We've been advised to take highway 2 through "The SandHill country" so that's what we'll do.  It's still sheeting down with rain and the highway cuts through wide open country, huge corn fields, apparently endless stretch away in every direction.  We pass through the beutifully named Wahoo, Rising city takes all of 30 seconds to pass through as does Custer.  We've now arrived in Broken Bow and the Arrow motel.

It's such a wondeful building, all mahogany coloured, smoky, it has a cigar lounge and pub as well as a grill room.  All the rooms are "suites", Kitchenette, lounge, Bed and bath it really is fantastically homely.  On top of all this they have a free guests laundry!!  We sit here stark naked while everything we have with us revolves slowly in the tub downstairs....just a 40 minute cycle between us and the bar. 

Down to the bar and apart from half height stable doors we could be in any dodgy 50s western.  People leave 4 trails on the floors they walk in, two feet plus two knuckles.  Back in the room we enjoy a couple of micro meals and veg in front of the TV, something we've not done for weeks.

First thing we're down for breakfast, the obligatory suasage and "fixin's".  We swerve around the scone with white gravy and stick with a bagel or some such then back to the room to pack.  Down in the reception area, all cowboy pictures, wood panelling, spurs, Kim goes across the road to the lot to pick up the car, as she opens the outer door a flurry of snow wheels up the street, by the time we're packing the stuff in the boot the snow is falling quite heavily.  We buckle up and set out toward Alliance.

The drive across the Sandhills is pretty extraordinary.  The sandhiils themselves are undulating dunes which stretch to the horizon in every direction.  They are carpetted with wild flowers and low growing shrubs.  In their fall colours now it's like being in a huge paint pallette that someone is using to colour a perfect Autumnal landscape.  Fiery reds, blacks, bright greens, silvers huge swatches of colour.  As we get deeper into the snow storm all of the dunes and ridges become dusted with snow, the apparently endless ribbon of road stretches away into the distance lined by telegraph poles each blanketed deep in snow on the windward side.

We  pass through the odd little town ship, nothing more than a gas station/bar/shop/coffee outlet and the obligatory 4 churches. One such is Hyannis where we stop off for coffees and a break from the road.  It's ridiculously remote but a steady stream of visitors come clumping in out of the snow, all cowboy hats and oil skins, stomping the snow off huge boots, thick gloves, blowing steaming breath onto cold hands while the coffee is poured.  Kim and I pull our T-shirts down and step back out into the blizzard.

Alliance is a bit of a disapointment, there is nothing there whatsoever except a busy railhead which means that motel prices are through the roof.  We refuse to pay a resort/two pools/all meals included/free bar/mini bar in room price for what is a cold crap hole with absolutely nothing around it and a breakfast of scones and white grease.  We drive on to Chadron, another small town with the huge benefit tat the hotel prices match the setting and there's a bar next to the motel.

In the morning the views from our little motel in Chadron are stunning as the sun comes up over the hills, lighting all of yesterdays snowfall carpetting the sandhills and occasional stands of Pine trees.  We spend a portion of the morning's drive singing Christmas hits so seasonal is the outlook.

The idea is to stop off at Hot Springs on our way toward Keystone where we can spend some time in the National Forest.  At Hotsprings is a 140,000 year old sink hole. 

It seems that a huge number of animals, most notably Mammoth and Giant Short Faced bears(Cute name but stood in excess of 15 foot and was a formidable predator)  They've already discovered around 60 Mammoth in the first 20 odd feet of excavation and another 40 odd feet remain.  It seems the animals were drawn by the warm spring water and foliage this fiostered, slipped into t6he water and the surrounding clay made it impossible for the creatures to get out. It's really quite a spectacle and the guided tour covering the recovery process and illustrating the petrified remains is really quite something.

There's a beautiful scenic drive into the b lackhills and toward mount rushmore, through Custer county.  We pass into South Dakota at Buffalo Pass and we're into a land of winding mountain trails, the continents largest wild herd of Bison, huge tracts of open prairie land.  It makes for a stunning trip as we make our way toward the tiny town of Keystone.

