(Author’s Note: I got back to civilization, and civilization quickly conspired to keep me from finishing up the trip blog. Fortunately only one blogpost, this one, went unpublished. Here it is! Road trip postscript!)

In my book, only rednecks and UFO abductees are supposed to wake up in cornfields outside Emporia, Kansas. But there I was. I had done that thing where I, ya know, don’t brush my teeth the night before. Between the latte, the bacon burger, the truffle fries, the Guinness, and the gummi bears from the night before, my mouth tasted like death in a bad mood.

After remedying that situation, I headed back south on I-35, realizing glumly that this would be my entire road home. (Part of the appeal of taking 183 the whole way down was bypassing I-35 completely.) Before long I was in Wichita, and retracing the route that I’d taken north to get into the wilderness.

One amusing bit came in southern Oklahoma, where not once but TWICE I exited the highway for a “Scenic Turnout” sign. In each case, it was… okay Oklahomans? All I’m saying is you should take a road trip to Montana. That’s all I’m saying.

Visit Scenic Oklahoma!

Slowly, I was seeing signs of home. Just south of Norman I passed my first dead armadillo. At the Texas border, I saw my first “BURN BAN IN EFFECT” sign. North of Dallas, the first asshole cut me off for no particular reason.

Five thousand miles of wide-open spaces had made me a bit of a speed demon, and in DFW I noticed that, for practically the first time in two weeks, my speed was limited by the traffic of other cars, not by my own whim.

I made a detour through my hometowns, Grapevine and Colleyville, to confirm that the continuous, Doozer-like construction there is still underway. It is. A stop at Braum’s for a late lunch (God I wish Austin had one) and it was the home stretch. At 6 pm on Wednesday evening, with the trip odometer reading 5360.1, I pulled back into Brent and Amalia’s driveway, where I promptly locked my keys in the car.

Kidding.

Since getting back people have asked me, with apparent sincerity, whether I found myself out there. Hell, I dunno. It was an incredible adventure that went about as well as I could have hoped. It was perfectly timed for the weird transition that my life is taking. And I had a marmot walk right up to me and scope me for food. Who could ask for anything more?

And now…

KEVIN’S ROAD TRIP AWARDS!

• Thing I wish I’d practiced before leaving on the trip: Bear-bag hanging. Turns out it’s a pain in the ass.
• Thing I know nothing more about now than I did when I left: Camp cooking. Or, just, y’know, cooking.
• Risk That Paid Off: Leaving my heavy jacket behind on the backpacking trip. If it had poured rain on me, it woulda sucked. Speaking of which,
• Thing That Was Better Than I Dared Hope It Would Be: The weather. The only consistent rain shower I got was driving out of Yellowstone; the “record high” temperatures in Glacier National Park were right in my comfort zone.
• Thing That Was Way Worse Than I Thought It Would Be: Sleeping. That’s maybe the best indication that I’m not meant to be a permanent outdoorsman.
• Best Food: The “Smoke” burger, Burger Bar at the Casbah, Lawrence KS.
• Texas Thing I Missed The Most: the final night of the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, which included by all accounts a spectacular roast of Tom Booker, and—again, it pains me to not have seen this—Tim Meadows, playing Barack Obama, having sex with a cat, played by my friend Peter Rogers.
• Road-Trip Thing I Miss the Most: Grass, just growing on its own, without any help from sprinklers. It’s a bit hard to imagine.
• Unexpected Treat: Listening to podcasts, which I never get the opportunity to do. Highly recommended: My Brother My Brother and Me, Stuff You Should Know, and Judge John Hodgman.
• Near-Death Experience: Narrowly missing a grizzly bear near the bottom of the Highline Trail. I heard about him from a breathless tourist who’d seen him ten feet off the trail, not five minutes after I’d been there.
• Low point of the trip: Waiting miserably for a tour bus at the end of my Highline Trail excursion, eventually having to hitchhike to get back to my car.
• High point of the trip: Reaching the packbridge at the tail end of my backpacking trip. I felt like a superhero.

One random tidbit that I never got around to sharing: I sketched out my backpack while in the middle of nowhere. In case you were wondering how to cram five days’ worth of stuff onto your back.

And one amazing postscript on my trip to the long-abandoned Pattonsburg Methodist Church. Two weeks after getting back, I was shuttling boxes between my new apartment and various storage units. At one point I moved a long, flat box with various old papers in it. On a hunch, I took a peek inside.

Yep, there was the birthday card I’d woken up to on my 16th birthday, which I made passing mention to in the previous entry.

"Noah good way to wish a happy birthday?"

In closing I wanna say thanks to Altec Lansing, for giving my car a very ghetto iPhone stereo hookup…

…and to my car, Cher, for getting me 5,360 miles without so much as a gripe. Much like Cher herself, I have a grudging respect for you.

