Badlands National Park, Black Hills, Mount Rushmore
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The tent is beginning to sag. Nothing alarming yet but worrisome. Life support systems still appear operational. My science officer has rigged a temporary solution in case of rain. Morale remains high even though I continue to push the men to ever increasing distances.
Started the day off with a hot shower. With great sadness we left the beautiful Arrow campground behind as we wondered what it would really cost to keep a diesel truck running all night (which is apparently what someone behind us did).
We ventured into Wall, and were sucked into the tourist vortex that is Wall Drug. Although they call it Wall Drug, it is in fact the world’s largest kitsch shop. Name a tacky trinket, it’s there. There are some there you’ve never thought of. There are more souvenirs here than there are people in the state. Yet this place attracts thousands if not millions of visitors a year. It just goes to show that if you put up enough signs over a long enough distance in an area of the country with not much else going for it, you will attract a large number of people. Wall Drug is truly a marvel of American marketing.
We wandered the shops a little, took our pictures with one of the locals, and had breakfast. The science officer noted the incredible amount of wood holding the place up. We marveled at the collection of memorabilia, bought some sunglasses (couldn’t stand the nuclear yellow anymore) and headed for the Badlands.
The weather was overcast and dreary with low clouds and occasional rain drops. Even so, the Badlands were quite a surprise after endless miles of rolling prairie. They are an amazing collection of mud piles eroding over the centuries steadily northward. In fact they form the wall that Wall is named for. We stopped just inside the park at the Big Badlands (and they were). (The French originally named this area “bad lands to walk through”. You gotta love the French people’s use of language.) These were the really bad Badlands, the career criminals, the serial killers. Unrepentant, unreformed, and hardened. You could walk out on the mounds. At least, there were no fences or signs warning you not to.
This was actually a trend we noticed with the National Park Service over the course of the trip. They were more than happy to let you do any damn fool thing you wanted to, including many actions that were likely to get you killed. I guess they didn’t want to diminish the wilderness experience. Disneyland it’s not.
Anyway, we noticed some kids out running along the tops of the mounds. That looked like fun. Plus the prospect of ruining everyone’s pictures by having us in it was enticing. We followed a trail out onto the mounds where we discovered that it tended to narrow at many points to roughly the size of a balance beam but with a much longer fall if you missed the cartwheel. Add to that the fact that they are not flat but rather go up and down at some rather steep angles and it makes for an interesting walk. After 300 yards or so of this, I started getting vertigo. Vertigo is a great sensation. The ground starts moving up and down like someone is playing with a zoom lens. Great for the heart. Les continued on awhile further. I sat down before I fell off. I managed to suck up enough courage to head back to the car.
After making it back alive we continued down the road. We came on another trail area and visited the “Door” and the “Window”, then ventured off into what we thought was the “Notch” trail but turned out to just be a maze of twisty passages all alike that ultimately dead ended somewhere (I have no idea where) in the middle of the Badlands. We managed to retrace our steps and continue on.
Farther in, the Badlands become really more of the kind of naughty lands, the occasional misdemeanor lands, or the victim of society’s ills lands. We took a small trail that showed where various fossils of ancient rhinoceroses and such had been found (big mud flats are a gold mine of fossils).
Farther up the road, Les noticed a fire burning (with the long range scanners), and as we got closer it turned out to be small camper van blazing in a turnout. Seems the nice German couple who had rented it, set it on fire somehow, and people were blocking the roads because the gas and propane tanks hadn’t exploded yet. We watched it for awhile (no explosions), and when it appeared to be in capable hands, headed on.
The Badlands taper off from east to west and at this point they were really more juvenile delinquent lands or the occasional Saturday night bender lands. They evolved from there into what are known as the table lands. The “tables” are areas of ground that the surrounding ground has eroded away from. It looks kind of cool when there are a lot of them everywhere you look.
We ventured off the standard Badlands loop onto a dirt road that would take us to the Pine Ridge reservation. Down the road we came across a prairie dog town. At first glance, you didn’t really see any (camouflage you know) but after a few seconds you could see the place was crawling with prairie dogs.
These guys are really cute. They run around like mad, popping into and out of their holes, constantly squeaking about something or another. I managed to get pretty close to them to take pictures before they all scurried into their holes. It’s like a giant natural habitrail with extra large hamsters.
Farther down the road we started seeing really large droppings and speculated that maybe there were buffalo around. Sure enough, we came across a small group of about 8 including two babies. We stopped and had a chat with them and took their pictures. As we continued down the road though we saw a lot more droppings and I commented that either there were some more buffalo, or these 8 guys had a real problem. Pretty much on cue, we came across a herd of probably 200 or so.
From there we left the Badlands and entered the Pine Ridge reservation. The first sign said it was a federal offense to deface or destroy roadside signs. Of course it was shot full of holes as was every other sign we came across from then on.
