Badlands, Good Times (Cheesy Enough for You?)


Advertisement
United States' flag
North America » United States » Wisconsin » De Pere
July 27th 2012
Published: July 27th 2012
Edit Blog Post

Total Distance: 0 miles / 0 kmMouse: 0,0


Alex: We drove east from the Black Hills into the Badlands National Park. The Badlands is one of the strangest landscapes we have seen on our trip. It looks just like something out of an sci-fi film based on another planet. The rocks have yellow and red stripes and are carved into tall sharp peaks, and deep twisting valleys. We drove along a road that followed the edge of the 'Wall', the line where the peaks and troughs start rising out of the flat landscape to the south. The coloured layers are fossilised soil beds, and the Badlands have lots of fossilised mammals (sabre tooth cat, camels, horses and rhinos) and marine fossils. We got out and George, Ruby and I climbed up one of the peaks. It was ridiculously hot (about 110F) and humid so we didn't stay out on the rocks for very long. But it did look amazing. We decided to return for a better look the next day but to camp just outside the park that night. The Circle 10 Campground was almost deserted; there was a young guy in the office but he wasn't allowed to book us in, so we just parked up in a space and waited for someone to come and ask us for some money. But no-one did. We played in the swimming pool, and had a BBQ, and still no-one came, so we went to bed. In the morning Carla paid a young employee in the office and noticed the name of the manager was Darla Cook. We then went to the Badlands Museum where we watched people cleaning up the latest fossil finds, and some that had been found several years ago but had got stuck in the back-log. The museum taught us all about how the Badlands had formed by river and wind erosion (the erosion of the rocks into the peaks and valleys only started about 500,000 years ago, and they will be completed eroded away in another 500,000 years). Next door in the gift shop we bought some drinks and noticed the name badge of the assistant, it said “Darla Cook”. And when we said to her 'We stayed at your campsite last night, you must be busy with all your jobs!' she seemed to look shifty and laughed it off with a 'Oh yes – sometimes' and pretended she didn't really understand. Perhaps we'll meet her again on our travels,who knows where she'll pop up! We then drove along the Badlands Scenic Loop, a 30 mile road through the middle of the Badlands National Park. We stopped on several occasions for a brief look out over the landscape, it was too hot to stop out long. We saw a few 'Big Horn Sheep', but there was very little wildlife to see. In the museum we had discovered that you need 20 acres per cow (per cow!) to raise cattle there. We then drove on east, aiming for Fort Pierre. We got there and decided to carry on driving. As we headed on out the signs of life began to thin out, and our chances of finding a campground in this part of South Dakota seemed slim. Each town on the highway had population of less than 200 and there was about 15-20 miles between towns. We had planned on stopping overnight, and then driving on to De Smet the following day. Instead we decided to drive all the way to De Smet and have a day of no driving the next day. We stopped in Huron for dinner (don't go to Huron for dinner – Pizza Hut was the pick of the restaurants) and arrived at the Laura Ingalls Homestead (with campground) at about 9:30pm.

Carla: After a night 'on the prairie' with lightning flashing in the distance throughout the night we awoke to soft blue sky and scudding cloud. We set off to explore the Ingalls' Homestead. The place is located exactly where Pa Ingalls' claim homestead was in De Smet and the curators have either moved relevant buildings from other parts of the county (such as the one-room schoolhouse and the church) or built exact replicas. The place consists of a big area of prairie fields, sown wheat-fields, a veggie garden and lawns which are peppered with buildings featured in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. There is a recreated 'sod house'; the type of mud brick which settlers really lived in when there were no trees available. There's also a 'claim shanty' which settlers used if they had the money to haul lumber with them from the east to build a small shack to live in. The Ingalls lived in a sod-house in 'On the Banks of Plum Creek'. The Ingalls Wilder books are a kind of semi-fictionalised account of her real life as she misses out some of the moving around they did and doesn't mention the specific locations of where they were. At the Homestead there was information about the Ingalls' restless travels round the mid-west and where they were when the events described in each book happened. They started in Wisconsin and went to Kansas, Minnesota and Iowa back to Wisconsin and then finally settled in De Smet, South Dakota (which is where By The Shores of Silver Lake and The Long Winter are set). George and Ruby had a great day at the Homestead (and so did we) and in the evening we went to the next field to watch the special pageant of 'The Long Winter' put on by volunteer actors from the town. They made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in acting talent or experience! The life-size sets representing the claim shanty, the house in town, the store and the feed shop were brilliant. On Sunday we drove the ninety miles to Sioux Falls, the largest town in South Dakota but not the state capitol which is Pierre. The main attraction in town (apart from an air show that was going on) was the Great Plains Zoo. We were pleasantly surprised by this little zoo which had Brown Bears, Black Bears, a Bengal Tiger, Giraffes and Zebras and loads more. The setting was leafy and the animal enclosures were fantastically large and the bear's enclosure even had a waterfall and a stream in it. I found the 100F temperature and humidity all too much though and retreated to the attached Natural History Museum to cool off whilst poor Alex bravely took George and Ruby around the remainder of the zoo. We returned to our campground that night to find the weather forecast warning of thunderstorms in the north of the State with 'ping-pong ball' size hailstones. We were glad that we were safely in the south and heading east the next day. Scary stuff. We asked the children to plan the next day or so and they decided on a trip to the cinema. So we stuck a pin in the map somewhere along our route through Minnesota and booked tickets for Ice Age: Continental Drift (!!) in Rochester, MN. We also planned to stop there for 2 nights to have a proper rest. We drove the couple of hundred miles to the city and upon arrival the only thing of note we saw was a water tower painted to resemble a Giant Sweetcorn looming over the highway on the way into the city. This served to remind us that we were in the sweetcorn capital of the US in southern Minnesota (perhaps the sweetcorn capital of the world, who knows?) In fact, on Interstate 90 at Blue Earth, Minnesota, we had seen a sign advertising a 55ft statue of the Jolly Green Giant (because the world HQ of Green Giant sweetcorn is nearby), but we had failed to stop and look at it. Maybe something we will sorely regret? Maybe not. On Tuesday we bought some local wine and beer in the Cap 'n' Cork Liquor Store and after our trip to the cinema we sampled some. Unfortunately it was the worst US wine and beer that we have tried so far. So Minnesota didn't win that one I'm afraid!

