USA - The Mile High Club

July 27-28

Hello everyone!

I started my great American adventure pretty close to a state capital, and am finishing the 6 week trip in another. This one’s a bit higher up…

Squatting at one mile high - well, technically
not quite, but I'll explain that later

Many tall buildings like so many major US cities 

Denver is situated just outside the Rocky Mountains, a range of mountain ranges that starts in Canada and ends in New Mexico. It is also a long way from Rapid City, where we started our day. About eight hours of travel time to get to the airport, and then more than another hour for me to get to my hostel downtown.

Some...alternative art here

We stopped for lunch in Nebraska, where I sat in a Walmart
watching the penalty shootout of Euro 2025 on their wi-fi

The obvious thing to do from Denver would be to venture into those mountains, specifically Rocky Mountain National Park. However, the last point of a trip like this is where fatigue often sets in, reality needs to be prepared for, and a bit of chill time is appreciated. My ankle still not being 100% also helped me make the decision to instead stay in Denver for the day.

Shame, as the mountains look incredible

Along with Washington, Colorado was the first
state to legalise recreational marijuana in 2012

Denver is quite an expensive city so I also didn’t live it to the max. I didn’t go to the Meow Wolf immersive experience, nor did I spend time in Denver Art Museum. I did walk outside the latter, finding a couple of interesting pieces.

This is "The Yearling" - the horse needed repainting
annually due to the strength of the sun here

This is a dustpan and brush. I
have one at home. Mine isn't art.

I also didn’t take in a game featuring any of Denver’s main sports teams, nor did I quench my thirst in the hot and surprisingly humid city with their famous local beer: Coors.

Denver is one of 12 US cities that has a team in each of the ‘Big 4’ male sports leagues

Coors is made with water from the Rocky Mountains - seemed strange to me that Bud Light was advertised on a higher window

So what did I do with my 24 hours in Denver that didn’t cost me a cent? Quite a few quirky things, actually. We’ll start with the blog title.

Quirky and without any obvious reason, this sign

Denver was chosen as state capital in
a referendum in 1881...by one vote.

Denver is the state capital of Colorado. The city sits quite a way above sea level - it’s the third highest out of the 50 - with some of it sitting 1609 metres above the sea. It sounds better in imperial measures: one mile high. One of the steps up to the Capitol is that exact height. It’s the obvious photo op in the city, even if the step with the writing isn’t actually one mile high.

The floors of the Capitol are made from marble
that comes from...Marble, Colorado.

It was remeasured in 1969, putting 1 mile at the 18th step
(shown above). When measured again in 2003, 1 mile was said to
be the 13th step (not shown above as I didn't notice the brass plaque below).

The area around the golden-domed building is well-maintained, though often populated with people who are taking or have taken drugs. It’s a long way from the original vice that brought people to Colorado in the first place: gold. 

Civic Centre Park

Colorado's Gold Rush was in 1859, about a decade after
a similar movement further west in California

After the gold rush, Denver established itself as a major city. It helps that it is situated in the heart of the continental United States of America, making it a popular transport and industrial hub over time. Art Deco murals from an acclaimed Colorado painter give an insight into the time.

A quote appearing on a board near Denver's Union Station
reads: "Without railroads, Denver would be too dead to bury."

The building itself is off-limits - a few of the paintings are found in the lobby 

With industry comes immigration. There are areas across downtown that evoke memories of citizens and peoples that came to Denver. One example is a mural on the side of a fire station, reminding locals that this used to be a thriving Chinatown until a huge riot in 1880. Across the street is Sakura Square, which houses the bust of Colorado’s governor at the start of WW2, Ralph Carr. He was the only governor in the country to object to an executive order that imprisoned people in America with Japanese ancestry.

The district was known as Hop Alley, which references opium dens

Carr was named Denver Post's "Person of the Century" in 1999

Like many cities across the world, Denver underwent urban renewal in the 1960s. They redesigned the downtown area, knocking down most of the buildings. The one that remained, after protest, was the Daniels and Fisher Tower, a replica of St. Mark’s Bell Tower in Venice, Italy. 

For a brief moment, this was the tallest building west of
the Mississippi River after its construction in 1911

It was originally part of a department store

One of the stranger things that has been added recently is a ‘soundwalk’. The pavement of this one block downtown has some drains that play sounds, such as the gushing of a stream or the tweeting of birds. Very strange if you aren’t expecting it to be there.

As I’ve alluded to, the last place to visit on a long trip like my six-week American adventure can become a bit of a damp squib. Nevertheless, Denver’s downtown had enough quirky elements to keep me entertained on the cheap for a day. 

This is Big Blue Bear, found peering
into Colorado Convention Centre

Adios, los Estados Unidos!

Love you all,

Matt

USA - Devilish Things

July 25-26

Hello everyone!

This is a blog about things that sound bad but are actually very cool. Well, one of them would be incredibly bad if it were still working…

Devil's Tower

Missile at the Delta-09 Minuteman missile site 

Badlands National Park

Having been to the United States of America’s first national park (Yellowstone) and then driven through its first national forest (the nearby Shoshone), it seems logical that we would stop at the country’s first national monument if the chance arose. Below is that monument: Devil’s Tower.

It was made a monument in 1906 by President Roosevelt

The tower is 264 metres (867 feet) tall

We weren’t actually planning to go there. Plan A was to visit the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn that I have mentioned in previous posts. However, this area is being renovated and only open on certain days of the week. Those days didn’t match, therefore we went for plan B.

