Badlands, South Dakota

By Claire

My astonishment at how much South Dakota has to offer continues.  We mapped out our route last night, choosing the longer, scenic route to drive through the famous Badlands.  At first, it just looked like a flat, pale, endless prairie with some moonscape bumps here and there. 

 

It wasn't long before we started to see the real show.  The temperature climbed as the day went on.  At 9 am it was already 73° so we knew it was going to be a hot one. By 1 pm it was 95°.

 

Our trusty Prius, Christina, passed the 3,000 mile mark for our trip, today!  So far she is providing excellent service, even though we have yet to fathom the total depths of her technology. We learned just today that we can ask our GPS guru, Vicky (if we're polite about it) to give us alternate routes to our destination.  What a concept!

 

 

 

 

At the end of a short trail, The Window.  We also walked The Door trail.

 

  It felt a little like being back in Petra, Jordan

 

 

Smallest mesas I've ever seen--about 10 feet high, 10 feet deep and 25 feet wide.

 

Suddenly we were in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands--pretty, but similar to what we have seen before.  We passed the town of Interior, advertising their "uptown Wagon Wheel Bar & Grill (is there a lowtown?) Also Scenic--I kept thinking Chuck was talking about the scenic route, which he was, but he was also talking about the town.  The final town, if you want to call it that, was Cactus Flat.

Our route took us to I-95, still two lanes with very little traffic.  We passed a few tiny towns and then I saw a billboard for a diner that looked pretty good.  We pulled into the town of Murdo and, with some trepidation, walked in.  It was full of people, mostly eating slabs of meat with brown gravy, grayish peas and mashed potatoes.  We sat at the counter and after being told about the special for $6.25--Swiss cheese and mushroom burger with a side of pea soup, we ordered two.  I was a little surprised at how good it was.

 

 

 

Back on the road, we passed several billboards (the only thing worth looking at) promoting the Corn Palace in the town of Mitchell in Davison County.  Of course we had to stop. Our friends, Jim and Stephanie had insisted "You have to go to the Corn Palace." We surprised ourselves by heeding their advice and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

 

Closer detail

  

Even closer -- it's all corn

 

 

Inside, they had exhibits of toys made of corn husks (what else are you going to do with them all?) and other things all about corn.  There were photographs of the three corn palaces and dozens of revisions they have constructed since 1892, just three years after South Dakota became a state.  Thirteen shades of colored corn currently are planted in separate fields to maintain color purity; the best ears are hand picked for use on the Corn Palace.  275,000 ears are used to redecorate the murals each year.  They did not redecorate this year because there wasn't any corn, due to the drought.

 

 

 

Now it was time for a treat.  We found a really  nice ice cream, frozen yogurt (haven't seen any since California) and coffee shoppe.  Chuck was hankering after a root beer float and I agreed to a frozen yogurt with a vanilla base, and then they mixed in my requests of fresh raspberries and blackberries.  I was still so stuffed from lunch that I couldn't really eat it all; but I've got a mean eating machine with me.  I just pass it over.

 

After the Corn Palace, what could be more exciting?  We did turn off to find Laura Ingalls Wilder's home; but when we realized it was 55 miles out of our way just to get there, we continued back onto the highway.  We simply waved at the exit to George McGovern's Legacy Museum.  It had been a long day.  We're now in Sioux Falls, the largest city in South Dakota--153,888 in 2010.  You'd think we could find a car wash; Vicky Christina Barcelona is really in need of a bath.

The Dakota Badlands...what I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere--a distant architecture, ethereal..., an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

 

Black Hills National Forest

By Claire
Another gorgeous day in beautiful South Dakota.  We're staying in Rapid City, a good base for the things we wanted to see.  I was excited about our drive through the Black Hills and my first sighting of Mt. Rushmore.  I've always felt it was one of those things you have to see before you die.  We were so lucky to have perfect weather and I was happy to find out in my research that mornings are the best time to arrive since the memorial faces east.  Not only that, arriving at 8:30, we beat most of the crowds.  Except there really aren't any crowds at this time of year.  That has been one of the nicest things about this trip.


On the road to Mt. Rushmore

 

First sighting from the road

 

 

At the entrance 

 

It's everywhere

 

We started with a fascinating video about the construction of Mt. Rushmore and information about Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of the memorial.  It took years of planning and building models plus dynamiting to create this masterpiece.  He changed the design nine times.  Men were hoisted down in wooden seats with pulleys; there was no protection for their ears from the blasts or their lungs from the dust.  Years later when they started wearing dust masks, the men would cut a hole in them so they could smoke.  The good news is, there were no fatalities.

