It’s all about the grade
June 18, 2008 by spinittravelIn last week’s column our intrepid travellers redefined “steep” when they encountered California gas prices of $4.39 a gallon. As their travels continued back east, “steep” was redefined again, but this time by the South Dakota terrain.
As you may recall, my friends Eadi and Pick Zetty were heading cross country by motorcycle for a wedding in California. Our friend Paul Pressy was following along in his car and agreed to share some of their travel experiences as they made their way to the west coast and back to Pennsylvania.
The South Dakota portion of the trip was on the way home. Venturing into the Black Hills to see Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse Mountain, it appeared as if weather would be their biggest problem, as Paul Pressy wrote:
“We have traveled over 4,270 miles to a point we call our midpoint. It’s time to head home. We will stop in the Badlands in South Dakota and then head home. Our travel stories will be changing to weather conditions from today on, seems a lot of flooding and tornados are all around us,” Paul wrote of the journey out of Sturgis.
“It was cold, lows in the high 40’s and then started showing threats of rain. By the time we got to Mount Rushmore we had some very light rain; then on to Crazy Horse Mountain.”

Well, it ends up the highlight of this leg of the trip wasn’t the weather, or the massive sculptures carved from the mountains, but the road itself. Being from southwestern Pennsylvania, where homes are built on grades engineers wouldn’t recommend for parking cars, my friends are used to steep grades. These are people who regularly travel Route 40 from the Summit to Uniontown which is posted as a dangerous mountain, with a big, red sign warning truckers to stop to test their brakes.
“When leaving Crazy Horse Mountain, we came to what we thought was a steep hill to go down of 10% grade, then the next one was 15% grade, both about 2 miles long. Keep in mind that the Summit on Route 40 is 7% grade; then when you got to the bottom is was curved to the left then the right,” Paul wrote.
Well, they made it to the bottom of both hills without burning their brakes or sliding over a cliff, visited a prairie homestead, passed John Wayne’s birthplace in Iowa, and are now back home without incident after 16 days on the road.

“We highly recommend a road trip to see the country. But you must get off the interstates, the best sites are off the beaten paths. What a beautiful country we live in, I would never want to fly over and miss so much,” wrote Eadi Zetty at the end of the trip.
For more on the Crazy Horse Memorial www.crazyhorsememorial.org. Information about homesteading is available at www.prairiehomestead.com. Info on the John Wayne birthplace is available at www.johnwaynebirthplace.org.
Share your travel experiences and photos with me by emailing Chris@howyouspinit.com.







