Big Country Little Car Tour, Day 9: Dakota Dunes, SD to Lewis & Clark Lake, NE
It dawned hot, still humid, and I was up by then. I’d slept like shit — no dreams, but waking up every hour, forgetting where I was and why I had come there. I spent most of the morning at the computer, not really working so much as avoiding going back out into it. At elevenish, I sighed, “Can’t live here,” and packed it up.
I didn’t have a long drive ahead, about an hour and a half, according to Noecker, who texted detailed directions, and I mean detailed: four texts. People assume they can neighborhood-play it with “turn at the big tree” or “a ways past” and I’ll just figure it out. Not so. Marines stationed every fifty yards with flares is still no guarantee. Noecker, however, spent so long painting my wayward house that he practically had his mail delivered there, and he knows how I get about knowing exactly everything that’s going to happen: “And then what? And it just goes in the cracks? And how long does that take? What does it do? Draw it for me. Okay, then what? And then it dries? Do I leave the fan on? ‘Sunday’ the whole weekend or ‘Monday morning’ the whole weekend? What if it’s too blue, do I call you, or…? But and so then what, do we paint over it? Oh, you’re…leaving? Can you just tell me the ending first? The not-too-blue ending? …Okay. Okay, bye.” Come to think of it, why did he even admit that he was in Nebraska, much less tell me how to get there? Did he lure me there to kill me finally? Fair enough, then.
Hell of a way to go. The hills got bigger and the turns got tighter and I remembered Missouri 51 on Easter Sunday of 2010, its perfect anonymous vistas that the camera would never get right, the slopes nearby and far away at once, the handsome weeds elbow-high.
Oh, boy: the driveway. Gravel shoals and rutted grass. If it rained, we’d have to live there ’til first frost. We huffed up out of the canopy and onto the top of a hill, into a field of daisies that ran away down into treetops, with a clear view of the lake, and the houses on the other side, and my house in Brooklyn, and France. A royal-blue dragonfly with Chanel cross-hatching patrolled the house. The local cicadas made friends with Campbell. Noecker emerged, and I supposed aloud that this, probably the most beautiful place I had ever seen for myself, including Lucca, would almost do.
It’s hard to describe the place. Over the table where we ate hung an aged print of Custer’s Last Stand, with a Marilyn postcard tucked into the bottom edge of the frame. That gets near it. That I had arrived, that the place was not the place before the next place, the inoffensive hotel anyplace, but was the place — that gets closer. Looking at Marilyn putting her lipstick on, unconcerned by the massacre inches from her marcel wave, I decided to stay and stop thinking, doing tic-y arithmetic, miles per gallon, miles per day, miles to Fort Dodge, Cheyenne, the sea. I brought in my bags.
I wrote a Revolting Snacks entry while the quintessential All Things Considered guest — says “absolutely” a lot, thinks the left-hand turn is destroying America — made sleepy noises on the radio. Sladek marched through a third draft in a back bedroom. We ate lunch at 4 PM, Spanish-style, and drank beer. Friends came by. Coffee the blessed consistency of syrup came by — Lord, deliver me from pitiable road coffee. I hadn’t had a decent cup since M. Giant and Trash’s house. You don’t realize road coffee is so shite at first; you just drink it, and drink more of it, and use your fourth cup before 10 AM to prop your right eyelid open, and wonder what drew together in the shadows this conspiracy against daytime alertness.
We climbed a hill and watched the sun take its leave. Back east, it creeps down, makes sure you get a good look. Up there, unimpeded, it dropped. I had never seen that before. I had seen restaurant taxidermy before, but not with “girl, please” expressions. I had never said the phrase “macaroni salad” that many times in one evening before, or suggested it as a pseudonym, and a night cream, and a weapon. I had never heard of the Santee/Sioux curse on white businesses that doomed a ski lift.
“How come those clouds aren’t moving?” I had never seen the Milky Way before.
We sat in the stars until late. I went to bed and slept without so much as turning over.
Tags: Big Country Little Car Tour Campbell friends good coffee shut up renovations
This was beautiful.
I feel I should bookmark this entry for days when I feel I can’t function. Reading this felt like a mini-vacation. Gorgeous. I hope to have a day like this in my near future…
This is gorgeous, and makes me question everything I ever assumed about the Midwest.