Definitely not where Battle of Little Bighorn happened

Eastern part of Wyoming

I’m very happy we did. It isn’t human-made, which I would associate with a monument; rather, it was made by our planet’s interior about 50 million years ago. Magma was injected into layers of sedimentary rock, which formed a tower…beneath the earth’s surface. Over time, erosion around it has exposed it in the way that we see it today. Mind-boggling.

The excavation was done by ancient rivers

The scientific name for it is a laccolith

There is another theory, offered by Native American tribes. Their sacred stories tell of a tower growing tall to help people escape bears. One in particular says that some girls were playing in a forest when they heard a bear. It was too far to run home, so they climbed a mound and asked a god for help. The tower rose, the bear became angry and tried to climb, but slid down to the bottom. 

Imagine escaping a bear up this...

There are no longer bears in this region - no need for spray!

When doing this, the claws scratched down the tower (forming the column-like structure) and rocks landed on the bear (creating a fun rock field at the bottom that I would have liked to spend more time exploring).

The columns are often hexagonal, made
over time by cracks from pressure

Beware the bear under there...

When white Americans chanced upon this tower, the locals apparently called it ‘Bear Lodge’. This was mistranslated as ‘Bad Gods’, which is why the name subsequently became the worst of them all: Devil’s Tower.

People leave flags here as reverence

This 300-foot alcove is called The Window

Like the bear, people do try to climb Devil’s Tower. Unlike the bear, they are usually successful. We saw two people ascending. It looks like an incredible challenge but, not for the first time when thinking about Native American culture and history, left me a bit conflicted: if it’s a sacred place for peoples like the Lakota, should people be allowed to clamber all over it? Other countries have banned it, after all.

The youngest ever successful climber was only 6 years old

Something else that should be banned? Firing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs. Doesn’t stop some countries, admittedly, but most countries that possess this weaponry normally refrain from firing or give significant advance notice if it will pass over someone’s airspace. Possessing the strongest military in the world, the United States of course has these, and has for a long time.

At one time there were 1,000 active Minuteman missiles

Back in the days of the Cold War, there was an arms race between them and the Soviet Union that threatened the planet’s destruction. The US developed a missile called Minuteman and hid them around the country, away from populated areas. What better place than the middle of nowhere in South Dakota…

From the time keys were turned to execute a positive launch command, until the missile left the silo, only took about a minute. Hence the name Minuteman.

That glass cover didn’t exist at the time when these were potentially active. Instead, there was a cement, manhole-style cover that the missile could easily blast through. There would have been a fence - trespassing could, and probably would, have been fatal.

Remotely controlled from underground launch control centers miles away from the silos, it offered a hair trigger launch response.

Once again, this stop wasn’t plan A. We had only passed by here - and a bizarre place called Wall Drug where I had the hangover sandwich of my dreams, pictured below - to go on another, optional adventure. If not enough people had wanted to go, we wouldn’t have made the trip east to visit one final national park. Like Devil’s Tower, not one with a particularly pleasant name: Badlands.

A roast beef sandwich. The blob in the middle?
Mashed potato. The brown goo? Meaty gravy.
I repeat, this is a sandwich.

Badlands became a national park in 1978

It’s not saying it’s a bad place to visit; it’s actually a phenomenal place to come to. Rather, Badlands refers to the fact that it is a land that is very difficult to traverse. 

It comes from the Lakota name ‘mako sica’

The park is 244,000 acres in size

They are still difficult to traverse - people get lost in hiking in Badlands every year. It felt very hot - that wasn’t just the continuing dehydration effects from the night before, either. The lack of water in the area would have made it incredibly difficult for those who lived here.

Easy to get lost...unless you're wearing bright colours...

I found water!

My main feeling here was similar to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks in Utah: the place was otherworldly. Like so many other incredible features I’ve seen on this trip, they used to be part of a shallow seabed. When that sea disappeared, geology worked its magic over millions of years and created this.

The Badlands are eroding at one inch per year

The oldest rocks are 75 million years old

There have been otherworldly creatures here, certainly those from far before the time of the humans. No dinosaurs as they lived on land, but the visitor’s centre outlines evidence of things such as the titanothere (has no living ancestors) and the hyracodon (a primitive rhino that was more like a pony). Fossils are often discovered at Badlands due to the relatively fast degree of erosion of softer rock.

Titanotheres are likely to have gone extinct due to climate change

Hyracodons had unusually large heads in
comparison with the rest of their bodies

They do live fossil work in the visitor's centre - this
lady was adding glue in advance to stop her tiny
jackhammer from breaking anything valuable

Some animals still reside in the area. This was a chance for us to get a better look at bighorn sheep and prairie dogs, as well as some distant bison.

Male bighorn sheep in the far distance - you can see the
distinctive curled horns. The video below is of females.

These prairie dogs have a black tip on their tail

A lonely bachelor bison in the distance

Another animal had been spotted the day before going to Devil’s Tower. We hadn’t seen it in more likely places such as Yellowstone, but finally a moose or two came out to play…

Moose live in areas that have cold, snowy winters

Only male moose have antlers

Moose are excellent swimmers

Moose shed their antlers every year

What’s in a name? They can certainly give you a subconscious impression in your mind (part of the Las Vegas strip is actually instead in an unincorporated town called Paradise, for example). I imagine it would be ‘bad’ to be stuck in ‘Badlands’, and it was understandable that previous people saw a bit of Lucifer in Devil’s Tower. But they are very cool places to visit.

Sitting under the tower of the devil

Admiring outselves rather than the stunning Badlands

Trying not to go too close to the edge...

Life at Badlands!

Love you all,

Matt