Tag: https://greatamericanwest.co.uk/

America, Countries

Take your Teddy on an RV tour of the US National Parks

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And inspired by the Great Man himself the drive is on to take your Teddy on an RV tour of the US National Parks this year.

Particularly with the 120th anniversary of the establishment of the first US National Monument hoving into view next year.

Now dinner party bores will tell you that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure you can see from space.

So why then did aliens alight on the Devils Tower monolith in Wyoming in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Teddy’s Trail


Bear necessities: Joe Wiegand as Teddy

Now no president championed the Great American Outdoors more than its 26th, Teddy Roosevelt.

While nobody had his ear more than John Muir, the legendary Scots conservationist.

We heard first hand from the immortal Teddy at IPW, the American Travel Fair, in Chicago.

With the Great Raconteur waxing lyrical about the grand opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library next year in North Dakota.

And alighting on a Scotlander about his own Scottish roots through his mother Martha.

Which mirrors another future NY President though Manhattan Man Teddy was quick to point out Donald Trump is a Queens Man.

Devil of a good time

Rock of ages: Devils Tower in Wyoming

Every June, the Devils Tower closes to rock climbers so that the tribes can celebrate their spiritual practices.

To truly appreciate the Tower, take the 1.3-mile Tower Trail, winding around the base for the best chance to see the rock from all sides.

Devils Tower National Monument is open for visitors year-round, and admission is $25/£19 per vehicle.

The West is best

Out of the Blue: The Denver Blue Bear

RV specialists Journeyscape have picked out The Close Encounters landmark as a topical highlight.

Of its Icons and National Parks of the Great American West by Motorhome.

The 15-day holiday costs from £2,950pp including motorhome rental (but excluding international flights). 

Traditionally, of course, pioneers would reach the Wild West by wagon, stagecoach and through the grand Denver Union Station.

And we’d certainly recommend that as we would flying into Denver International Airport, in the apron of the Rockies.

The open road

Salt of the Earth: Salt Lake City

Your Journeyscape tour will take in five states, your launch pad, Colorado and taking in four of the five states under the Great American West umbrella.

That’ll be Wyoming, Montana and North and South Dakota… you’ll arrange your own private Idaho in your own time.

But for a starter Badlands National Park, Spearfish Canyon, Devils Tower, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park and Salt Lake City ain’t bad, eh?

So take your Teddy on an RV tour of the US National Parks.

 

America, Countries

Mark the 100th anniversary of Mount Rushmore

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Who would bet against one of his acolytes suggesting we mark the 100th anniversary of Mount Rushmore by carving The Donald into the stone?

Of course in these days when everywhere you look you find confirmation bias the 45th and 47th President has been credited.

With wanting to be commemorated in South Dakota stone.

What can’t be faked though is the mad frenetic genius of its creator Gutzon Borglum.

Whose work is all over America and probably under your nose when you’re not aware of it.

As was the case in Texas with his commissioned Monument to Trail Drivers.

In front of the Texas Pioneer and Trail Drivers Memorial Hall next to the Witte Museum in San Antonio.

Stone Mountain on our mind

The South Will Rise: Confederate greats

Now as much as our hero, the son of Danish/American polygamist parents from Utah then in the Idaho Territory, loved the common man.

He lauded great leaders.

Gutzon has his fingerprints in Stone Mountain in Georgia which the South is only too quick.

To share that it precedes and exceeds Mount Rushmore.

On the shoulders of giants: Stonewall Jackson in Virginia

With the surface measuring 3 acres, larger than a football field and Mount Rushmore.

With the carving of General Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson towering 400ft and measuring 90 by 190ft.

And recessed 42ft into the mountain, with the deepest point of the carving at Lee’s elbow, 12ft to the mountain’s surface.

America’s Fab Four

Prez guys: And get your selfie

For the purposes though of our paen here to Mount Rushmore the impetuous Gutzon fell out with the planners after completing Lee’s head.

And he went off to mastermind the North project in South Dakota, much like Lee had done himself when he pledged to the South.

All of which leads us to why we’re celebrating Gutzon this year in the Great American West.

Because it’s 100 years since the flag ceremony to confirm the dedication of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills as a national monument.

Carve me in stone: With the Donald

With the carving work officially beginning less than two years later.

With the project, often involving dynamite.

Needing almost 400 people to bring the rocky sculptures into being.

Mount Rushmore, of course, pays tribute to four legendary presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Hail to the chiefs

One I made earlier: At the Washington Memorial in DC

But for those not on the mountain, well, they weren’t left out entirely.

And just up the road in Rapid City there are 44 American leaders commemorated.

In life-sized bronze statues are dotted throughout the city.

Earning it the nickname of ‘the City of Presidents’.

America As You Like It offers a 14-night ‘Rocky Mountain Western Heritage ‘ trip.

From £1,570 pp, including flights, one-night hotel accommodation, and 13 nights’ fully inclusive RV rental .

So you can carve it in your heart and mark the 100th anniversary of Mount Rushmore.

 

 

 

 

 
America, Countries

Buffalo Bill and the move to Cody Yellowstone, Wyoming

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The biggest fight of them all was over his final resting place so a delve into Buffalo Bill and the move to Cody Yellowstone, Wyoming.

Because if you believe the Wyomingans’ version of the story the Great Man does not reside in Lookout Mountain, near Denver in Colorado.

Pick your story: At Lookout Mountain

But in his hometown of Cody Yellowstone.

And that the Coloradans buried a vagrant there and claimed it was Bill, while they have the real man.

Bill and his pals

Ride ’em: Channeling my Buffalo Bill

To cover our bases though, and because his legend has endured from the days his Rough Riders rode into my own hometown of Glasgow I paid homage on our Coloradan trip.

And learned of Buffalo Bill and the move to Cody Yellowstone, Wyoming.

Big Chief: Sitting Bull

And learned of his friendship with Sitting Bull, Annie Oakley and how he had the great and good of the Old and New Worlds eating out of his hand.

So it will come as little surprise to you then that he brought Teddy Roosevelt and the Prince of Monaco to Cody’s Hunting Lodge… there’s a party.

Tip your hat: To Buffalo Bill

Of course you can channel your inner Bill in the Great American West in Pahaska Teepee.

Go riding (June to August) and even stay in the modern cabin-style rooms

And eat and drink like a cowboy (well, maybe a wee bit higher-end) in their full service bar and restaurant.

Life’s a Butch

Can you handle me? Butch Cassidy

Of course not every cowboy sought the grandstand because, of course, they were hiding out from the law.

And Wild West fans and tourists will lap up the Old Trail Town/Museum of the Old West.

It’s an enclave of 27 authentic frontier buildings, including one used by Butch Cassidy and his Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.

Leaving on a jet plane: United

Now our Wild West heroes used horses, stagecoaches, trains, and in Bill’s case the ship to get about.

You, of course, can get out to Cody by big bird with United Airlines, a 13hr 19mins trip from London, via Denver, and into Bill’s birthplace from €1,055pp.

 

 

 

 

America, Countries

Crazy Horse is…

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Now bear with us but two seemingly unconnected things came onto my radar this week, Donny Osmond and a Lakota mountain carving…. Crazy Horse is…

Crazy Horse is rightly memorialised in South Dakota and this year they will celebrate 75 years of the in-progress carving.

And doesn’t the great chief look well on it.

Where everything is: The park

As for Donny, well, the teenage heartthrob of the Seventies is returning to British shores 50 years after wowing audiences here.

When he was diverted through Glasgow Airport because Heathrow Airport wouldn’t allow him to land there.

After his teeny army brought down a balcony in their ardour to see their hero.

Osmonds standard

You Crazy Horse: Donny and The Osmonds

Crazy Horses was of course one of The Osmonds standards.

As the buffalos once did as we found out in Denver and on our old Wild West adventure in Colorado.

