American Adventure

Wyoming (Hulett)

A special thank you to Freida Dent of Hulett, Wyoming

Starting on August 08, 2002, 12:10:56 PM

I feel I must start out my tour of Hulett at my Aunt's back door. With all the bird seed that she leaves out, it makes for an easy, convenient photo-op. Unfortunately, I sometimes feel a little guilty about capturing these images. It kind of takes all the fun out of taking the pictures when you lure the animals right there to you. That's almost as bad as sitting in a deer stand waiting for the deer to come and take the feed, just before you point the gun down and shoot them. I don't know about you, but not being a hunter myself, I feel that is a pretty sissy way of catching a deer or actually any other animal. You want a sport? You want to show how tough you are? Chase them down on foot and wrestle them to the ground yourself. I dare you, wimp.

I know that the first bird here is a grosbeak and the flower is a morning glory. Then the squirrels have to jump in and make their appearance known as well.

Just a few hundred feet from my Aunt's house, and right through town, flows the Belle Fourche River. From the bridge I could see the kids swimming up stream and there's a shot of one of the many domesticated ducks that hang around along the river banks there.

From Hulett, as well as all over, for at least a hundred miles in every direction, you can easily see the Devil's Tower National Monument. You will be able to see many more pictures of this awesome sight further along in my journey.

Just a few miles out of town the local fire departments were busy fighting a forest fire that had been tormenting them for weeks. Every time they thought they had it under control it would break out and flare up again.

From above town, here's some shots of main street where you can see some of the tents still up from the bike rally. Most of the bikers had left by this time but on Wednesday the town was totally overrun with bikes and bikers.

Being, as it is located right along the path of part of the bike rally tour from Sturgis, Hulett has joined the ranks of all the other local towns and catered to the bikers for a few years now by offering some free roast pork. The bikers came, the vendors came, and the place normally gets quite full of bikers on the Wednesday of the rally and the parties rumble all through the night. This week, however had a change of plans. Just before sunset, a luminous cloud saturated the area and dropped a torrential rain and storm that would rival the one I survived in South Dakota. My Aunt and I bailed into the establishment next to the civic center. When the storm began to destroy the tents around the building the owner ran out in the storm to save them. Standing there for just a moment, really nit wanting to get wet again, I finally decided to go out and help. Running out in the pouring rain I became completely saturated with water within seconds. We secured the area and came back inside, totally drenched.

My aunt and I went on and walked home after the rain subsided. I changed into some dry clothes and got comfortable. Later that evening she got a call from the local campground right around the corner. It had been totally flooded and destroyed by the weather, leaving dozens of bikers cold, wet, and stranded. We went downtown and opened up the civic center for them to crash at. They were all quite grateful and, after they got comfortable and warmed up they soon began to fall asleep and the place sounded like a saw mill with all the snoring. So much so that one gentleman had to put his earplugs in to be able to sleep himself. The next morning my aunt had to open up the center and run them all off so they could start to serve breakfast. She said that it smelled like left-over bikers.

Zoomed in is this shot of the tower ten miles in the distance.

Up on the hill overlooking this small town of 429 they have a nice, new golf course and are busy building a new airport for the town. It looked like a great place for a skydive drop zone to me.

Now for a trip up to the tower