@Chris: Thank you! I will say that, if you assume about the Midwest that almost every dish will have bacon or chicken unless otherwise noted, you are correct. (See: the broccoli bites at CJ’s. The breading, the cheese, fine, bring it, I love it. But I could just tell there would be bacon in there, so I made the others taste them first, and I was right.) Nothing wrong with that, per se, but I eat a lot of salad.
As a Midwest/Great Plains kind of person, I salute you both for capturing what’s amazing about that part of the country and for resisting the condescending, “isn’t that quaint” tone that I sometimes detect in writing from New York/L.A. authors and journalists. Granted, we’ve got some low-hanging fruit available (my own family eats 2 kinds of Jell-O salad every year at Christmas), but I appreciate your not taking the easy way out, not that you ever would.
And besides, one of our Jell-O salads is delicious.
I cannot explain how and why this made me cry…not just misty, but big fat tears. Beautiful.
I’ve long tried to explain the beauty of the plains to people, by way of explaining my homesickness when I’ve lived away, and especially my twitchiness when placed in a claustrophobic geographical setting, but you just can’t. It’s one of those things you really need to be in the middle of yourself to appreciate.
I know exactly how Leigh feels. The whole piece is wonderful, but from “We climbed a hill” onward, it gaves me goosebumps. Damn.
I grew up in Nebraska. I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re driving through the parts that aren’t just the parts you drive through when you’re trying to get the hell out of NE and on to “better” places.
On my last trip home (my hometown is in the much flatter part of the state), we drove up so we could head eastward on US-20, just a little south of where you’re talking about. The landscape was breathtaking in every way.
I’m in the Pacific Northwest but spent a lot of my childhood in various flyover states, and the best part of them is the answer to the constant “what am I supposed to be doing now” headbuzzing is “You’re doing it, chill out. Did you even know there were this many crickets in the world?”
So beautiful. After moving to the east, whenever I return to the west, the vastness of the distance to the horizon is one of the first things that strikes me. It’s amazing how quickly we can become accustomed to the beauty around us, and almost stop seeing it. That’s what I love most about travel – reawakening myself to the world by seeing new places, and seeing home with new eyes upon returning.
I think one of my favorite stops on a road trip a few years ago was a spot in South Dakota – I think there was a sign that said “Scenic overlook” but it appeared to be just a little circular driveway which overlooked … nothing. But we stopped – time for a leg stretch – and watched the sun getting lower as sunset approached. And then it struck us – the beauty of this place where the plains were swirling around you with almost nothing else in sight.
I took a picture of our Boston Terrier standing in the brown grass of the plains – it looks like a painting, with her lit by the orangey sunset, adopting an appropriately regal pose, looking like she owns the place, the plains stretching off into the far distance.
Thank you for these travelogues – even with your car troubles, these are among my favorite entries to read on the site.
I love your writing Sars. And love to hear others travel. But right now I just love going home a bit every day. When I go back to the Midwest, I love to drive. And my friends from out East ask, “Isn’t it boring?” No. Boring is being enveloped by trees and unable to really see anything but green for hour after hour. Driving in the Midwest is throwing your heart out ahead of you into the sky that you can see forever. With silos providing the exclamation points.
This was really lovely, especially the last line.
There is nothing like the prairie. My parents both came from a very small town in eastern SD (~100 people), and we went back there twice a year. At first glance, the landscape looks very boring, especially in mid-summer, but then you start to see the subtle gradations in the color, the different crops and wildflowers, and nothing but sky above you. Even sunsets over the ocean can’t beat an open prairie sunset.
One of my aunts was a very busy woman, since she and her husband farmed and had eight kids, but she made it a point to stop every day at sunset and spend a few moments just taking it in. I will always remember sharing that with her a few times.
She also could tell when one of her sons and his family were home at night because she could see the lights in their house from her house. They were two miles apart.
Thanks for writing what you did. It did justice to my memories.
Aah, the Milky Way! Here in my crowded state, it’s just a rumour. I had my Milky Way moment on a deserted State Park beach in VA. Talk about feeling insignificant in the vast cosmos. Definitely a Carl Sagan moment.
I’m thinking “Big Country, Little Car” in book form, maybe? I’d be first on line to buy it.