Going Native: In Colorado

Although not written about the Lakota legend but rather the articulated lorries stampeding all in their path.

And I think you’d agree Crazy Horse, of Native American lore, has a far more lyrical tone to it.

It’s Crazy to think too that his carving will be big enough to include the faces of the Mount Rushmore four Presidents in his visage.

Pow wow

Cool waters: At the Crazy Horse Memorial Park

South Dakota is home to nine tribes of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota and doubtless other Otas.

Our friends at Great American West encourage us to take in the artists, songwriters and dancers.

Crazy Horse Memorial also offers the chance to hike to the arm of the carving during the biannual Volksmarch event.

Great American West also suggests we tie in our visit to South Dakota with a pow wow.

The Sisseton Wahpeton Wacipi is the second-oldest in the country, celebrating its 155th anniversary in July.

Like a native

Head of the tribe: South Dakota

South Dakota is also home to the annual Black Hills Pow wow, one of the premier American Indian cultural events in the US.

Welcoming thousands of dancers every October.

Proud voice: A Native American woman

It also features parades, Lakota archery, an art show and live music.

So if all tracks this year lead to Crazy Horse Memorial then how do you get there?

Well, it’s in the Black Hills of the south west of the state.

How to get there

Gather the tribes: Pow Wow

The entrance along US Highway 16/385 (the Crazy Horse Memorial Highway) is nind miles south of Hill City, SD.

And four miles north of Custer, SD.

Crazy Horse Memorial is 17 miles southwest of Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Around 45 minutes from the Rapid City Regional Airport.

And that’s worth pencilling into your diary because that’s what Crazy Horse is…

 

 

America, Countries, Culture

America The Old Faithful

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It’s one of my go-to countries where I always feel right at home… America The Old Faithful.

It’s the land of the young and the hopeful, and those in their golden years.

Yes the best old geezers… and I’m not talking Joe Biden or Donald Trump either.

No, these are the old geezers of The Great American West, chief among them Old Faithful.

Old geezers

Whoosh: The Old Faithful

The geezer in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming erupts every 44 minutes to two hours, rather less frequently than the Scary One. 

And it is known to spew  3,700 to 8,400 gallons of boiling water to a height of 106 to 185ft feet lasting from a minute and half to five minutes.

Wyoming lays claim to most of the 3,500sq mile Yellowstone Park, while Montana and Idaho also own some of it.

And much of it is covered by the Father of the National Parks Scot John Muir, who hails from just along the road from us here in Dunbar, East Lothian. 

Wyoming’s footprint on Yellowstone is undeniable but more contentious is their ownership of Buffalo Bill.

Fits the Bill

Buffalo Bill: Rest in peace

A good old Wild West row has brewed ever since William Cody died in 1917 in Denver, Colorado.

The Coloradans make a big thing, as you would, of that and any visitor to Denver should check out The Buffalo Bill Grave and Museum on Lookout Mountain. 

Thing is though that the good people of Wyoming claim Bill for themselves and insist that it is a vagrant who rests for eternity in Colorado.

And they celebrate the superstar cowboy in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

We’ll maybe leave that to Wyoming and Colorado to fight over and just be grateful that it’s double bubble. 

Buffalo Bill, of course, was a global star of his time on account of his touring Rough Riders which included one Sitting Bull.

Little Big Horn

Standing: Chief Sitting Bull

And you can see where he and Crazy Horse had their greatest triumph in Little Big Horn, across the border in Montana.

Now if you have a middling or less knowledge of the Mid West don’t beat yourself up over it… as even American History students are always learning.

I don’t know where Ted Ransen is now but  I hope he’s on a ranch.

Because he knocked the narrow-minded Scottishness out of me when he told me that if I didn’t know the capital of North Dakota then how should I expect Americans to know the capital of Scotland.

You don’t forget things like this.. it’s Bismarck.

And finally the US is the gift that keeps on giving and you can always rely on America The Old Faithful.