westward, ho!

Highlights from the Lawrence-to-Bellingham trek, or, why we’re glad we shipped our stuff and didn’t drive a rental truck

The Nebraska Sandhills
Although a lot of my experience on I-80 through Nebraska consists of fairly stock images of mid-western farmland, the route from North Platte to Valentine is entirely different. Once the road turns north, it enters a vast, sparsely populated region characterized by narrow, steep hills that are actually sand dunes held in place by grass. Ranching, rather than farming, dominates the area, and the views are expansive. I’d traveled through the region several times as a kid, but failed to appreciate its beauty; I was put off by the very openess, nearly unsettling in its magnitude, that now attracts me. Driving through in late afternoon and early evening, the sun caught on the grass, and the sky—that commanding Great Plains sky—glowed with a tangle of light and cloud. A fitting transition from mid-western to western, this is one of my favorite drives anywhere.

Valentine is a center for outdoors activities, including hunting, fishing, canoeing, and rafting along the Niobrara River. We stayed in the Dunes Motel, which is pet-friendly. The town also has a great western-wear store.

Devil’s Tower National Monument
After seeing the South Dakota Black Hills on the tail end of winter the previous May, the summer season seemed a little too overpopulated. The drive from Belle Fourche, SD, to Devil’s Tower was beautiful and far less crowded. I’d only experienced the plains and high desert of southern and eastern Wyoming, and so I’d imagined the monument rising out of the flat grasslands. Instead, it stands at the western edge of the rugged, forested hills that continue into South Dakota. The place is still used by Native Americans for ceremonial purposes, and their ribbons and bundles hung from trees were a slightly incongruous mixture with the carloads of tourists vying for camera angles. The paths around the based are pretty kid-friendly, which is a good thing, but the monument itself is, like most national parks, not dog-friendly. There was a moment when, with the wind rustling the pines, the energy of the place was palpable. It was quickly broken by a loud family with a mom in an anti-abortion t-shirt, but it was there and it made the trip.

Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming
Our quest for campsites took us near the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area west of the town of Buffalo. It was a clear weekend in July, and many campsites were already full. We followed the friendly brown sign promising an established campsite on Forest Service land, but ended up basically in a cow pasture alongside the dirt road leading in. What lucky cows, though, because the road dipped through a broad valley before rising again to forests; snow-capped peaks were visible in the distance, tinged pink with sunset. We unhooked the bikes and took a spin. Kendall discovered that his cruiser is better suited to the streets of Lawrence than to rutted mountain roads, but that he can in fact ride with two dogs in tow. It was the coldest night of the trip by far, and the combination of clear, cool air and mountain elevation made for one of the more brilliant displays of stars I’ve ever seen. The Milky Way was luminous, and the Big Dipper sat nearly atop the mountains. Our morning hike took us through pine forests and past lakes, although the trail seemed merely a jumping off point for longer treks into the wilderness.

Welcome Creek Wilderness Area, Montana
We’d been here fishing the previous July, so when we struck out at all of the easy-to-reach campsites along the highway, we hit the back roads and returned to the Rock Creek area. The drive in from Phillipsburg was beautiful, as the road ran along high, rounded hills in agricultural country, with mountains farther in the background. Our hike that morning was steep, starting in a stand of trees and then climbing through a grassy area on the side of a mountain. It was light when we started out, but we hiked a good distance before the sun came up over the eastern mountains and began to burn off the dew. We should not, however, have driven the thirty miles of dirt road to get back to the 90, particularly not in a Honda Civic loaded down with two computers, a television, cleaning supplies, wineglasses, a stereo, and a baritone sax.