Selected as District Governor 2013-2014

I'm delighted to have been selected as District Governor for District 1090 for 2013-2014. Joan & I know that we have busy years ahead of us but are looking forward to the opportunity immensely.

As the tale unfolds I'll try and give a feeling about what it all involves.

Way out West (Part 3)

To Scottsbluff, Nebraska and back to Denver

In talking to people we met on our travels to this point, whenever we said we were travelling back through Nebraska we were faced with either a spoken or unspoken – why? It appears that for your average American Nebraska is just not one of those places you would ever choose to go to – the only town most people outside America would know is Omaha, the state capital at the Eastern edge of the state and that I suspect only because Warren Buffett, financial genius, lives there. However, agriculture is clearly a huge part of Nebraska’s economy, with vast circular fields irrigated by a centrally driven watering system.

The Southern end of South Dakota and western end of Nebraska are mostly flat, very flat. On the way at Hot Springs (and guess what founded that town) is a Mammoth site, where what turns out to be a death pit for mammoths is being excavated – the bones being largely left in situ as an exhibit.

Nebraska does have a few tall rock structures, notable among which is Scottsbluff, another National Monument and another important waypoint on the North Platte River for the emigrants along the California, Oregon & Mormon Trails. The imposing height of what looks like an impassable ridge must have been daunting to the migrants – but they found their way through and round.

It was in Scottsbluff that we saw too the ravages of the recession – clear signs of deprivation and downturn – in the almost empty (of shops) strip and larger malls and in the weeds growing through the driveways and car parks as a result of foreclosure or abandonment.

We then made our way back to Denver through the vast agricultural plains of Nebraska and into Colorado. Downtown Denver is worth a stop – tours of the US Mint if you get there early enough in the day and the Art Museum is well laid out and has lots of imaginative interactive stuff to entice in the culturally declined (like your author!).

Lots of photos from the complete trip

Way out West (Part 2)

South Dakota and the Black Hills

And yes, we haven’t got to the main event – South Dakota and the monuments yet! But we’re nearly there. Our route out of Wyoming and into the Black Hills (yes there’s Doris Day with the song – “Take me back to the Black Hills, the Black Hills of Dakota…..”) was to take us right by the Jewel Cave National Monument. Sitting at the edge of the Black Hills this cave complex is reached by a 350ft deep lift and the hour long tour takes you down (and up) several hundred steps. Still being explored the caves are interesting (and inevitably the second longest in the US) but not the most spectacular we’ve ever seen.

And on to Custer. Located at the heart of the Black Hills, Custer (named for the historical general) makes a brilliant place to explore the entire area. We stayed at an idyllic spot – Jake’s B&B (Jake is the resident black and white cat). A little off the beaten track, we could watch the wildlife – chipmunks, herds of deer – as they went about their daily routine largely undisturbed by human life. Custer is also home to the Custer State Park complex. This vast unspoiled landscape remains so because of the vision of two men – President Theodore Rooseveldt who determined that tracts of the US needed to be protected from overdevelopment and 1920’s South Dakota Governor Peter Nordbeck, who plotted the trails and winding roads through the park so that people could enjoy the natural beauty of the scenery and wildlife.

We were recommended to take the Needles & Iron Mountain roads (part of the Peter Nordbeck Scenic Byway) as a long scenic route on our way to Mount Rushmore. The scenery along the way is breathtaking – giant rock formations heaved up out the earth billion of years ago, covered with pine forest, red patches of which show the ravages of the pine beetle killing so many magnificent trees (but making for an attractive colour contrast to the uninitiated eye). Along the way you pass round almost corkscrew turns and through narrow road tunnels, hewn from the rock to create these scenic routes. And then, in the distance, you see the Mount Rushmore monument, its figures proudly gazing across the landscape, and then coming closer seemingly with each turn in the road and at one point framed exactly as you exit one of the tunnels on Iron Mountain road.

Mount Rushmore

Everything we found in the Black Hills was good value and Mount Rushmore is no exception. A $10 parking charge (return visits free for 3 days) is all it takes to view one of the great modern monumental sculptures. I’d never troubled to consider who the four Presidents honoured were and what made them special – visiting the excellent information center changed that – 1st President George Washington who oversaw the creation of the U.S. is on the left (although Jefferson was originally intended to be further left than him) followed by Thomas Jefferson who masterminded the possibility of unification with the Louisiana purchase in the early 1800’s, Abraham Lincoln (far right) who fought to keep the union intact through the Civil War period and Theodore Rooseveldt who cemented the power and position of the U.S. with imaginative projects including the Panama Canal. The sheer scale of the work is awe-inspiring, the vision of the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, a first-generation American of Polish extraction whose patriotism and vision guided the process of sculpture by dynamite through its tens of years of development.

If you return in the evening, the monument is lit, complete with patriotic flag-lowering ceremony, mass recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, singing of the National Anthem and recognition of forces veterans – all very well, but slightly uncomfortable for non-citizens!

The nearest town to Mount Rushmore is the hideously touristy Keystone (yes, probably where the Keystone cops idea originated). The entire raison d’être for modern-day Keystone is the pursuit of the tourist dollar. However, the 1880 train which puffs its way the fifteen miles from Keystone to Hill City using restored rolling stock typical of the period is worth it, a complete getaway from the modern tawdry town it leaves from.

Crazy Horse

And so on to another monumental sculpture, this time still a work in process. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that in most conventional histories of the development of America the native-American gets a raw deal. No longer portrayed as the Red Indians of the Western films, the inconvenient truths of the injustices heaped on the indigenous tribes are generally air-brushed or not so subtly swept under the carpet. Broken promises, treaties ignored, massacres are generally underplayed as unfortunate happenings. Not so at the Crazy Horse Monument. Crazy Horse was chosen as the symbol of the Native American by the elders of the tribes in the 1940’s. It was Crazy Horse who said of the white man – “They promised to take our lands – it was the only of their promises that they kept”. It was Crazy Horse who, alone of the tribal leaders of his time, never signed a treaty with those who invaded and plundered the native-American lands. His early death while at a US Army fort is described differently depending on whose version of history you read. But chosen he was to be an enduring symbol in a Monument to equal or surpass that placed at Mount Rushmore to honour the conquerors. Construction of the monument began in 1948 in the hands of another first generation of Polish extraction Korzcak Ziolkowski. It continues through the work led by seven of his children. It is not supported by Federal funds as Mount Rushmore was, not for want of offering, but for the determination of Korzcak and his family that this will remain a publicly subscribed venture funded only by donations and visitor subscriptions.

As a sight and experience this is one of few that can really deserve the moniker of monumental. The statistics are difficult to comprehend – many million tons of rock removed, so far, a figurehead with a height of 90 feet (large enough to hold all four of the Mount Rushmore heads), and an arm that will stretch 263 feet. We returned to the site twice - a planned 1000 tons blasting was postponed because of the risk of storms and that was an event we couldn’t miss. In the event, the 1000 tons only served to show how much work has been completed and how much will still be needed. When will it be finished – definitely on June 3rd – which year – who knows – not in my lifetime I’m sure – probably not in my children’s lifetime. Is bit worth it – unquestionably, as a sculpture, as an experience and as a lasting reminder of the injustices heaped on the tribes by those who saw them as an inconvenience to be eradicated (much as our exported peoples did to the Aborigines of Australia).

Deadwood

No trip to the Black Hills would be complete without a trip to Deadwood – yes, it’s Doris Day time again – “The Deadwood Stage is coming on down the track…..” We expected another Keystone – touristy and dreadful. But actually it isn’t – and why – well actually it’s all down to two things, one happened in the 1905 and one a whole lot more recently. In 1905 the town of Deadwood was destroyed by fire, but the riches of the surrounding goldmines enabled the town’s leaders to order it rebuilt in stone – and buildings of substance too. The gradual decline of the gold deposits led to a decline in the town also. But a change in South Dakota law enabled the establishment of casinos and yet again prospectors for riches flock to the town, with rather less chance of success. But the gambling profits have enabled the restoration of the historic areas of the town and it’s worth a side visit - we gathered the same cannot be said for the neighbouring town of Lead (pronounced Leed), where there is a gold mine museum and where there are plans to locate a scientific research centre below ground in the old mine workings.

Miscellaneous

If you collect useless information here’s one for you – I defy anyone to see car licence plates from more individual US states in a single area than here. We counted more than 30 states (and a good few Canadian provinces) from where people had driven, in some cases thousands of miles, in what is clearly an American pilgrimage to one of their national Monuments – we know why they do it too!

Lots of photos from the complete trip

Way out West (Part 1)

Introduction

Nothing to do with Rotary, well, only a little and that just tangentially, but just felt the urge to write about the fabulous trip we’ve had through what I guess is the West of the mid-West U.S. We flew into Denver where, waiting for the shuttle bus to the car rental we met up with a Rotarian from Texas on his way to an Alzheimer’s convention (and yes, he did know where he was going he works for an Alzheimer’s charity). We made our way up to Windsor, Colorado, spending the night at the Porter House B&B Inn – very comfortable, but tip for arriving Brits, a chain hotel may be better for the first night, B&B’s tend to have set breakfast times, in this case 8:30 and with the time change you’re bound to be up early so it may not suit. We were out at 6:30 a.m. exploring the locale - Windsor is typical of many small US towns – it has a Main Street, but not a lot else and the original businesses have now been replaced by a mixture of collectables, the inevitable town newspaper, realtors, and cafes whereas the day-to-day stores are now located on the edge of town – actually come to think of it, just look at any UK suburb’s street and you’ll see the same thing.