That’s it, man. I’ve also just finished processing all my trip pictures (yeah I KNOW it’s been two months), so I’ll get those posted momentarily.

I drove south into Omaha and cut over to I-29, which would take me down to the Kansas City area, from which I would turn east towards Pattonsburg.

OR, SO, I, THOUGHT.

South of town were signs that I-29 South was closed ahead. Okay, guess there’s a detour. I took the exit where indicated, left I-29 behind, and in the drizzling rain proceeded east along with the rest of the traffic.

THIS was the detour.

It was the mother of all detours. I drove so far into the butt end of Iowa that I started looking for Shoeless Joe Jackson. At one point I had the insight to ask my anthropomorphized iPhone to recalculate directions. It blinked and said “You’re WHERE? …Uh, yeah, don’t even bother with the Interstate at this point, dude. Country roads the whole way down from here.”

It was an opportunity to see more of the backwoods Midwest, for sure. I passed through one tiny town after another, rain coming and going the whole way. About 9 AM I was driving at high speed past the town of Villisca, when…

I slammed on the brakes.

Alas, though there’s a cool-looking museum on the town square and advertised tours of the Ax Murder House itself, they didn’t open until 1 pm. Wasn’t worth the long wait, though it took me a couple of agonizing minutes to realize this. So all I know of the Villisca Ax Murders, sadly, I got from Google.

I passed into Missouri, criss-crossing the countryside. Fuzzy black caterpillars were crossing the road here by the thousands in some kind of autumn migration (I tried not to hit any). Finally, right near good old I-35, I entered the town of Pattonsburg.

Okay so here’s the deal. In 1993, the Missouri River experienced some of the worst floods in its history. And in 1994, as part of a church mission trip, I went with my youth group to rebuild the hardest-hit towns. My group’s assignment: Pattonsburg.

For some reason the trip has always stuck in my memory. I spent my 16th birthday there, sleeping on the floor of the Methodist church. We tore up floors and repaired roofs. We ran mischievously through corn fields. We ate at the only diner in town. We nicknamed the site leader “Butt Cheese” and TP’d his van. (We didn’t like him.)

I’ve thought of that town many times since, and realized that some day I wanted to drive through it again. With two extra days to burn, why not? So I took my nine-hour detour from Pierre, SD (with an additional two-hour detour thanks to I-29) just to find this tiny, tiny place.

It was gone.

Not long after we were there, the Pattonsburgians had the wild idea to move the ENTIRE CITY to higher ground (it had flooded 33 times in the preceding 100 years). So my first stop on Tuesday morning was New Pattonsburg, which the sole person in the small Municipal Building proudly declared is the “youngest city in America.” There were brand-new churches, a strip-mall looking main street, and a pretty interesting-looking K-12 school that was a series of windowless geodesic domes with skylights at their center and inward-facing classrooms. Never mind, I’d need to draw you a picture.

Based on directions from the lady at city hall, I drove five miles down the side highway, and turned right into the town of Old Pattonsburg. Like you can see above, the streets are still there, but the buildings are almost entirely razed—there’s twenty at most still standing, half that number in actual use.

I drove to the end of the “main street.” Suddenly a flashback: against all odds, I recognized one of the few remaining houses as one of the two that I’d worked on 17 years ago. I guess my floor-building skills are JUST THAT GOOD, y’all.

They're even using it for, uh, storage.

City Hall Lady had told me the Methodist church was still standing, though she described it as “overgrown.” I thought she was mistaken—there was one church, but it wasn’t the one we’d stayed at. I prowled the empty blocks for a couple of minutes. I rolled slowly past a stand of trees. Then suddenly I saw it:

It's like freaking Narnia.

The stand of trees was concealing the Methodist church almost perfectly, but it was still there. I parked and walked through the open door, noting the unbroken glass, and found myself in the abandoned sanctuary.

My friends know well that I’m a serious nostalgia addict. And I’ve established that I love prowling abandoned buildings, the spookier the better. So for Kevin this particular moment was, like, the best thing since sliced peaches.

I explored every corner of the small, small church. There was a basement that I’d learned to play pool in, but it was down a black staircase; no matter! I got the headlamp from my camping gear and walked fearlessly down. Are you kidding me? The pool table was still there.

The place had been deserted hurriedly, and apparently never ransacked like you tend to expect of abandoned buildings. There were long stacks of styrofoam cups in the kitchen, for some reason a repository of school textbooks and other materials in the classroom area.

I got my fill of pictures and memories, remembering how we’d explored these same spaces, finding the spot on the sanctuary floor where I’d woken the morning of my 16th birthday to see a giant card everyone had signed for me. I had that card as recently as a few years ago—hell, I might STILL have it.