In town we get the motel deal of the trip so far.  For a princely $47 we get a small kitchenette and diner bathroon and bedroom which contains a whirlpool spa bige enough for us both to swim in, outside a small balcony looks out onto mainstreet, across the road forest, moutains and a view of mount rushmore.

Up bright and breezy for brekky before heading up to Mount Rushmore.  Oh my! we've been fortunate and seen many amazing sights around the world, Rushmore is way up there! what a magnificent place it is.  The monument is simply staggering and the story of the construction is amazing.

From here we go to the Crazy Horse monument.  Under construction for something like 4 times as long as it took to complete Rushmore, this place has the air of something that will never be completed.  They've refused public money and the aims of the project here are lofty and worthy but I have to say it's tough to discern much difference between the photos of the monument in 2010 and today.  We're kept a disapointingly long way from what we're told is an "active site" but can't see much activity.  The monument for all of that looks magnificent. The rest of the day we spend driving around the magnificent black hills and out to the thriving art community at Hill City.  It's a stunning area and you can't help thinking you could spend a month here and not do it justice.

After an evening in the hot tub with some kit kat and bourbon we're up and energised for the drive to deadwood. All starts beautifully, more wonderfrul forest and mountain views, amazing lakelands, pretty much every corner reveals another breathtaking vista.  The snow kicks in around 12:00, in an hour or so we're into a full blizzard, by the time we get to deadwood the snow is thick on the ground and clogging the windscreen wipers.

In Deadwood there's a songwriting convention.  Lovely, plenty of live music, downside being all the motels have tripled their rates and we have to drive to one place which is a complete shithole but within budget.  We can't face staying there and walk up to the Silverado Franklin Hotel and Gambling House.  The place is god knows how old, creaks at every floor board, has ceilings 10 foot tall, we have huge sash windows looking along mainstreet and up to the Moriah Cemetery  perched atop the mountain that over looks deadwood gulch.  The room is double budget tonite (cause the songwriters are in town) but half for the next two nights because deadwood is virtually actually dead at this time of year.

I have a cowboy hat.  Not the $200 stetson that graces the heads of cowpokes out here when they ride into town to shoot up the sherrif (sorry!) but a foldable, genuine leather, Minnionka hat from Lone Pine near Death Valley.  For the last 20 years or so I have carried it around the world with me and used it to keep the sun off of my delicate features.  Not once has it occurred to me to wear it in inclement weather.....until tonite.

Kim and I are half way down the quadruple width stairs which lead from our room to the gaming floor and entrance lobby of the Franklin Silverado Steak, Gaming and Lodging House and discussing how we can negotiate the teeming blizzard outside with nothing more than a half size umbrella purchased in Kuala Lumpur that grows more unreliable every day in that (much like my penis) it takes 10 minutes of complex manipulation and brute force to get the bloody thing up, and 15 minutes of whacking against a wall accompanied by dockyard style swearing to get the damn thing down again so that we can enter public areas.

"What about my hat?" I say

No sooner said than I'm back up the quadruple width stairs and back down again with my foldable hat firmly in my grasp.  Fact is when not in foreign climes I always feel a bit of a dick wearing a cowboy hat. Here on the other hand, particularely in the heavy snow more people are wearing cowboy hats than not, at last my chance to be an "Ornery critter"!

To exit the Franklin Silverado Steak, Gaming and Lodging House we need to hit the gaming floor which is populated with countless slots and half a dozen black jack tables and turn left.  From the right however comes the sound of a few exploratory chords and sounds of someone tuning a guitar.............. "a songwriter!!"  Let's check it out.

On the stage are seated three musicians, they are playing their songs in "rounds".  One sings and plays while the other two listen with the audience, then it's someone elses turn and so it goes for an hour or so.  Two guys flank a young woman, she's tuning her guitar, her head laying against the body of the instrument the better to hear what she's doing.  The two guys are maybe late 50s early sixties, long haired, bearded, stetsoned in that "man of the mountain\serious artiste" kind of way, they stare off into space with what I initially take to be a contemplative air, preparitory to listening to some deep, beautiful music, but soon learn is a "I wish the fuck I was anywhere else than here right now" kind of wistfulness.

