The Grand Trip: Part I

WESTERN SWING

My last post was about my ascent of Cloud Peak in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming.  That two-day trip was part of a bigger solo road trip covering eleven states over nine days.  For this post I want to do a summary of the entire trip.  I won’t bore you with too many details but suffice it to say there were lots of details and it was the trip of a lifetime.

I left Kentucky on September 6^th and drove north to the Apple River Canyon State Park In northern Illinoising.  I slept in the hatch of my Jeep Compass that night.  That was a big part of my lodging plan for the trip.  I discovered at 5’9” I am slightly too tall to fully stretch out in the hatch and had to sleep with my feet on the console between the front seats.  But the logistical faux pax aside, my sleeping and storage arrangements worked fairly well.  I think I could refine my road tripping setup in the Jeep to be more efficient, but I’m hoping by the next time I take on an adventure of that magnitude I’ll have a better vehicle for it.

The reason I timed my trip when I did was because the high point in Illinoising is only open to the public four weekends a year as it’s on private land near a private residence.  This year, September 7 & 8 were the last dates it was open until June of 2025.

I woke up Saturday the 7^th and drove from the campground at Apple River Canyon to the parking area at Charles Mound in the mountainous region of northwestern Illinoising.  I got there just after dawn and there were already three cars parked in the small space.  I jumped out and began hiking briskly against the cool morning air toward the forested hillock away off yonder. 

It’s a pretty hike, and the summit is a nice area within view of the owners’ house.  I passed two couples coming out, and a few minutes after I got to the summit another couple showed up.  We ended up hiking out together and chatting.  The husband is a longtime UPS employee, and I’ve spend my fair share of time slinging boxes.  We parted ways back at the road and I turned the nose of my Jeep west.  Charles Mound is the high point of Illinoising at 1,235’.

It was a hard push across Iowa and South Dakota all day Saturday.  I got into the Black Hills after dark and slid into a parking space at the Old Baldy Mountain Trailhead near Mount Rushmore where I slept until just before dawn. I woke up raring to go.  I had wanted to camp in the Badlands, but I also wanted to be as close to the Cloud Peak trailhead as I could get when I woke up on Sunday morning.

I rolled into Buffalo, Wyoming right at 10:00am.  I was hoping to get breakfast somewhere in town before heading into the Bighorns, and I was greatly and pleasantly surprised to find there is a real Busy Bee Café in downtown Buffalo.  The town is where the fictional town of Durant is set in the Longmire novels by Craig Johnson on which the Netflix show is based.  I’m a huge fan of the show and the books.

With an amazing omelet and sides in my belly, washed down with coffee and a couple glasses of water, I pushed the Jeep on toward West Tensleep Lake Trailhead.  I was hoping to keep going on my good time so I would have enough daylight to march in as far as I could and get camp setup.  Even that far into the trip I was still a bit nervous about going into the Bighorns alone.  What if I rolled an ankle?  What if a bear tried to eat me?  What if I died of old age?  It’s those fears and others that have thwarted me from the things I’ve wanted my whole life.  Once I was old and mature enough to push beyond those thoughts I was married and had kids and the opportunity windows closed.

And yet there I was, standing next to my car with my new, lightweight backpack filled with all the right gear, and food, and I locked the car door and started hiking north toward Cloud Peak far off above the West Tensleep Creek headwaters.

Sunday was a hot day.  I was dressed in shorts and cotton t-shirt (cotton DOES NOT kill if you know what you’re doing) and I plodded under the relatively light weight of my gear.

I won’t go into the details of my Cloud Peak ascent since I’ve already recounted that here, but the hike in was mostly mellow, if a little bit hot, and I passed several other groups of people hiking out.  It was Sunday afternoon after all.  

I got to Mistymoon Lake in the mid-afternoon, but I wanted to push on a little higher to reduce the distance on my climb the next day, so I went on to the crest of the divide between Mistymoon Lake/West Tensleep Creek and Paint Rock Creek to the north. I found a great little spot on a broad flat spot behind a tree-covered hill that faced Cloud Peak.  I had no choice but to set up my tent with the door facing my main objective.  I made dinner at a picturesque spot a few hundred feet away and sat eating while watching the light change over the mountains.  It was pleasantly warm—not too much—and the evening was peaceful and serene.

I cleaned up dinner, stripped off my smelly clothes, and stowed everything in my food bag.  Due to a paucity of suitable trees for hanging I dangled my food bag over a fifty-foot cliff and hiked naked back to my tent.  I considered dipping in the decent sized tarn near the tent where I got water to ease the soreness in my muscles, but I had forgotten a towel and only had my clean clothes for the ascent to dry off with.  Instead, I crawled in the still balmy tent and rested until dusk.  I got dressed and climbed out to watch the sunset glow bathe the high west face of Cloud Peak and the stars come out over the Bighorns.

It was still and quiet and even though I knew there were a small collection of tents scattered around within a mile or so of where I was camped, I saw nor heard anyone from my sheltered spot.

I went to bed and tossed and turned until late.  When it was full dark I felt the urge to empty my bladder, so I once again slipped on shoes and exited the tent.  I was shocked to see the intense brightness of the Milky Way as a brilliant banner splitting the sky overhead.  There seemed to be zero light pollution where I was, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky except that mountain looming in shadow in front of me.

The next day was spent climbing, descending, and subsequently retreating from Cloud Peak as I described in my previous post.  I exited the mountains that evening after the sun went down and drove back to Buffalo where I found a nice hotel room.  I was so keyed up from the climb I couldn’t fall asleep.  Sometime around midnight I was finally able to stop looking at the photos and writing in my journal long enough to fall asleep.  I assumed I would sleep like the dead—it had been a few nights since I’d gotten solid night’s sleep—but I woke up at 4:00 am which is 6:00 am in my home time zone and close to my usual time for waking up.  I was also finally able to text and let my family and friends know I had made it out of the Bighorns and was back to the relative safety of civilization and once I got started telling the story I was doing so across a handful of text threads.

While hiking out of Cloud Peak I modified my plans for the rest of the trip.  What ensued was my original and first plan for the trip, but I soon modified it to include a jaunt out to the Tetons after summiting Cloud Peak to also bag the Middle & South Tetons or alternately Disappointment Peak and Teewinot before continuing with nabbing as many northern state high points as I could while roving back toward home.  The experience of summiting Cloud Peak—and fighting through my fear and doubt—felt like it was the crowning achievement of the trip.  While I could probably have succeeded in summiting a couple Tetons, I was afraid that would weigh down the rest of the trip and put me behind schedule.  But if I dropped the Teton add-on leg from the trip, I would bank some extra time and allow myself to fully enjoy the rest of the trip without absolutely wrecking my body.  It seemed a prudent choice, and for the first time I felt confident about bailing on a mountain objective.  That choice wasn’t out of fear or apprehension, but realistically so I could better enjoy myself afterward.

With the extra time I decided I would swing back through the Black Hills and then the Badlands which I had missed on the trip out and hated that I drove through both in the dark.  I took my time Tuesday morning doing some laundry in the hotel, repacking my stuff and cleaning up the Jeep, stretching for the first time in days, and finally—as my clothes dried—soaking in the hotel’s hot tub and stretching some more.

I left the hotel and drove back into Buffalo for a second breakfast at the Busy Bee Café.  I eagerly ordered the Longmire Breakfast from my seat by the front windows.  It’s comprised of eggs, a 6 oz. flat iron steak, potatoes O’brien, and a huge buttermilk biscuit.  I added a side of gravy because Walt always serves his inmates a breakfast of biscuits and gravy from the Busy Bee in the books.  Or at least in The Cold Dish, which I had been listening to on audiobook on the trip.  I’d already read the actual book, but I wanted to revisit it, because one of the climaxes of the book takes place in the Bighorns and down West Tensleep Creek where I had backpacked in.  It was an incredible meal, and I hate that it’ll be a while before I can have it again.  I reluctantly pulled out of Buffalo and headed east toward the Black Hills.

The Longmire Breakfast

In 2020, when I took the road trip out west with my dad one of the side trips was to bag Black Elk Peak in the Black Hills.  It’s the high point of South Dakota and still my favorite state highpoint to boot.  One of the attractions along that nine-mile hike is a short scramble to the top of Little Devil’s Tower.  It’s a feature that only resembles its namesake in rough shape from the north.  But it’s still a cool point.  I figured the three mile out-and-back hike to Little Devil’s Tower would keep me from stiffening up too much after my considerable Cloud Peak effort.  And that it did.

I took my time and enjoyed the hike.  Once there, I explored around the base of the summit block, then scrambled/soloed up a 150’ exposed slab to gain the top.  It felt like maybe a 5.2 or 5.3 climb but felt secure all the way.  Then I eased down the standard approach and explored around some more following a brilliant dike of rose quartz across a big hump of rock a few hundred feet until it disappeared into the matrix.   

Winding through the Needles area on the drive out I saw parallels to my tourist-oriented frustrations in my home of the Red River Gorge, even down to a Nada Tunnel-esque experience at the Needles’ Eye Tunnel.  I called The Bean while I drove through the Needles and chatted with her, checking on how her week had gone and telling her next summer I was definitely bringing her and her brother out west.  I felt terrible I had taken yet another big trip and left them behind.  But I also acknowledged to myself that maybe I’d gotten this mountain bug out of my system enough to focus on showing them some of the wonders of the West before going solo again.

Hallowed bouldering ground: The Thimble

Needles' Eye Tunnel (aka Nada's Eye Tunnel)

I eased into the Badlands a little before dusk and bought an annual National Parks pass.  I fully intend to use it, too.  I drove along the escarpment and tried to get some photos as the sun set, but I wasn’t terribly happy with them. As it got too dark to keep taking photos sooner rather than later, I turned back and made my way to the Sage Creek Campground.  I pulled into a spot and arranged the Jeep for sleeping.  It got dark and quiet pretty quick, and I tried to get some rest.  After a little bit I woke up and looked out to another insanely beautiful night sky.  I crawled out of the Jeep and set up my camera on a small army surplus tripod I found a few months ago and got a few pics of the Milky Way.  I regretted I didn’t do the same near Cloud Peak, as there was too much light pollution near the Badlands.  They turned out okay, but I also realized I need a wider-angle lens to better capture the night sky that way.  I got back in the car and slept until just before dawn.

When I woke, I realized if I got going, I could get some early morning photos of the formations in the Badlands and that motivated me to roll out of the campground before anyone else.  I felt conspicuous because I am not usually the loud guy in the campground and growl under my breath at everyone else.  I tried really hard to be quiet, I promise I did!

The drive across the top of the Badlands and then down to the lower tier was fantastic.  I did stop and take photos.  Got some closeups (from the car with a zoom lens) of bison.  Even with the extra time and no pressure to move on, I still felt pressure to move on.  One of these days I’m going to have to go to South Dakota and just stay between the Badlands and the Black Hills for a week.  I absolutely love that area.

I made my way out and back to Wall Drug for breakfast.  I’d stopped in before going into the Badlands the night before and had a bison burger and fries with a piece of apple pie.  For breakfast I got eggs and biscuits and gravy (I know!) and a coffee to go.  I was dragging sleepy-eyed a little bit and needed some bean juice (as my friend Tony would say) to get me on down the road.

Continued in Part II: Across the Roof of the Country