I wanted to hug the entire place, to put it in the trunk and drive it home to Texas so I could walk everyone through it like it was a museum. But alas, it had to stay here, in this town that none of you will ever visit—this town that doesn’t even EXIST any more. So I left.

On my way out I got a picture of the church, just to show how invisible it is to the outside world.

I drove down I-35 to Kansas City. Once there I found a place to rotate my tires. How long is this road trip? I HAD TO ROTATE MY TIRES WHILE I WAS ON IT. I called my sister and told her excitedly all about Pattonsburg.

So long as I was in the area, I stopped for the afternoon in Lawrence Kansas, home of KU (Rock Chalk! Not a fan, it’s just fun to say). My high-school girlfriend moved to Lawrence and then went to KU, so I had some vague memories of it being an awesome little town. I was right. I walked up and down a single block of Massachusetts Street, where I found used-music stores, a bookshop, a chill little coffeeshop, and the best burger of the entire trip: medium-rare with bacon, smoked gouda cheese and chipotle-cocoa ketchup for God’s sake. Truffle fries on the side, and a Guinness. Sorry, In-N-Out, you just got out-Whataburgered.

I was enjoying my time in Lawrence and would have been happy to spend the whole night there. But it was early yet for any of the dive bars to be hopping, and I had nothing else to do, so I said goodbye to this badass college town and moved on to Emporia.

One last wild-goose chase, this one even more ridiculous. On that same mission trip, as we drove north from DFW, our church youth group stopped for the night at a very small college somewhere in Kansas. I clearly remember the administration building, the layout of the dorm where we stayed, and (clearest of all) the baby bat that I was tasked with throwing out the window when we found it flopping helplessly down the hallway floor in the middle of the night. There’s a whole story.

Emporia State University, enrollment 6,314, was my best guess. I stopped off at the campus and it looked damn close to the place we’d stayed, but not quite. I even got out of my car and wandered the campus for a bit (I’ve always found college campuses relaxing to walk around), and found a couple of buildings that were frustratingly close in appearance to what I was seeking out. But unless the campus was totally reconfigured in the last 17 years, I was barking up the wrong tree. This particularly obscure wild goose remains uncaught.

Did you read this whole long blogpost? Then I must reward you! RANDOM PICTURE OF CHIPMUNK:

Let's ask him what happened to Jason Lee's career.

Uh… okay.

I’d driven the windy road from Wall to the Badlands campground in absolute darkness the previous night, with no idea what was around me. Turns out, a lot.

View from the campground

I leisurely (leisurelily?) backtracked through the park as the rising sun colored the landscape a beautiful orange. There were almost a dozen scenic turnouts, giving different perspectives on the alien landscape.

And now in THREEEE-DEEEEE!

I took one proper hike, a rough trail among the rocks that’s scarcely even marked and made me slightly skeered of the prospect of taking a wrong turn and getting lost. Midway I got to climb up a wobbly log-and-cable rope-ladder thing, which was even more of an adventure to climb down.

The usual assortment of wildlife grazed with its typical blasé attitude: prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, giant crows that would just as soon eat your eyeball for breakfast as not.

By midmorning I was done with the Badlands, headed east into the middle of South Dakota, taking—all together now—”a lesser-used highway that ran parallel to the Interstate.” This 70-mile stretch gave me some of the best abandoned porn of the entire trip. In a “town” called Belvidere, I saw an ancient overgrown motel, and in the next field over, explored a house and shed that have been sitting empty for decades.

The next town, Okaton, had a grain elevator that was partly collapsed. Half of you just groaned out loud at how boring that sounds; the other half are my sister.

Along the way I also passed within a few miles of two rather odd South Dakota geographic distinctions. The first was the pole of inaccessibility, the spot in North America that’s farthest (1,024 miles) from any ocean. The second was, up until recently, McFarthest. Just click.

Made a left turn at Highway 83 and drove through open prairie to reach Pierre, which piqued my interest by being the second-smallest state capitol, and probably the only one that sits at the end of a dead-end 30-mile road. Why the heck not, I say.

It’s a nice enough town. The state capitol building is cute, he said with the smugness only an Austinite can muster, and I ate something called a “pizza burger” at a walk-up stand called Zesto’s that seemed to be a local institution. It was good for what it was.

It was 86 degrees, warmest I’d seen since Texas, as I left Pierre and turned my car, once and for all, southward.

Now, near Pierre along I-90, the town of Presho, South Dakota (population 497) lives its sleepy little life. There is absolutely nothing notable about Presho to an Austinite like myself, except for one odd bit of trivia: it’s where US Highway 183 begins. 1100 miles later, after many twists and turns, that very same highway passes straight through north Austin.

