If you remember what was going on last time (which seeing as it’s been a little more than a year since my post in this series on 2018 West European travel you probably don’t), I had just arrived at a sudden and startling realization.

I had forgotten that Saturday was a day, and had no plans and no reservations. Everything that could be booked for one night in the country of Belgium (on a sunny weekend in the middle of August) was booked.

And that’s why I ended up spending the day in Köln, a place between other places I was visiting anyway.

Hello, friends!

Welcome back to another exciting episode of Go West, Young Lad in which our intrepid narrator, “Steve” makes their way from Pennsylvania to Seattle, alone in a station wagon.

Last time, “Steve” did probably a solid 500 miles of driving in a single day. This time “Steve” decides it’s time for some R&R.

Except, for this “Steve” character, R&R actually means… climbing up a mountain.

Mom, you are welcome to skip reading this one.

Anyone else, read on.

Waking up in the Black Hills, I could already feel the throngs of tourists encroaching.

I opted to skip stopping at Mt. Rushmore, and bought a coffee and bagel in the highly patriotic town of Keystone. Neither were stellar, but they were both adequate insofar as things inside my belly go.

Onward, I drove for two-ish hours into Wyoming, and onto my first destination, a certain famous butte.

What better way to celebrate “Presidents’ Day,” a U.S. Holiday, and apparently a day off from work than to hike up a trail named after a U.S. President?

Little Si was my choice for a first post-COVID hike.

Doing a bunch of hiking, then lazing around ill, and then trying not to push myself too meant that this was the first post-COVID mountain I’d climb, and I’d say it was a good choice.

It was fairly short, fairly moderate (though it has some steep and rocky sections), and.. only fairly crowded on this particular drizzly Saturday in February. I had thought about going elsewhere, but I had hoped the weather conditions would help ensure that the hike would be less crowded.

I think you can imagine the elation and joy I felt when after spending nearly two weeks quarantining in my apartment, I was suddenly able to be in the outside world again.

And so, I felt as though I was seeing my surroundings with fresh eyes again. The city was having moments of glorious sunshine in between fits of drizzliness. The temperature was rising, flowers were blooming. And fate compelled me to check out one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions when I was looking at replacing my increasingly scratched glasses. (Yes, that’s what two years of wiping condensation with my shirt when I entered an indoor space with a mask did to ’em.)

Besides this, of course, I’ve gotten sundry joys from birding and going on a few recent hikes, but those have (or shortly will have) their own posts.

This is my photographic perspective from various corners of the city. If things seem weird… it probably means that I’m experimenting.

No more words, just images.

I made it to the Black Hills of South Dakota. A place that was profound, beautiful, kitschy, and touristy in equal measure. A place that was simply gorgeous.

So, what was happening in the Black Hills in mid-September of 2021?