Back to the Badlands, and more...

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Brr… it was cold last night. I guess you have the option of hot days and reasonable nights or reasonable days and cold nights… Our first intention was to take advantage of the first, but that was not to be so we are coping with the second. All I can say is that I am glad that we took my cold weather sleeping bag out of storage to bring with us!

Statistics

Starting Destination: East of Interior, South Dakota
Ending Destination: Devils Tower, Wyoming
Ending Destination GPS: N: 44° 35.461’ W: 104° 41.992’ Elev: 3895’
Miles Driven: 289.4
Number of Miles Hiked: approx. 1
Most Interesting Road Name: Be Still Lane

More of the Badlands…

The day started with the “Invasion of the Cats.” Last night as we were cooking dinner, Carl chased away a cat who was snooping around looking for food… In the morning the cat had multiplied 4 times and there were 5—the mother and 4 kittens. The cats came walking along all in a line until the mother cat growled at the kittens and they quit following her and started hanging around our campsite, or more accurately the Kamping Kabin next door!… Carl commented that he thought that cats didn’t have much of a sense of smell, however, these cats seemed to be able to identify where we had dumped the water from the pasta the night before… After 30 minutes of hanging around, Maria finally modified a McDonald’s tea cup and gave them some milk - it sure didn’t last long!!!


Next we retraced our steps into the park and walked some of the marked trails further into the park. I think our favorite was the hike to the “Notch.” This hike was considered “strenuous,” but it took you through many of the rock formations, up onto a ledge and then to this ”notch” in the escarpment where we could look over the part to the South and where we had walked another trail only 30 minutes before… We amused ourselves along the walk trying to answer questions such as… (1) Was the rock clay or not? (2) why were there these “fault’ like lines running perpendicular ( or close enough) to the main rock and why were most of these colored green (3) how did the pointy towers form and (4) many more… We are not sure if we got the answers correct, but it was sure fun “making up” the answers!! After our hike we re-traced our steps past the visitor’s center we followed the remainder of the loop road out the western entrance to the park - this was kind of an anticlimax after the eastern part of the park, but impressive none-the-less…

Our last stop in the Badlands was in the town of Wall our first ‘Main Street’ investigation and a visit to the Wall Drug Store, touted as the largest drug store in the world - very touristy; but it did actually have drugs… So we were quite surprised!

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From one Wall to another

After Wall, we followed Interstate 90 back to Rapid City - Our first comment on entering the highway was “this looks like Kansas,” with the gate to prevent you from entering if snow has closed the road, to the rolling prairie vista and the field of sunflowers… until we dropped way down in the Cheyenne River valley—definitely not Kansas!! Our next stop was the Berlin Wall Memorial in downtown Rapid City—this memorial was located in one of the city Parks (Memorial Park) and had 2 twelve foot sections of the Berlin Wall and some plaques documenting the history. It was impressive, but somehow the “wall” didn’t look quite as menacing as it must have done in real life…

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Back to the Black Hills

After the Memorial we followed a scenic route through the Black Hills, hoping that we would see things similar to what we missed the day of the great “fog” adventure… We traveled the main route to Mount Rushmore and then cut off North West towards Lead and Deadwood. The scenery was very impressive—trees, mountain lakes, rock outcroppings… The towns were not quite so impressive!

Throughout the trip Maria has been interested in the “Main Streets,” the main street for Deadwood was bustling, definitely a “destination,” with every second establishment being for gaming! We even saw the actors getting ready for the next “shoot-out!” However, our sensibilities were refreshed by the next section of our trip through the Sheridan (correct?) valley into Spearfish… We followed the scenic route through a narrow river valley complete with many limestone rock outcroppings, beautiful trees… and the local road crew repainting the lines!! Our final destination for the day was Devil’s Tower… We followed the quickest route as the light was rapidly fading and the scenery was much the same…

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Memories of South Dakota

Three things stuck in my mind during our time in South Dakota… (1) There seem to be “casino’s” everywhere, in the local bar, the store front down the street, the hotel on the highway and of course “everywhere” in Deadwood… Is there really a need for that many gaming establishments? (2) The rampant commerciality surrounding the major tourist attractions—the gold mine factory tours, the reptile parks, the mystic hills, the caves that have been there for a “million years,” and even the Boondocks Fifties town!! Contrast this with (3) thoughts of just how hard being a pioneer in this area must have been, particularly those who came west to settle on a quarter section in the Badlands… I guess in those days you did what you had to do and didn’t think too much about it… As Carl said, perhaps in the future one of our descendants will turn to us and say… “you spent all that time riding in a car?”

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Comments

[Marvin Bush]

Cats
Goody for you that you gave the poor hungry kitties something to eat. You should see Deadwood full of motorcycles. Four rows of them, row by each curb and 2 rows down the center of the street. Sturgis time. MB