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Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 17:00:34 -0400 Subject: 8/12 - Badlands and Wall Drug
8/12 - We are heading West on 90 from Mitchell South Dakota on our way to "the badlands".
As I closed last night, a strong thunderstorm rolled through. Today it is 20 degrees cooler and the sky is a huge grey blanket as far as we can see.
We have made a change in plans. Instead of going all the way down the West coast to see the San Diego Zoo, we now plan to head East when we get to Northern California. With the time saved, we will be going North from Yellowstone to see Glacier National Park.
Back to the present. It's about noon and we just crossed the Lewis & Clark Memorial Bridge. The country has become mixed fields and rolling grasslands. Places on the hills are black where the wind has worn the grass away and the dirt shows through. As I am writing (glad I learned graffiti), we passed by fields of sunflowers.
There is so much open country it's incredible. Different from anything we have experienced before.
We have had only a sprinkle of rain, but we can see storms passing to the side with sheets of rain falling in the distance.
On the way into the badlands, we stopped at Prairie Homestead South Dakota and visited an original sod house: 3 rooms (not 3 bedrooms). Of course, it had been repaired some over the years, but that was done by cutting more sod from the homestead, so it all appeared very authentic. It made me really appreciate having a hot shower at night. The yard was filled with prairie dog holes, which, of course, had prairie dogs in them. I'll include a few pictures. Then we proceeded directly into the badlands as it started raining.
It seems very ironic to me that we should be visiting the badlands of South Dakota in the rain, but there it is. We stopped at the first outlook and looked around. The pictures don't do the sight justice. All of the hills appeared to be eroded away and all the stripes of color in every hill were at the same level. We then went to the visitor center to make sure what we wanted to do next and check the maps. Then we backtracked a little and climbed one of the shorter trails. Rain was still coming and going, but not hard.
After stopping at a few scenic outlooks, we decided to visit the historic Wall Drug that many people had mentioned to us, since it was only 20 miles away. It was a very interesting town. Population less than 900, and we had been driving through the middle of nowhere, but Wall Drug was packed. Did I mention that there is a motorcycle rally going on? I know I mentioned a bicycle rally in Wisconsin, but we seem to be traveling the same route as a Harley rally, so Wall Drug was full of bikers as well as other folks. A couple of people stopped and asked me about my Visor as I was using it to take pictures, and we had some pleasant conversations (Ben says 300,000 motorcycles according to some people he spoke with).
It stopped raining while we were at Wall and we returned to the badlands. The sun was shining! We stopped at Pinnacle Outlook and took some more pictures and climbed around. Bill said it took a long time for a rock to him bottom when tossed off the outcropping.
Then we decided to drive through the badlands on the way to Mt. Rushmore. We had a few moments of, "are we going the right way?". But we figured it out. We were very happy that we went that way, gravel roads for 50 miles, instead of taking I90, as we got to see a herd of Bison just as we were leaving the badlands and it made the day. The strangest part of the ride was seeing rolling grasslands with cattle on the right and the badlands on the left. It was a fantastic contrast and the sky was wide open and blue overhead.
We drove until 8:45 and made Mt. Rushmore in time for the lighting ceremony. No pictures of that, but we were there. Here are some pictures that we did take. |
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