So according to the original plan, Presho was to be my gateway home: take the 183 exit off of I-90, turn right, drive for TWO DAYS, then take the Anderson Mill exit and I was back where I started. For all the hours I’ve spent driving up and down 183, it had a certain appeal; how many people can say they’ve driven 80 percent of it?

But then, I was still two days ahead of schedule. I didn’t quite feel the pull of 512 just yet. And so I kept heading east on I-90. (Anyway how many people want to say they’ve drive 80 percent of Highway 183?)

There are a few more oddball tourist stops in the eastern half of the state: the South Dakota Tractor Museum, and what was advertised on every billboard as “The World’s Only Corn Palace.” (Should I have been expecting there to be more than one?)

At Sioux Falls, SD, I turned south towards Sioux City, IA. (I kept having to check which was which.) My mission was to find some Wi-Fi and catch up (somewhat) on the blog. Sioux City seemed like a very nice place, but then maybe I just hadn’t seen a proper city in awhile—I realized that it was the largest town I’d passed through since Missoula, 11 days earlier. I struck gold when I found an Irish pub there that had both Wi-Fi and Monday Night Football.* I ate fish ‘n chips, drank Guinness, and had a relaxing evening before continuing in the darkness down into Nebraska and finding a spot to sleep somewhere north of Omaha. The next morning I was to keep heading southeast.

Okay, so the eponymous “slight change of plans” was more like a nine-hour detour. I was adding a full day to my trip and heading to a place that you’ve never heard of, and never will again: Pattonsburg, Missouri.

*The Yelp app for your phone is a Godsend when in strange places.

It’s difficult to describe (or ya know, understand) the appeal of Wall Drug in Wall, SD. It’s like the Paris Hilton of drug stores: famous mostly because it’s famous, and because it LOVES LOVES LOVES promoting itself. As I drove into the town of Wall from the south—not even along the Interstate, mind you—there were SEVEN different billboards for it within a quarter-mile on both sides of the road.

The business occupies an entire square city block, and not a small one. There’s every possible item of kitschery for sale, and a few impossible ones.

There’s a long, long wall of magazine clippings that mention Wall Drug. At one end of the row, animatronic raccoons in pith helmets sing songs while kids pan for gold. At the other end, a giant animatronic T. Rex springs to life every 12 minutes and tries to eat you.

There are toys, games, jams, jellies, hats, t-shirts, postcards, a full-service boot shop, a chapel, a candy shop, and tucked into one corner, an actual drug store.

There’s also a ten-foot saddled jackalope that you can ride, but no one was around to take my picture. Awwwwwww.

I went to the café, where coffee is only five cents, and ordered a buffalo burger, which I’d been hungering for ever since Yellowstone.

"Okay."

It was alright. The fries were better. I also had a double-dip ice cream cone, CAUSE I CAN.

After football, beer, and blogging at the local bar across the street, I was back into Badlands Nat’l Park to find a camping site. A deer munched grass and looked at me with vague disinterest as I set up the tent. The stars overhead were the best I’d seen by far; I was unlucky enough to have a waxing quarter-moon as I left Austin, so most nights had been washed out by moonlight. Alas, I was way too sleepy to set up a tripod and a camera. So instead you’re getting a repost of a picture I took in Big Bend with my sister last year.

It'll do.

“This monument has never accepted any government funding, and it never will,” says the woman on the screen. “He [the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski] believed in individual initiative and private enterprise,” she lectures. “He didn’t believe in waiting for a handout”—here she pointedly extends her palm—”from the government.”

And I thought I was here to learn about a statue.

But then the Crazy Horse Memorial, a dozen miles away from Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills, is kind of nutty in general. They’ve been blasting at the side of a mountain here since 1948. To call it the largest statue in the world doesn’t really get the point across. It’s going to be 563 feet high and 641 feet long, big enough that all of Mount Rushmore could fit inside Crazy Horse’s head. The horse’s head is 22 stories tall. The gap under Crazy Horse’s arm will hold a 10-story building. And so on.

Then there’s the Fox News angle that the introductory video took. Ziolkowski didn’t accept any government funding because he was afraid the government would never finish the monument; instead, they operate on private donations alone, and they finished Crazy Horse’s face on the 50th anniversary of work starting. Nobody would even offer a guess when it might be done, but it’s not likely to be in our lifetimes. God bless the free market, or something.

Oh, my favorite WTF quote from the video: “He wanted the statue to be owned by the public, not by the taxpayer.” …Okay.

So that was an oddly political part of my day. But lemme back up to sunrise at the Montana-Wyoming border.

I woke up shivering in the front seat. I was still sleepy, but way too cold to do anything but fire up the heater and hit the road.

The usual complement of deer were munching along the sides of the road (and at one point, so was a flock of wild turkeys). The sunrise was just as beautiful as sunset had been. Oh, and I drove past a freaking surface-to-air missile launcher. So that was something.

In less than an hour I rounded a bend and saw Devils Tower* standing alone in the distance. It’s even more bizarre-looking than Chimney Rock & Friends™ down in Nebraska.

I was the first one in the parking lot. I got out of the car and realized my feet were still killing me. So I found my running shoes and went Full Seinfeld for the day.

Devils Tower is much more impressive up-close. It looks different from every angle. Fun facts: it’s the largest example of natural geometric columns in the world, and it was America’s very first national monument (declared by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906). And in 1941 a daredevil successfully parachuted to the summit of the rock, only to be stranded for six days before being rescued by a team of rock climbers. Smart guy.

Devils Tower is also home to a large town of prairie dogs that are basically domesticated. Two German tourists and I (I swear, they’re always Germans) snapped pictures while the dogs tittered at each other and nibbled at grass.

"Do you mind?"

Then I hit the road again, headed towards the Black Hills in the corner of South Dakota. I passed a historical plaque noting George Custer’s expedition into the area in 1874, which was in direct violation of an existing treaty with the local Indians. Custer was a dick.

There’s no real straight roads in this part of the country. Here’s my route for the day:

After many twists and turns I was suddenly in the Black Hills, covered in dense pine forest the whole way through. I passed through Deadwood, which I might be able to find something interesting about if I spent the day there—at a glance it seemed like some nice historic-looking buildings, most of which were slot-machine casinos. No Mr. Wu anywhere to be seen.

From there I headed to the Crazy Horse Memorial, which was much much more interesting. (It really is a cool-looking statue, don’t get me wrong. Just a toooouch grandiose.)

Afterwards I paid the rapey-seeming park entry fee of $15 to drive along the six-mile Needles Highway between Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore. The spindly Needles are really cool-looking, though. Rock climber’s dream. Wish I wasn’t still walking like an old man.

One of the Needles Highway’s trademarks is its one-lane drive-through tunnels. On its eastern half, two of the tunnels are perfectly aligned to give a view of Mount Rushmore in the distance as you drive through them. Pretty awesome.

Here were the tightest switchbacks I’d driven on the whole trip. In three places there were even wooden pigtail bridges from the 1930s that made me feel like a Hot Wheels driver. Wouldn’t call the whole thing worth $15, necessarily, but it was easily the prettiest part of the day.

Then I was at Mount Rushmore, final tourist attraction of the day, and miffed to discover that my Nat’l Parks Pass does not cover the $11 parking fee. (You warned me, Michael!) I’d seen the mountain from a distance, and I couldn’t see myself getting $11 of enjoyment out of seeing it up close. So I just looped right back out of the lot and was on my way.

Heading northeast out of the Black Hills, it was Tourist Trap Heaven. There were billboards for reptile gardens, caves, mine tours, gold panning, cash for gold (heh), even a “mystery spot,” whatever that means. I successfully withstood the onslaught and zipped around Rapid City.

And then the pine forest was behind me, and I was back to Dances With Wolves territory. (I even glimpsed of a Dances With Wolves logo on a billboard, so it might have actually been filmed nearby.) Just as quickly, 45 minutes later, I found myself entering the Badlands, where the yellow prairie has been weathered away to beautifully ugly scarred hills.

I entered Badlands National Park, which of COURSE you get to via a dirt road. I made it to the first overlook, which I’d need a giant panoramic picture to properly capture. Behind me it was perfectly flat. To the west, the sun was riding low above the rolling hills. To the south and east, the landscape of the badlands rose eerily. It was a cool confluence of topography.

It was too late to go for a hike, and too early to find a campsite, so instead I drove BACK out of the Badlands to the north, and 10 miles later was in Wall.

Know what? This entry has run long. Wall Drug gets its own blogpost.

*No apostrophe in “Devils.” Some kind of mountain-naming-convention thing.

I lazed in bed for an hour after waking, writing blog and churning through pictures while College Gameday played on ESPN. At 9:30 I had an omelet at the breakfast buffet downstairs (included with my room, WOOT) and then embarrassed myself by filling an entire luggage cart with the stuff I’d brought up from the car. It looked like I’d been living there for months. There was even a ROCK on the cart. Just sitting by itself. A rock. Am I a fucking caveman?