The girl starts singing, why has nobody told her? she doesn't so much hold a note as juggle it, like a slippery fish, fresh from the stream, squirming from hand to hand.  She is to singing what I am to carpentry. 

Carpentry has always eluded me. At school my carpentry projects ended up as little more than sculptures moulded from a paste made from Gloy wood glue and sawdust such was my inability to saw a straight line.  In the summer terms, when returning to my project I'd often find it resembling a puddle of what I assume beaver dairoeah must look like where the days heat had melted it. 

To this day when the annual "sawing the bottom three inches off of the trunk of our Christmas tree" looms around, Kim punches in the first two "9"s of the emergency services and stands finger poised over the last 9 until I have safely completed the project.  Ordinarily the "sawing of the bottom three inches off the tree" ends with me laying on the couch, a cold flannel on my head, while blood spurts rythmically from some wound or other.  In my defence, such is my hatred of carpentry that I won't attempt it and therefore we'd never have a decent saw in the house.  I still have a star shaped scar on my forehead from the year when I attempted the "sawing of the bottom three inches of off the Christmas tree" using a plasterers trowel and a lump hammer, and we won't go into the year when I fused all of the electric to the Close where we live by trying to use an electric carving knife.

When I first got a guitar it came with a set of pitch pipes to tune it to.  My Dad to his eternal delight found that when he blew the note for the D string, my dog, Skipper would run from wherever he was in the house, sit in front of Dad, put his head back and Howwwwwllll!.  I can still see them, Dad in his fireside chair, blowing the pitch pipes, Skipper silhoueted against the glow in the hearth, head back wailing................Thank fuck they invented television!

Anyway this girl is howling away, much like skipper, with the skill that I display in the cutting off of the bottom three in.....you get the picture. Her two fellow songwriters stare off into space, presumably, mentally in the "happy place" my dentist advises me to visit as he approaches me with the drill.  Kim and I have managed to get to the middle of the room.  I elbow her sharply, and gesture to the exit with my eyes.  We do that "Look, we think you're really good but I'm a doctor and I need to do a spleen transplant" or, "our daughter has just gone into labour otherwise we'd love to stay" type exit.  As I get to the door way I glance back, I catch the eye of one of the old guys on stage, he has a "Please, dear god, take me with you" look of despair on his face.

At the door of the Franklin Silverado Steak, Gaming and Lodging house, Kim wrestles the umbrella erect and I pop my stetson on with a "just my everyday hat" air and prepare to mosey on down the boardwalk.  We're going to Wild Bills Bar and steak house.  The very place where Wild Bill, was shot in the back of the head while holding 8s and aces (the deadman's hand) in a card game.  I hunker down keeping my hat into the blizzard in what I hope appears a practiced way, while trying not to catch my reflection in any of the shop windows.  I feel I should look like someone from "Bonanza" or "The Virginian" but fear I look like Deputy Dawg's side kick, Musky. Kim marches along resolutely, collecting eyeballs on the little spikes that the inventer of the umbrella thoughtfully left poking put beyond the canopy.

We go into the bar, flurries of snow all around us, Kim appears to be trying to force two large, live octopuses into a milk bottle as she tries to force the umbrella down into it's "Handy pocket sized cover"  She's approaching the "throwing it to the floor and giving it a good kicking"...... "Not so fucking hard now are you?....eh?....eh? stage.

I take my stetson off and bang the snow off of it against my legs with what I hope is an "I've been a-ridin' the range all day, digging calves out of snow drifts and carrying them on my saddle pommel back to the warmth and safety of the barn" air.

The barmaid says.....

"Howdy stanger, what can I git ya?"

"Well, you can get me a slice of bread cos you just melted me like butter" I said.

Actually that, of course is what I now wish I had said.  What I did say was....

"Do you have any Indian Pale Ale?"

