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Published: June 24th 2008
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Badlands National Park South Dakota
We slept in this morning not getting up until 6am. The hotel serves a continental breakfast (I've never figured that term out) which was ok. The weather was threatening thunderstorms with large hail for later in the day so we decided to drive the truck instead of riding the bike. We could have ridden the bike. Weather was great. Tomorrow we ride, rain or shine, actually it is supposed to be beautiful.
Fifty miles east of our hotel is Wall, South Dakota, home of the world famous Wall Drug Store. The town of Wall (population 818) is just north of the Badlands National Park. The best I can figure is that the Badlands (so named by French explorers) is actually a wall of erosion between the high prairie (also a French word) and the lower prairie, hence the name of the town. The wall, or Badlands, extends for just over sixty miles from east to west and is steadily creeping north with the continuing erosion. In the town of Wall, Wall Drug Store has grown to a mini shopping mall with departments for virtually anything you can imagine (including several variations of udder balm,
cream, or lotion, which is actually very good stuff). Wall serves lunch in its Ice Water Well Cafe which seats 530 people at a time. I figured out why there was so little traffic on the interstate, everyone in this part of the state was in Wall Drugs.
The Badlands Loop Road is a Scenic Byway which runs through the Badlands National Park. The road wanders among the spires and other erosion carved shapes. The erosion results in some rather interesting shapes left atop the mounds or spires of soil. The pioneers named passes by which they could manage to get a heavily loaded wagons up or down to the opposite prairie. Todays the road provides access between the lower and higher prairie along some of these original passes (Dillion Pass, etc.). There is a difference in elevation between the praries of as much as 1,000 feet and as little as a few hundred.
The road is 35 miles long and the speed limit varies from 25 to 45. We stopped at all of the scenic overlooks and walked among some of the more interesting locales. There is a resort in the Park about 12 miles in on
the lower prairie. While the roads are open day and night, the nearest ground lights are probably 60 miles away. It could be really, really dark out at night and getting through the passes would be . . .interesting.
We stopped again at Wall Drug Store to look at whatever we might have missed and to pick up a jar of udder balm and they were all out of what Donna wanted.
Enjoy the pictures. If you double click on the picture, it will open in a larger window for easier viewing. There are still more pictures but we needed some for picture night lateTomorrow we plan to ride the bike through the Black Hills and Custer National Park to Mount Rushmore. The weather is expected to be near ninety. Another thing we have noticed about the air here is that it feels cooler than the indicated temperature. At 80 we ride with the windows down and Donna can get chilled. I figure at 90 we will both be comfortale. I guess it is the cleaner air that makes it feel cooler or, conversely, it is the polution in our air at home that makes it feel warmer
there.
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manco4
Al Wilson
that is awesome!!