Before leaving town I went to the Lewis & Clark museum. See, Great Falls is named after a series of five waterfalls in quick succession on the Missouri River*, which Lewis & Clark were misfortunate enough to run into as they paddled west. So they took 31 days—that’s a month—to portage their canoes and all their gear around the falls, across prairie covered in prickly-pear cactus, wearing moccasins. In honor of their miserable freaking time, or something, Great Falls now houses a 5,000-square-foot exhibit that basically tells me to STFU about how difficult my backpacking trip was.

Also, apparently trees just sit on top of the water here.

Made a stop at Starbucks (seriously y’all, the salted caramel mocha is delicious) then headed east around 2 pm with a new jug of water and a fresh can of Pringles.

BTW the supermarket I stopped in looked exactly like the one from “Russian Unicorn.”

I’ve always wanted to drive across Montana. It’s my thing with wide-open spaces. The fact that I was now two days ahead of schedule, giving me the flexibility to be totally indeterminate, made it even better. So I pointed my way across the Great Yellow North.

Now the emptiness of Montana really set in. In the next 234 miles of driving, I passed through six towns of any size (and “town” is generous for some of them). In between there weren’t farmhouses, gas stations, anything—just one beautiful vista after another. I don’t know what zen is, but this might have been it.

A bit later in the afternoon, I realized I was on a schedule after all. After the Chinese Wall, there’s exactly one other stop on my trip that I found by randomly browsing pictures on Google Maps: it was this wicked-looking picture of a “rollercoaster road” in eastern Montana. In need of a route to take across the state, I decided awhile back that I’d like to see this wacky road. But sunset was on its way, and I certainly wasn’t going to camp overnight at this random spot, so I had to reach it before dark.

I dropped the hammer and started cruising 85-90 miles per hour**. At one point I pushed it to 100 just to say I did so, but the car sounded rather unhappy, so I eased back. If the emigrants on the Oregon Trail were sailing across an ocean of grass, now I was flying over it. It felt great.

Just as the sun was going down I found the fabled road, and, it was about what you see in the picture. Not especially cool besides that. But the race against the sun had been worth it on its own. Another journey-over-destination kind of thing. And the sunset that I got to celebrate my victory was fantastic.

Another 50 miles south from there and I was in Miles City (12th-largest city in the state with a population of 8,123). I’d abstained from the UT game earlier in the day, but decided I wanted to find a place for the OU-FSU primetime game. The gas station attendant literally laughed when I asked about a “sports bar” in town. After 5 tries, including a bowling alley and a liquor store that I mistook for a bar, I finally found a place that was showing it on TV and served pizza besides.

Afterwards I kept heading south, towards the Wyoming border. As I waited in the DQ drive-through for a dipped cone, I witnessed some quality redneck romance: a Pizza Hut employee in the adjacent parking lot screaming at her nonchalant boyfriend as he sat on an ATV, finally yelling “FUCK YOU!” as he got tired of the routine and puttered off down the road.

I’d planned to make it as far as Devils Tower before camping. I could quickly tell that wasn’t going to happen. But I got as far as the state border, decided that was as good a place as any to stop, and pulled over to sleep in my front seat 50 feet short of Wyoming. One last night in Montana. It’s been real.

RANDOM LEWIS & CLARK FACT: The dynamic duo wrote more words in their journals than are in the Bible, but didn’t care too much for their spelling. Lewis spelled the word “Sioux” 27 different ways, never once spelling it S-I-O-U-X.

* True story: four of the waterfalls have been dammed to create hydroelectric power, and the fifth was submerged in one of the resulting lakes. NOT SO GREAT NOW, ARE YA, FALLS??
** Yes, Montana DOES have a speed limit, though it seems to be loosely enforced.

About 1 in the morning, it started to drizzle. You’d have thought the Vicodin would make me groggier than a drunken hibernating bear, but with a pit-crew efficiency that impressed me greatly, I leapt out of the tent and threw the rain-fly over the tent, stowing my shoes under the cover, and jumped back in my sleeping bag. Still got it!

By the morning, my feet (surprisingly comfortable this whole time) finally caught up to the rest of my body in soreness. Other, brand-new parts began to ache as well: right thigh, left pinky. By mid-day my body was a cacophonous symphony of ouch.

"HERE!"

I made some more yummy oatmeal and broke down camp for the final time in the wilderness. Let me take a moment to say that compression sacks are totally awesome.

I left the vicinity of the packbridge, working my way back along the original stretch of trail towards the trailhead. Another error in water: this turned out to be the driest portion of the trail by far. I found plenty of dry ditches for rain runoff, but naught in the way of actual running spring-fed streams. Again I got down to my final swallows of water, though at least I was in known territory.

It was Friday morning, which meant that the trail was suddenly very busy. Five minutes after leaving my site there was another mule train (7 mules, 1 cowboy) headed up the trail. After that was another hiker, then a hiking group, then ANOTHER one, all within 90 minutes. Everyone was off to enjoy their long weekends, seemingly.

