The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

I had a great evening yesterday at a Western style saloon in Keystone, SD with good country music and some rather feeble attempts at period raunchiness. The waitresses, despite being clad in risqué outfits and red garters, managed still to radiate down-home innocence. They are probably all solid churchgoers. Still, they were politely attentive at serving drinks, which was all I was looking for. Four margaritas slipped down very pleasantly as I tapped my feet to the Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and (appropriately, given my tipple) Jimmy Buffett covers. The other clientèle consisted of a couple of chaps from Nebraska trying to get off with three local girls and elderly “regulars” who were disturbingly good dancers.

I really liked South Dakota. The Black Hills National Park is beautiful and I loved driving through it this morning (apart from a worrying few minutes wondering if the hail bouncing off the car was of the “damaging” variety). The forest roads were great fun, even though the weather was atrocious.

I took an early lunch break in the pouring rain at an attraction called the “Boondocks”. It’s a little tourism complex themed around the 1950s with a period diner, several old cars and the quirkiest little gift shop I ever saw. I broke my “no desserts” rule finally to find out what a “malt” is. It seems to be just a thicker than usual milk shake flavoured with stuff that could more usefully have been made into Scotch. Delicious, but very fattening. I liked it but suspect my first will also have to be my last.

Then it was on to Deadwood, another little former frontier town trying to live on its past infamies. Unlike Dodge City, which was keen to point out how respectable it has been for so long, Deadwood’s tourism gurus have persuaded it to claim that it is still a wild town. Hmm. It obtained special permission from the state to have limited stake gambling in order to promote its tourism, but it seemed respectable enough to me. Modern Americans – at least out in the rural parts – don’t seem to “do” decadence very well, as witness the saloon girls in Keystone. Or maybe I am just not hitting the right night spots. Deadwood did have quite a good museum, however, with displays about Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and other local luminaries, as well as more serious stuff like Native American artefacts.

I didn’t do North Dakota justice. I am sure, from the little I saw of it, that it’s a beautiful state too, but I stuck firmly to my plan just to clip a corner of it on my way to Montana. It was one of the adjustments I had to make to get my originally-planned route down from 20,000+ miles to about 14,000. The longer route would have meant a break to service the car and replace tyres. I did stop to take a picture of Speranza with a North Dakotan “butte” behind her, which I think is one of the best of her so far. I apologise particularly to my North Dakota reader who invited me to meet him upstate. I was just too far over my miles budget to do it. I would have loved to, but I couldn’t. Email me your address and I will mail you a mug as the failure was entirely mine.

Just when I thought my fantasy home in America would definitely be in North Dakota, I arrived in Montana. I am not very far in yet, but I am impressed. Sadly, it’s no longer true that it’s the state without speed limits. That all ended in the 90’s (although various Americans I have chatted to en route have not heard this news so it’s as well I checked). I progressed well however, on good roads with spectacular views. They would have been even better if it were not pouring with rain the whole way to my overnight stop in Miles City.

Speranza is booked into the Ferrari dealers in Vancouver next Monday so they can confirm the reason for the spurious “engine management failure” warning light and, I hope, make it go away. She continues to perform beautifully, is running cool and delivering better fuel economy than I expected. That may be because I am adapting my driving style to American norms, however. The trip computer never promised me 340 miles on a small tank of fuel in Europe, as it did when I filled up today.

All this clean living is getting to me – and not just in terms of my driving style. I am getting up earlier, have stopped swearing and am hitting the hay much earlier than I did back home. I am planning a particularly early start tomorrow to execute an ambitious plan to “do” both the Little Bighorn and Yellowstone in one long drive through Montana and Wyoming, ending back in Montana at West Yellowstone. I have so far committed to it as to book my hotel on a non-refundable basis, so let’s hope it all works.