Alex: We got up early and drove to Madison, to meet Rob, my friend from Epsom, who is now a Professor of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin and his wife Maria, who is a Communications Director. We arrived just before lunchtime, so we went for a swim in one of the lakes in the town and had a picnic by the shore. (Maria later warned us all to have showers after swimming in the lake due to the yucky blue-green algae.) We met up with Rob at his house which is in a perfect, leafy part of town and is a beautiful, four floor classic American wooden detached house with a pretty yard and front porch. Rob took us to see the sights of Madison. We went to the Capitol building, the centrepiece of the town, which was rebuilt in 1906 after the old Capitol building burnt down. It's a huge granite and marble structure, between the lakes, and resembles the White House in Washington (which George and Ruby had just watched being destroyed in 'Independence Day' the evening before). We went right to the top and looked out over the city. We then walked to the University Student Union building by the lake shore and drank some beer and met up with Maria. We got back to Rob's house and I went to get some stuff out of the RV. I had a spot of trouble locking the RV door, and thought it must be the heat, locked it from the inside and closed the door. When I tried to get in again, the doors would not unlock. There are 3 doors on the RV and none would open. Maria brought out some WD40 which didn't seem to work, Rob put ice-cubes on the locks to cool them down. Eventually, Ruby had to squeeze in through an outside locker and into the RV cabin through a cupboard door, and then unlock the RV from the inside. It was after all this, with the neighbours coming out to find out what's going on, that I found I had another almost identical set of keys in my pocket. These keys worked perfectly, they were the correct keys. I had somehow got the keys of our previous RV (the one that went up in flames) and had been trying to use those. Doh! In the evening we went to the 'Blue Plate Diner' and I had meatloaf for the first time, which was really, very nice. Thanks to Rob and Maria for a lovely stay in Madison, we had a fantastic time.

George & Ruby: We visited the Children's Museum in Downtown Madison. At the entrance there was a water exhibit where you had to get the ball using a fountain into the water tornado and it was really fun. On the second floor there was a big climbing thing and it went really high and there was a pitch-black slide. There was a scanning TV that scanned your face and if you opened your mouth then you would make a sheep's, cow's or a duck's noise. On the roof there was a clubhouse where you could look at animals and see the rest of Madison; there was also chickens and mice and you got to hold the mice. There was an enormous gerbil wheel on the second floor, for people to go in an pretend to be a gerbil. We went in the gerbil wheel twice and the great climbing frame four times. Dad said that there should be a way to create electricity using children in giant gerbil wheels. At the end, we sat down at the café and bought a drink. Then we left.


Additional photos below
Photos: 28, Displayed: 28


Advertisement



27th July 2012

Bob Dylan Country
Hi Ya'all out on the range and in them Badlands. We were really impressed by Ruby's spectacular break into the RV. She has a great future as a burglar. Only joking!! Did you know Bob Dylan is from them parts i.e. Hibbing, Minnesota? The University looks very nice and your friends very welcoming. We now have good weather its really hot here now. It got to 25 degrees!! And yesterday 35 degrees. OK we can't compete with you folks with your 50 degrees in the shade, but when you have been wearing wooly jumpers for the past three months it seems like an oven. Keep on trucking and trying those roadside diners. One day there will a good 'un. Lots of love to you all from Marion and Len, Mum and Dad, Nanny and Grand Puppet, The Muppet

Tot: 0.133s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 14; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0763s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb