Rolling hills of NE Wyoming, after the thunderstorm
Recently, I found myself in the Lower 48, with a car and no where to park it. The smart move was to sell the car in Minnesota, but the lure, and frankly, the need for a road trip was too strong to resist.
The rumor was that Canada would allow Alaskans to cross the border to return back home to Alaska. There were also several reports, that the final judgement was up to the individual border patrol agent at the port of entry. I decided to roll the dice, pack up the little 300zx, and drive the car back to Alaska.
This would be the twelfth time I have driven the AlCan, or the Alaska Highway, as it is more commonly known. I knew it would be a different sort of trip, but I didn’t know what to expect in these anxious times, so it was hard to predict how different it would be.
I drove I-90 across South Dakota. I have not driven the interstate for ages, as I try to avoid them, when I can. This trip, it seemed like the smart move. The interstate made it a lot easier to avoid people, plus I wasn’t sure if the small towns in South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana would care to see a car zip through with Alaska plates.
Day one’s goal was to get to the Black Hills National Forest, just past Rapid City and into Wyoming. The weather was hot & sticky, and the air conditioner in the car had recently stopped blowing cold air. An attempt was made to fix that, but with working windows and a T-Top, I wasn’t overly put out by the heat. The 90 degree weather did force me to take the top off before I made it out of Minnesota.
Aladdin General Store
I veered off I-90 and took SoDak Hwy 34 near Spearfish. The hot & humid weather had been building dark storm clouds on my horizon for a while, so I stopped to put the tops back on the roof of the car. Immediately after, the wind picked up, the sky darkened even more, and the sound of hail hit the recently replaced glass tops. The cell phone gave me an automated message that I had never seen before: Tornado Warning in your vicinity until 7pm. Then the rain came down in absolute torrents. I was impressed, but I pressed on. There was no place to stop anyway. I followed a truck’s set of taillights as best I could, and continued on.
I eventually drove through the storm, and it was beautiful weather on the west side of the Black Hills. I stopped briefly in the community of Aladdin, Wyoming: Population 15, Cell Coverage: zero, wonderful country: as far as the eye could see.
Not long after Aladdin was the campground I was looking for in the national forest. Within minutes, I had started some charcoal, and was setting up camp among the tall pines of the Black Hills.
