Just across the Missouri River, where the Floyd River joins, is a town first settled in long-ago Native American days and first recorded as a geographic note by Lewis & Clark in 1804.  Earlier exploration by Spanish and French trappers was probable but there is no record.  Today, Sioux City is an unusual oasis in the heart of the American High Plains.  Essentially it’s a very small city which, because of its location on the two rivers and very far from any nearby larger city, is much more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than ought to be believable.

The three-county metropolitan area has fewer than 200,000 people and yet the town has two major and well-respected medical centers and a complete line-up of television, radio and publishing firms.  It developed right about when the railroads were crossing the country and very soon afterwards became a major meat-packing, agriculture-processing shipping center.  It’s now and was then at the navigable head of the Missouri River. World War II provided the need to build an air training base (Iowa’s pretty flat and airfields need flat land and Iowa’s pretty dependable and clear weather which the Air Force usually sets as a criteria for locating a base) and so modern Sioux City now has a well-built, albeit, hand-me-down municipal facility.  Originally built as a training facility for B-17 pilots, the air strip is now the area’s link to the rest of the airborne world.  Although, only Northwest actually flies out of Sioux City and only goes to Minneapolis-St. Paul, but, still, it’s five flights a day to an international air gateway.

This view on the left shows the general terrain.  Because

Rapid City, South Dakota.  Chances are you’ve never been there.  It’s not on the road to anywhere in particular and it’s in a state with not a lot of draw for folks living elsewhere.  However, if you know a hardcore Harley-Davidson type, someone who gets great pleasure out of cruising on the highway with that V-Twin engine pushing them forward at slightly over the speed limit, then you probably know someone who’s been to Rapid City.  Why?  Rapid City is the urban center for the strange geological conditions which exist in western South Dakota and northwestern Wyoming - the Badlands, the Black Hills, and Devils Tower.  And why would your Harley-Davidson friend be in Rapid City?  Because Rapid City is the downtown to a bunch of places motorcycle fans visit every year - Sturgis is home to the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, one of the largest motorcycle rallies in the world.  Why Sturgis?  Why not!  One incredible reason is that the Black Hills, of which Sturgis sits on the edge, like Rapid City, is filled with deep canyons, one-way-at-a-time (honk first) roads in tunnels carved out of rock, and twisting and winding steep roads - all of which give a motorcyclist a great thrill.  Heck, the roads through the Black Hills even give bus drivers and car drivers a great thrill.

There’s also the Badlands, a huge basin filled with primordial chemicals and which has been undergoing erosion forever.  Not to mention the large number of eagles which nest in this general area and flocks of which can be seen soaring on the thermals anywhere in this part of South Dakota.  Within the Black Hills there’s Mt. Rushmore and the newer carving of Crazy Horse.  Surrounding the Black Hills are innumerable state and national parks featuring such things as bison herds by the hundreds, underground cave formations caused by ancient seas now long receded and other caves large enough to create

Part Two

Part Two has a bit of a backtrack.  I was and am quite taken by Wyoming, so I wanted to focus on Yellowstone and Cody and the Big Horn Mountains in the first post in this thread.  Boise, Idaho, is an equally alluring and worthy-of-visit city.  Boise is “west” of Wyoming, and therefore should have come before Wyoming in this write-up.  I’ll describe my take on Boise here, Rapid City and Sioux City will get their turn in subsequent posts.

The Western States have their draw.  The Pacific Northwest states have their draw.  The Pacific Northwest means different things to different folks.  For some, it means Washington and Oregon state.  To others it means Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.  To still others it means Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana west of the Rockies.  To even others, it means BC, Washington, Oregon and portions of California down to the Bay Area.  Calling Idaho and portions of Montana “the Pacific Northwest” is not entirely inaccurate as this area of the West was explored and developed in a collective time period which included the development of the various states cited.  The Pacific Northwest is also defined by the kind of flora and fauna and the prevailing weather patterns.  One could easily include all or most of Idaho and the western portions of Montana and the far north of California in the Pacific Northwest and be completely accurate - historically as well as climatologically and geologically.