Above the door at Sallon no10 is purportedly the actual chair that Wild Bill was sitting in when muderously shot by the vile assassin.  All around the bar is memorabilia and paraphenalia, death masks of Bill, Calamity Jane and all sorts are here, huge moose heads, deer heads, bears, Bison etc are everywhere, the floor is thick with sawdust and everything is lit with an orange glow, as if by candle light.  It's a ridiculously atmospheric place and we enjoy a couple of beers before heading upstairs to the steak house where we get a Ribeye approximately the size of Kent for Dinner.

It's been such an amazing day, what with the drive, the huge blizzard, now relaxed, we treat ourselves to a bottle of wine (You may not believe us but the first for some weeks!) When we head downstairs we're greeted with a jam packed bar area facing a stage ion which there are 4 guitarist\singers, again singing in rounds.  This lot are all quite something, I read up on them all the following day and all have had success in Nashville placing songs on hit country albums.  It's a wonderful hour or so listening to these two guys and two girls singing and playing beautifully.

Back up the street through the snow to the Silverado Franklin, Steak, Gambling and Lodging house.  The quadruple width stairs to the lodging section is just in front of us, but, we, just, can't, seem, to, make it, past the little stair to the left going down to the steak hiouse and LOUNGE.  We'll just take a peek.  What a wondeful bar, all mahogany and cigar smoke stained wood and scarlet lamp shades.  There's a lovely couple at the bar with whom we have a few drinks and then we wend our way up the little stair. On the gambling floor, a turn to the right takes us to the quadruple width stairs leading up to the lodgings, to the left, the doors out to the snow and back to Wild Bills where live music is due to start in 15 minutes........

OK we may have lost a day hereabouts.  We walked the lengthy and breadth of downtown, nursing hangovers looking onto the Indian art shops and galleries that line the satreet.  WQe treat ourselves to some comfort grub in the Gold Dust Casino, and a hair of the dog in Saloon 10 before an early night and start to the next day when we'll attempt Mount Moriah and boot hill.

It really is a clamber!  From our room we face mainstreet backed by a cliff which rises to pine clad hills.  By crooking our knecks we can see, almost vertically above us the stars and satripes which fly 24\7 at the Moriah cemetery.  It's a lung bursting climb on ice in freezing temperatures but we get there and find our way to Calamity's and Wild Bills last resting places, we take in the view over Deadwood Gulch, straight down into our hotel room window.  A family of deer, beautiful and golden coloured wander among the trees, breath white in the clear morning air, above us a featureless blue sky, definately a "good to be alive" Morning.

We really enjoyed our stay in Deadwood and indeed South Dakota and the black hills. It's true to say we had no idea what we would find here other than an area of the US we hadn't visited before.  Ruggedly beautiful, we've fallen hopelessly in love with the place but tomorrow, it's off to Wyoming.....See you there?

We've been trying to time our arrival in Yellowstone and surrounding area with a period of beautiful weather that has been heavily trailed on the weather channels for the last week or so.  Right on cue the weather changed yesterday, unbroken blue skies and a temperature rising into the late 60s saw a serious melt.  Today as we load our bags out of the hotel and into the boot of the car it's a stunning day.

A feature when crossing most state borders is your arrival at a welcome centre.  Wyoming is no exception unless in the quality of the welcome.  Here it's just amazing!  A beautiful building, designed and constructed to minimise it's impact on the staggering scenery, endless rolling prairie in all directions.  It's sleek, all glass and curved timber, a stunning sculpture of a cougar, descending a mountain face graces the outside.  As we cross the parking lot the sun is hot on our backs, the warmest breeze blows across the hilltop bringing the scent of wild herbs.

Inside a huge computer allows you to tap on screen to see filmed examples of local crafts, history, geology, food, music, culture.  Further in, by the free coffee and cookies, a life size covered wagon and more displays detailing the exploits of early settlers.  A tepee and diarama houses information on the Indian tribes who called this home, the buffalo and it's shameful near extinction as means to drive the tribes with famine from their ancestral land, and finally a full sized model horse, with western saddle and a number of cowboy hats in which you can pose and take pictures.  It puts the graffitti covered crap house at southsea to shame that's for sure.  Kim leaps into the saddle to pose for pictures and get's off the horse with a bow legged gait which doesn't bode well for my chances tonite.