The rain started picking up. The reservation (like all the others) was sad and depressing. Serious poverty. Run down buildings, run down cars. We headed down a long, really deserted gravel road. This was probably as close to the middle of nowhere we had gotten so far. No houses, no power lines, no fences, nothing. We passed one car coming the other way on the whole road. An Indian in a pickup truck whose left rear tire was flat. He was driving on it, and judging from the tracks as we went down the road, had been driving on it for quite some time. We weren’t really sure that maybe he didn’t drive it this way all the time. This was the only car we saw until we came out the other end.
We came across a herd of about 30 antelope. Then we hit a road construction area. Basically gravel and mud for a few miles. When we finally hit the area where they were working, there were no flaggers or anything. I hit the brakes like usual and was happily operating the vehicle when I realized that my actions on the brakes were having no affect on the truck. Turning the wheel didn’t really seem to cause any changes to direction either. An interesting experience. Ultimately, I got it to stop. We drove along next to the road grader for a brief stretch, then continued on. As we left the site we noticed a flock of really large turkeys. They looked to be loose, that is wild, but they were awfully big. We still don’t know if they were wild or not. We got out to take their picture and realized two things. One, the truck was (finally) covered with mud and two, we had crossed the 2000 mile barrier. This called for a small celebration so we wrote 2000 mi. on the truck in mud and took pictures.
We found our way off the reservation and started into the Black Hills. The trees started returning (wouldn’t want the Indians to have any trees) and we saw lots of fall color and large rock formations. In the damp, it was really beautiful. Lots of mist, fresh smells, and vibrant colors. The road we were on was built by Peter Norbeck who wanted to create a park like setting for the approach to Mt. Rushmore. And he really did. That’s just what it felt like. In a couple of areas, they had to build some incredible bridges. These bridges were designed to solve the problem of winding through some serious hills. In one case, Pig Tail Bridges, it looked like a parking garage exit, looping around 720 degrees or more, but using timbers from the local forest to build. The sign said no bridge in the series was straight or level.
We reached Mount Rushmore and much to our disappointment, it was completely fogged in, and I mean completely. You couldn’t see anything. Not a tree, not a stone, nothing on the mountain where the sculptures were. We weren’t even really sure where to look. We used the 25 cent telescope viewer placements to try to spot it. But, in probably an hour of walking around, we never saw it.
The park around the mountain is really nice. Almost to the point of being overdone. The visit center is made of some kind of fancy stone. There’s a walkway with the flag from every state. There’s an amphitheater, the walkways and paths are all flagstone, and they light the mountain at night. We wandered around trying to figure out how to get closer to the mountain so we might have a chance to see it. We came to a path that was chained closed. As we speculated whether we should venture in a women came up the other way. We said something like, well if you can go, I guess we can. But, she said she was down there because her husband worked there and was giving a talk in the sculptor’s studio. But, we could probably come down for a look.
We took her up on her offer and walked down to the studio. It was a neat building with a scale model of the monument. I took a picture of it figuring it would be the only view of the monument I’d get. I thought I’d just tell people it was the real thing. We met her husband, had a quick chat, then left. It’s always fun to get to do something no one else does.
On the way out, we stopped in the visitor’s center to see if we couldn’t figure out some way to get closer. We talked to a ranger and complained how useless our tax dollars were when they couldn’t even clear the fog. Why not fans on the other hills (I’m sure they’ve never heard this before). Why weren’t they out there trying to do something? We lamented the failed Clinton administration and all kinds of stuff. (In fact, we figured that the Clinton administration probably would have tried to do something about the fog if they had known about it, but then would have changed their minds later). Finally we gave up.
We stopped to call home. I had no luck but unfortunately, Les did. He talked to his kids, but then his estranged wife wanted to talk to him, and 45 minutes later they were still “discussing” things. I wandered around the area and the gift shop, where I heard someone ask the clerk if it was foggy like this often and he answered that in the 4 months he’d been there, it had only fogged over one other time. Lucky us.
It was still foggy and damp as we left in search of a campsite. We wandered around awhile and finally found a place at Sheridan Lake. By now it was completely dark. We set up the tent with flashlights and lanterns. Les went off in the truck to find some firewood and I foolishly didn’t go with him. Left alone with no vehicle, no food to prepare (in the truck), and nothing to do, I sat at the table, with the light of the lantern only, imagining all kinds of bad things that could happen. What if he has an accident and doesn’t come back? What if a serial killer shows up? That sort of thing. Down the way a couple of young men were drinking beer and getting loud. Finally, I wandered down to the lake and sat in the dark where I figured they couldn’t find me. It actually was pretty nice when I didn’t worry about getting left there.
Les finally did come back and we had dinner of chili and potatoes. We talked around the fire (once again lit by “Mephisto” Hemmingson) for awhile, then went to bed.
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