When we planned the trip our destination was Mount Rushmore and all we planned for the journey to and from Denver was not to do the 400 miles in one day. So from there we planned in a night stop each way and some things to see along the way. Our trip was taking us through Wyoming and having discovered that Douglas would be the natural halfway point we found ourselves unable to book anywhere because the State Fair would be in town, so we had to take what for us seemed like second best – Casper, to which I’ll return in a bit.

Wyoming

Wyoming for those of us of a certain age means one thing – cattle ranches, cowboys and Indians and all those Western films and TV shows of our youth – Bonanza, Lone Ranger and so many more. So taking in Cheyenne was sort of like an unplanned pilgrimage to all those memories. In reality Cheyenne (the State Capital) grew up like so many towns with the advent of the railway in the 1860’s – the passenger station is now a museum and worth a visit, as is taking the trolley ride around the city. We found out lots about Wyoming – now consider this, Wyoming is the tenth largest state by land area, but has the smallest density of population, with only 544,000 residents. Statehood was only earned in 1879 by dint of a radical step – to secure the 30,000 souls needed to qualify as a state Wyoming took the bold and radical step of giving votes to women, some 40 plus years before we did so in the UK. Being the tenth largest state, Wyoming has about 90,000 square miles, which makes about 6 people per square mile. The London Borough of Hillingdon has a population of about half the size of Wyoming – one minor difference though, Hillingdon has an area of only 47 square miles, or 5,300 people per square mile! It doesn’t take a genius to work out the Wyoming has a lot of unpopulated space! And a lot of oil – well actually it used to have a lot of oil, it used to be the oil capital of the US in the 1920’s – most of the large deposits have been worked out but there are little oil wells everywhere still. Oh, and a lot of space in between, with the occasional town of population maybe 150, 200 and you think why? And then it’s clear, there are lots of places that do drilling, service equipment etc. Mustn’t forget coal either – Wyoming produced 450 million tons of coal last year and has some of the biggest open-cast coal mines (which are hideously ugly, but hey there’s plenty of space to lose them in) in the country. Oh, and wind farms – well there’s that space thing again. And the wind and the coal and the oil bring in the taxes that make the state work.

Casper

I said I’d go back to Casper. We stayed just the one night – not realising that Casper is close to being the great junction point of the massive westward migration that took place in the 1840’s to 1870’s. In those times more than half a million people made their way West to the “promised lands” of Oregon and California, some in search of gold, or to Utah along the Mormon Trail escaping persecution, in wagon trains, on horseback, or pushing handcarts on their 4-5 month journey made possible by the opening up of the West through Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase of land from the French – a huge tract of land stretching from Louisiana all the way up through the mid-West to the Canadian border, making possible the eventual unification of what is now the United States. 20,000 died along the way. So many people went and became successful that getting mail there quickly became a priority, leading to the establishment of the Pony Express – which took a letter from West to East in just five days, but wasn’t cheap - $5 for a single letter. Lasting only 18 months, the Pony Express was overtaken by the completion of the Union Pacific railroad which could do the job faster and safer. We learned all this, and much more at the impressive National Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, which had been just an overnight stop for us. Just goes to show how much we don’t know!!

Driving across the wide open spaces of Wyoming is made easy by the lack of populus. Off the interstate highways, the state roads are well maintained, and a 65 mile an hour speed limit means that you will do 65 miles in an hour. That single vehicle way out there in front of you that you thought you’d catch – well 15 or 20 miles later he’s still just as far in front, and you’ve seen no one else going the same way – possibly a few going the other way. Making sure you have filled up is a good idea – the next gas station could be 70 miles away.

The big plus, and something we couldn’t get over, was just how friendly and generous everyone was – from the guy at the Interpretive Trails Center who couldn’t apologise enough that we didn’t qualify for the Senior (or Student) rate to the lady at breakfast in Casper who refused to charge for a full buffet when all one of us had was juice, cereal, yoghourt, pancakes and coffee – that clearly didn’t count as a proper breakfast in her eyes. Oh and the owner of the Subway in the middle of nowhere (actually the junction of two state roads) who wouldn’t let us pay for a second round of cookies when we enjoyed the first so much.

Lots of photos from the complete trip