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Published: June 20th 2007
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We woke up early to get a jump on the
Badlands. We ate the continental breakfast and hung out in the lobby for a little while. After breakfast we packed up the car once again and headed for the Badlands. All I can say is WOW. The pictures don’t really show how beautiful this place really is. We got there and were just in awe. The badlands stretched for as far as the eye could see. They were called the Badlands because back in the days of exploration, they were the Bad lands to cross. I could definitely see why. It was so hot and very desert like. There were many different view points that you could stop your car along the highway and get out to look at the view. We did this a basically every point. It took us about 3 hours to go 40 miles. It was amazing. There were a lot of signs warning us of the Rattlesnakes, but luckily we didn’t see any! The road through
Badlands National Park ended up in
Wall, South Dakota. We had been seeing the many signs for
Wall Drug since
Worthington, Minnesota where we saw the sign that said
Only 355 miles to Wall Drug. Other signs that we saw were Wall Drug spells FUN!, in
Luverne, Minnesota we saw one that said, Wall Drug- a must see, Coffee 5cents since 1913, and finally, but certainly not the last that we saw, Wall Drug, this sign is in Kenya, Africa. The town of
Wall was a complete tourist trap. The reason that it is so famous is because of the signs that they have on the side of the roads leading up to it, as well as the signs that are on the Underground in London, in the desert in Africa, among other places. The people that started Wall Drug decided to advertise that they had free ice water for travelers. This turned into a very touristy place in a state that doesn’t have much else. After Wall we headed to
Mount Rushmore. Both Lindsey and I agreed that it was nothing like we pictured. The mountain itself looked exactly like I had imagined, but the area surrounding it looked nothing like we would have thought. We walked through the trails and got lots of nice pictures of the monument. We heard many of the tour guides talking and
the most interesting fact that I heard was that originally Washington was not planned to be the president farthest left in the monument. They began work carving Lincoln in the space that is now blank next to Washington, but there were too many cracks on his face. They blasted away what they had carved and rearranged the order of the presidents with Washington farthest to the left and Lincoln now sitting all the way to the right. We left Mount Rushmore and headed for
Fort Collins, Colorado to stay with my friend Dan’s friend
Jai Tatum. On our way there we passed through
Wyoming. We traveled on many roads that reminded me of what a road trip looks like in the movies. The highway was flat and straight for miles, stretching to the horizon. Along the way we saw some really cool and some really weird things. We saw one billboard that said Help manage your wildlife…WEAR FUR!. That made me laugh out loud. We also passed through a few towns that were intriguing.
Lost Springs boasted the population of 1 at an elevation of 4996. A little further down the road there was a billboard for Lost Springs saying
Lost Springs Welcomes You!. What it really meant to say was, The guy who lives in Lost Springs wants you to marry him so that the population can at least be 2, so he won’t be so bored out here all by himself. Someone should really stop and fix that sign for him. The next town over was Shawnee. The church was the first place that we could see. As we drew nearer we saw that the windows were smashed out, some were boarded up, and the grass in the playground was overgrown. We passed the church and saw that the rest of the town was exactly the same. This was a real ghost town. This one wasn’t like the ones that you think about though, it clearly was built circa 1930 instead of the 1880s like most of the ghost towns out there. It was cool to see. We arrived in
Fort Collins at about 10:30 and met Jai for the first time. Very cool. He had everything ready for us and we got into bed almost immediately so that we could get ready for our busy day of exploring
Denver, Colorado.
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Margaret
non-member comment
LOVE it
I love the badlands. It's so crazy how the landscape looks. Hope you guys are having fun!