Boise sits on a bluff overlooking a vast basin - the Idaho Basin.  The Boise River, a tributary to the Snake River, runs through the city and provides a respite along its banks, which have trails and wilderness areas through nearly its

{ This trip was an opportunity to capture the wonder of North America on camera.  I’ve put together a 30 minute trip video which covers the route shown in orange above.  It’s produced as if “you” are in the car with me as I travel across America.  It’s designed to stream, but is better if downloaded to a local hard drive and viewed in “full screen” mode.  The map on the right above shows a few of the trips I’ve made at “ground level,” as I call it.  Since that map was put together I’ve made about two dozen additional continental or trans-continental trips.  This last trip, though, was the first where I planned from the start to capture the images for the express purpose of putting together a travelogue.  The movie is high resolution but not in a “high definition” format so it will look fine on a regular computer monitor or TV screen.  Give it a whirl - it’s a travelogue, which means you can’t really take your eyes off the video for the entire 30 minutes, lest you miss some segments of the journey.

 

Part One

You all know that I love to explore.  On foot, on a bike, on a bus, or in a car.  Each mode has its advantages and its natural turf and range.  Feet are for parks, wilderness, neighborhoods, business districts, and maybe occasionally that five-mile trek down an old railroad line in the middle of nowhere.  Bikes and buses are pretty comparable in their scope:  neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, ‘burb to ‘burb.  Bikes, of course, are a bit more personal and involve usually no one else but perhaps one’s alter ego or “spirits sitting on one’s shoulder.”  Cars,

As a group, we’re literally a band of gypsies.  Each of the 40 or so regular attendees brings their own perspective and talent to the organization.  Recently we held the first-ever Sustainable West Seattle street festival.  I happened to be out of town on the day of the festival but had worked months with others setting this up and getting pamphlets, speakers, tablers, and demonstrations ready.

Here’s a quickie look at the ceremonies and reception...

The minister and Leif and the groom’s party are approaching the outside altar in the shot on the left and Alan Gray, father of the bride, is escorting Lowrey down the “aisle” in the shot on the right.

The River Farm setting was perfect and the nearly 100 guests and family were all elegantly dressed and ready to party.  The shots below show the newlyweds and some of the reception action.

So that’s been part of what has been consuming my time for the past six months.  To get from Seattle to Alexandria, where the River Farm is, I drove the trusty 1999 S70 red Volvo across the country - alone heading east and with our other son, Adam, accompanying me on the trip back.

That trip was the excuse for a long-standing video art project I’ve been working to get accomplished.  More on that trip, the project, and

 

The winter winds come from the southwest and bring with them all the characteristics of East Coast summer low pressure storms off the Atlantic, such as waves of gusts and waves of precipitation which sometimes last for days.

 

That’s actually one of the advantages of living in Central Puget Sound almost directly east of the Olympic Mountains - the nearly constant access to wind throughout the year.  Other areas of the Sound are more or less protected from these NW and SW winds because of the Olympics or their relationship to Vancouver Island.  In the winter some of the winds can come up and be essentially amplified by the ridges and peaks of the Cascades, which trap and allows pressure build-ups to come back from an easterly direction.  

 

 

Right now all these volcanoes are doing to us is steering some of the weather some of the time.  They’re demonstrably higher than the Cascades, in which they’re embedded.  The

Here’s some thoughts which capture the past 15 and more months.  This is a good opportunity for me to mix legend, history, accomplishments, expectations and forecast into yet another long essay.  My best form is long - be it verbal, written, illustrative, or even physically expositing.  In a way, my life is an exposition and I'm hoping that it, too, is long.

 

Going on two years now my Mom died.  More recently the moms of several of my friends have died.  Most of these friends were younger, some more than a decade and then some, than me.  Their moms all died within a reasonable actuarial lifetime for when they were born.  I have friends and family who have lost someone outside of the reasonable.  That's always just that - it's unreasonable and therefore hard to explain or fathom.  The parents dying part is easier to understand because when one reaches a certain age one's parents will also be within an actuarial distance of their natural death.  We grow up sort of knowing the life cycle - kid, youth, teenager, adult, middle-aged coot, old fart, nattering ancient and then death.  We "know" this but until it happens to us, ourselves, each of us individually, then all it is, is book knowledge.  Once you lose one or both of your parents, you are essentially the next in line to go.  That's different than losing an aunt, uncle or grandparent, because you "knew" they would go and there was still plenty of room left in the real world of living people that you knew you weren't next in line.  That changes with a parent dying.  

 

It's odd, indeed, that it takes most of us our first 40, 50, or 60 years of life to realize fully and to actualize the feeling that we are finite creatures.  We have a time on the planet and then it stops.  It's sort of the "ah ha" moment for all of us who have pondered why we are here, which is probably most of the dead and living humans going back to the stone age.  That's a lot of humans and a substantial portion of all their lives to come to grips