Once I finally found a brook and nabbed some water, I enjoyed the last bits of bucolic scenery. Butterflies flitted among wildflowers. I haven’t mentioned the bursts of smell yet; every few minutes there was another whiff of pine, flower, mule dung. But mostly the first two things. (I’m proud of myself for not stepping in any poop the whole time.)

I crossed the first/final bridge over the river, hiked through familiar-looking territory, and there was my car through the trees. I plopped down my bag at 10:30 AM, exactly ten minutes shy of three days from when I started. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I kind of rock at this.

Yes I still had my keys. Yes the car started. All good things.

Tired though I was, I still pulled over for some beautiful vistas as I drove back up the 30-mile gravel road toward “civilization,” or the Montana equivalent thereof.

Then it was onto the pavement. Cell-phone signal returned, and emails and texts leapt into my phone, implicitly confirming that Austin had not burned to the ground during my absence. Well-done, guys.

Two quick hours later I was in Great Falls: population 58,505, third-largest in Montana. I saw my first Chili’s in over a week (Ahh, civilization!) as I pulled into the Hilton Garden Inn for the second of my two nights in a bed for this whole trip. It was only 2 pm, but the concierge took pity on the filthy homeless-looking man who limped in the front door and found me a room that was already serviced.

Helloooooo, lover.

Then began The Cleansening.

Back in Austin I’d packed a loofah, body wash, and face wash in anticipation of this very moment. I peeled off my clothes and created a toxic pile in the hotel-room floor, then got to work. The hobbit feet got extra love and care. Next I shaved my head and face, though I’d subjected myself to some serious torture by packing a used razor, not a new one. Then came the socks and sock liners (8 in total) which turned the bathwater I drew for them into some icky hot-chocolate disgustingness.

I put on my one nice outfit, and even applied cologne out of general principle. Then I started sorting through my stuff, doing a load of laundry, organizing the junk I’d brought back, hobbling several times back and forth to the car. (Guess how many times I’ve used the word “hobbling” in this blog, win a free lunch!)

We're going with "lurching" from now on.

Finally, refreshed but still achey, I searched Yelp for the best steak in Great Falls and went to Jaker’s. I ate my 12-ounce ribeye, pear-and-pecan salad, asparagus, and side of coconut shrimp in record time (Coke to drink—hadn’t had a soft drink in a week). Almost to ensure I’d pass out immediately upon returning home, I searched Yelp again for interesting dive bars in Great Falls, and came across the Sip-n-Dip Lounge, an old-fashioned tiki lounge with freaking mermaids swimming behind the bar! Alas, the bar was packed and the mermaids must have been on smoke break, so I was quickly back to the hotel for sleep.

Hmm, this was another one of those boring days, wasn’t it? Here, BONUS PICTURE:

Okay so it's from back in Glacier, SUE ME

Despite all the physical effort, I seem to be rather untalented at sleeping while in the wilderness. From about 2:30 til 3:30 AM, I was wide awake and reading a book on my iPhone. (No, I didn’t have a cell signal.) At some point I stepped out of the tent to answer nature’s call and was struck by the moonlight bouncing off the trees and the Wall above me, rendering everything a ghostly white.

Fear of the dark is not something I normally deal with, but it hit me a few times while here, miles from any help. The Blair Witch Project is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, and so I made tremendous efforts not to think of it as I lay in my tent, which inevitably turned into a game of “Don’t Think of an Elephant.” That part where they hear the baby’s cry—GAH SHUT UP THINK OF HAPPY PUPPIES Still, all I heard in the woods that second night was the rushing wind through the trees. When I finally slept, I dreamed there was a carnival of tourists there with me at the Wall. When I woke, of course, it was quite the opposite.

I was up with the sunrise as usual. It was funny how little I wanted to actually do now that I was here; I was reminded of a quote by an explorer upon reaching the South Pole, who said “I had finally reached my goal and all I wanted to do in the world was sleep.” It was certainly a journey-over-destination kind of thing. There’s not a lot to do when you get to the South Pole either, come to think of it.

I hit the trail at 8:30 the next morning, and just like that, my big road trip was on its back nine. It was a full sixteen hours after I’d stopped the previous day. It had been a bit of a boring time, but I sure as hell wasn’t in a situation to move much of anywhere. I struggled mightily to make it back up the saddle from the previous afternoon, doing one mile per hour if I was lucky. The best part about the return trip, though, is that you can’t give up.

