hope I didn’t burn anything out.

We got to the end point, where the gift shop, snack stand and baby/small animal enclosures were. The highpoint there was the bear cub enclosure. There were probably 14 of the little cuties cavorting around! Yay! Before we headed out to see this area, though, I did take the time to fix the camera. I took off the pictures that I had accumulated and reformatted the memory card! And I started charging the battery! Yay!

Next stop, Mount Rushmore. I didn’t really know where it was, but there was good signage. It wasn’t too far from Bear Country, actually. The whole area is stuffed with tourist activities. If I were traveling with kids, we could have stayed in the area and dropped thousands of dollars and quite a few days going to them all. But, we are on a mission and something of a schedule, so Mount Rushmore was our only stop.

What a cool place! Sadly it is mostly a walking site, so mom wasn’t pleased. I tried to minimize the pedal distance required, but we still got a teeny bit of whinage. Oh well. We eventually made it to the cafeteria, which was very crowded. Bad timing on our part. Oh well. We had some bison chili and some coleslaw. Tables were being readily shared, so we sat with a family. Turned out it was grandparents with the two children. Nice couple, though the guy kept wanting to show off his travels. I refrained from adding much, just being polite and asking questions and correcting mom when she said she had taught in China for 3 years - more like 7 or 8.  

Speaking of which, I am thinking of making a mom-chronology. A book of 82 pages, one with each year of mom’s life in it. I will be soliciting information as I only know so much - hopefully mom will be able to help a little bit before her memories go away. And I promised her a book of the trip if she stopped complaining about walking. I don’t think it will work, but it is worth a try. My next thought is to suggest that before she say anything, she examine it to see if it is a negative or a positive - if a negative, to see if she can think of a way to rephrase it into a positive. Again, it won’t work (gee, that’s positive) but it is worth a try (see, got there, eventually!).

They left and were replaced by three Chinese exchange students from Guang Zhou. We chatted about this and that and somehow I regaled them (well, I am a raconteur - at least my card says I am) with the story of my being a Chinese Television Star (star might be a bit of an exaggeration...)

We toddled off and headed to our next stop - also a surprise to mom: Deadwood! I thought it would be more kitschy and maybe have some old storefronts or something. It was just a city. Well, town. 1800 people I think. But we did stop at the cemetery where Wild Bill Hickock is buried. Mom didn’t go, cause it was quite a hike (or would have been for her). I zipped in, paid my dollar to the beautiful but dour (I couldn’t get a smile out of her) ticket seller and loped up to Bill’s memorial. Fun stuff!

Next stop, Rapid City. First order of business, get the blinkety blank GPS dealt with. I had found a Best Buy in Rapid City on my phone, and as we were driving into town, I saw it! Yay! The ex-mercenary sniper who had been shot too many times was very helpful, discovering that Best Buy could, in fact, just replace the unit! Huzzah! I had been imagining all sorts of scenarios, but that wasn’t one of them! It took some time, but I was really pleased with the outcome! Hopefully this one will work for a couple of years. Maybe longer even! That would be nice...

The next order of business was to get to a used bookstore. Mom has been bookless for a couple of days, having finished the one book she brought with her - a Judge Dee mystery novel. I had located a used bookstore in Rapid City, so I programmed that into my GPS! Yay! Got there and mom found four Tony Hillerman mysteries to re-read. And I found an old (2008) spiral bound atlas that ought to keep mom entertained in the car now and then.

Firehouse Brewery happened to be about a block away, so evil torturer that I am, I forced mom to walk all that way. I don’t know if it is the same place that Mark Sanford and I stopped at years ago (I think it was 1997) but I am glad we went. The beer was terrible, all really watery and basically tasteless, but the food was good. Sadly, as we were leaving, I saw a place called Independent Ale - I could have lived there. Sigh. Maybe I will be out that way again one day.

We headed back to Wall for the night, with one last stop planned - Wall Drug! How can one go to Wall and not at least wander a bit in Wall Drug?! Again, mom was a little tuckered, so we didn’t end up staying long. We did, though, get our $.05 coffee and free ice water!

In the motel room, we were blessed with noisy upstairs neighbors, which irked mom no end. I did my best to ignore them. We watched an unsatisfying Die Hard - too many commercials - and went to sleep.

Here comes the kvetching - my right shoulder hurts. I feel like we have been traveling forever and like the trip will never end. I looked at the Atlas and can’t believe how far we are going to have to travel. Who’s stupid idea was this? And I am thinking that this will be the last opportunity for some people to see my mom while she is still somewhat mentally competent. And they don’t seem to care. I am sure they do, it just seems like no one cares about anything but themselves any more. Heck, look at all of the “I’s” in that paragraph. Glarp. Oh, kvetching done. Off to more adventures today!

Oh, I am going to post all of the pictures (ok, most) on Facebook at some point. Yay?