8:50AM Leaving the Super 8 in Cheyenne, presently our favorite new town. It’s crisp and cold and sunny. We happily anticipate another day on the road. Wonder if happy anticipation will be with us all the way to Minnesota? Now we have some miles to go at the western edge of the Great Plains before we reach our Black Hills destination.

In The Great Plains Ian Frazier focuses on the Plains tribal history, the presence of Native Americans long before I started driving back and forth and seeing the ghosts of the people and ponies and buffalo, imagining how it must have been. I do love this country, geography at its emptiest, history at its richest.

California girl Teresa is astounded. There are more people in her LA neighborhood than all of Wyoming. She’s experiencing the sheer pleasure of driving these lonely roads…that sense of absolute freedom.

10:30AM We’ve driven as far as Torrington, stoked by our Cheyenne Starbucks’ lattes and cakes. Oh Brother is our sound track again this morning. For me these endless plains and sky are the background to evaluating life and ideas and planning new ventures. Even with a companion and music I can turn on my prairie thinking mindset.

Up toward Lusk the hills barely show up but it’s no longer so flat, a prelude to the Black Hills. There are real ranches here. Like in Green Grass of Wyoming, the third book in the trilogy, following My Friend Flicka and Thunderhead. As a young girl I was obsessed with the family, Nell and Rob and their young son, Ken, who was probably my first crush. I walked up and down the lane leading from my house to where the gravel road began, telling myself stories about MY ranch in Wyoming. Lot of horses and a big ranch house and a boy like Ken.

Up and down the lane, telling my stories. Now my granddaughter is driving me through my stories.

Now at 8:00PM we’re all cozy in our next Super 8 in Keystone, South Dakota. Tired. A wonderful afternoon at the Crazy Horse Memorial Park. More about that in the morning as I have a little work to do tonight. Why can’t things ever be totally tied up at work? Rhetorical question. Until tomorrow and Crazy Horse.  (May 21, 2013)