Had much better luck going down the giant hill, though I’ve written before that downhill while backpacking is murder on your knees. Still, I was down to the river crossing in 70 minutes, where it had taken me 2 hours going up. I was doing well. Midway I passed a whole raft of hikers: four on horseback, two on foot, two dogs, and two additional pack horses. I was like, “Uh, I have bear spray!”

I got to the rest stop where I’d had lunch the previous day, and with great happiness set down my pack. Then, a shock: my trail map was missing. It had been nestled snugly between my back and my pack for the previous two days, but must have fallen out at some point. Now, this was probably the best time to lose the map, since I was only retracing my steps. But I mourned the loss regardless, since it was gonna be a great souvenir. Plus I felt bad for littering.

In honor of the trail map, I had a lunch of almonds, granola, and beef jerky. 45 minutes later I groaned as my pack went back on. It was cooler, 65 degrees with cloud cover, but my knees were aching, especially the left one, which had felt ouchy ever since the Highline Trail in Glacier.

At about 2:15, the knee finally gave.

Every time I fully straightened my leg, I literally yelped in pain. I hobbled to the side of the trail and dropped my pack with a thud. As if in response to the knee, the pain in my right ribcage flared up worse than it had ever been. I hollered again.

I leaned against the tree, which I noticed had barbed wire in it*, and grabbed the first aid kit. One of my two ACE bandages went around the left knee. My only Icy-Hot bandage went on my ribcage. Three of my five remaining ibuprofen went in my mouth. And then there was nothing to do but keep walking.

You’d have laughed to see me. I couldn’t put tons of weight on either my left leg or right pole, so I had quite a silly walk as I struggled along the riverbank. Ya know how you’re supposed to sing or talk to yourself as you walk along? Yeah, I just went “Ow! Ah! Gah!” It came naturally.

The last 30 minutes before I reached my idyllic campsite from the prior night were hellish. I stopped to rest and fantasized about eating a ribeye steak in Great Falls. And then I was headed downhill towards the Indian Point ranger station, limping the whole way. The station was empty, but I raided the first-aid kit out front for more ibuprofen, laid flat for 20 minutes on the wooden porch, ate some Shot Blox (“It’s what horses love!”™), and kept on going. It was 4 in the afternoon.

Then something came over me. Maybe the ibuprofen I’d filched had caffeine in it. Maybe I just wanted to avoid another sleepless, tossy-turny night. Maybe the steak I was going to have in Great Falls seemed extra-juicy. Either way I got a tremendous burst of adrenaline. My pain reduced to give me basic hiking functionality, and I was moving speedily along the riverbed like a limpy, aching bat out of hell.

The sun moved down the sky, hiding and peeking from behind Bob Ross-lookin clouds, the sky still a brilliant blue. I kept passing one great campsite after another, but just kept on going, figuring every step I took was one fewer than I’d have to take the next day.

A wolf called from a hilltop to my left, a high-pitched wailing yodel. A few seconds later, another wolf responded in the far distance. Then a third, then a fourth, all from different directions. (Was it the “Injured Prey Sighted” signal?)

I suddenly, partly inspired by the wolves, decided that I was going to camp all the way back at the packbridge, two short hours from the trailhead. But I had to hustle to get there; the sun was lower, the sky a deeper blue. My adrenaline kept fueling me (and my Shot Blox, I guess) as I race-hobble-hike-stumbled down the hillside, closer to the river.

As the sun finally set, I triumphantly reached the packbridge again. A sign said “No hiking within 500 feet of bridge,” so I walked yet ANOTHER quarter-mile until reaching another nice grassy field. Setting down my bag, I felt like a goddamn superhero. (I walked like an after-school special.)

I doffed my shirts and cooled off in the evening air. I completely set up camp, changed socks, and moleskinned two developing blisters on my feet (which were, by the way, hilariously filthy).

I warned ya.

I saved dinner for last to make sure I was hungry for it. It was 45 degrees by the time I crawled into my tent. For dessert: Vicodin!

The moon rose as I waited to fall asleep. All of a sudden there was an otherworldly-sounding call from a nearby hilltop. I thought it was wolves, but then realized it was elks bugling.

The bugles came periodically from all up and down the valley. One was close enough that I surely would have seen it during the daytime. It was just the sort of thing that might have frightened me—again, Blair Witch Project—but I thought it was beautiful, like some kind of dinosaur call. Here, you really need to hear this. (Imagine it without the tourists, and in the pitch dark, over and over.)

Between the heavy hiking, the late dinner, the hypnotic elk bugles, and the Vicodin, it’s not surprising that I slept better than any night of the trip thus far.

*I learned in Glacier that scientists collect bear fur samples by wrapping trees in barbed wire. How bad-ass are grizzly bears? THEY ENJOY SCRATCHING THEIR BACKS WITH BARBED WIRE.