 

 

We walked the trail to the Sculpture Workshop and found the best view of all.  We also met a Dutch couple who took our picture and then proceeded to chat with them for about 15 minutes. 

 

This one is almost my favorite, taken as we were leaving, driving on to our next site.

But wait!  Here's the rear of Mt. Rushmore!

 

We drove through the Black Hills noticing a sign that warned "Danger! Large Wildlife on Road."  He isn't that large and didn't look too dangerous but I didn't get out of the car to take this photo of a mountain goat.

 

In South Dakota, they are referred to as Buffalo.  We saw too many to photograph them all.

 

Next on our agenda was the Crazy Horse Memorial.  I knew nothing about it and therefore had no expectations. I didn't even know it was another carving out of rock.  What a surprise!  

 

The sculpture was created by Korczak Ziolkowski, a Polish American from Boston who had been an assistant on Mt. Rushmore.  Work was begun in 1948 and continues to this day.  He was completely self-taught and never took a formal lesson in art, sculpture, architecture or engineering.  Since Korczak's death in 1982, his wife, with seven of their children, working in concert with the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Board of Directors, has directed the work which continues to see exciting progress being made with each passing year.  We saw one of the daughters on the deck of the restaurant complex dead-heading flowers, checking on things and generally being useful.  The future of the Crazy Horse Visitor Complex is an Indian Museum of North America (well on its way), Indian University of North America (they have had two classes of students), and a Medical Training Center.  The project is financed primarily from an admission fee and donations. They decline to accept any government funding, partly out of concern that the project would later be dropped.

 

This  is the model of what the finished work will look like. To give an idea of the scale of this monumental work, the entire Mount Rushmore project--that's 4 giant Presidential busts--would fit within the completed head of Chief Crazy Horse!

 

There is no documented photograph of Crazy Horse.  This model is a composite likeness created by Korczak from "word pictures" given in the 1940s by old Indians who had known Crazy Horse in the few years that he lived from 1843-1877.

 

Leaving Crazy Horse, we  continued our scenic drive, enjoying the wildlife around us, especially one that gracefully walked across the road in front of us.

 Pronghorn Antelope

 

These adorable prairie dogs were popping up all over the place.

No wildlife, just a nice view.

  

Chuck's final plan for the day was a visit to Wind Cave National Park and a tour of some of the cave.  We picnicked along the way and made it just in time for the 2:30 tour.  Our tour guide, Tiffany, is from north eastern Nebraska.  She studies meteorology and told me that Nebraska has 90-100% humidity.  No, we didn't crawl down that hole.

This is one of the World's largest cave complexes, having 95% of the world's boxwork--a feature created from limestone cracks filling with gypsum and then having (naturally forming) carbolic acid eat away the softer limestone, leaving a honeycomb-like structure: boxwork. The wind coming out of the cave can reach 70mph. Wind studies have allowed scientists to determine that only about 5-10% of the cave has been discovered/explored so far. Chuck was impressed--and a little nervous--that we walked over and looked up along one of the area's geological faults.

 

An exciting day, especially when you spot signs like "Reptile Garden. This ain't no petting zoo."

My lands are where my dead lie buried. ~ Crazy Horse

My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too. ~ Chief Henry Standing Bear (in his 1939 invitation to Korczak to carve Crazy Horse Memorial)

Ambling Across America

By Claire
Today really was a road trip.  We motored out of Montana, wound our way through Wyoming and slid into South Dakota.  We are tired but exhilarated by all that we saw.  The weather was a perfect 70° as Chuck began the day at the wheel while I sat in the co-pilot seat/office setting up the GPS (Vicky) to take us to our next lodging location while simultaneously adding our first site into my iPhone GPS.  I also use my iPhone to get information about the sites that Chuck and I planned for our day back when I was working on Wyoming and he was working on South Dakota.  To make it more enjoyable, we switch places every hour or so.  The mornings have been cold and I am really appreciating our seat warmers.

On the road in Wyoming once again

 

The other side of the road

 

Our first stop was The Devil's Tower in Wyoming, a huge monolith resembling a colossal stone tree stump, rising 867 feet from its base and 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River.  The 1.5 acre top has a growth of sagebrush and grass and the almost perpendicular sides are fluted columns.  It was the first National Monument.

 

It took us almost 4 hours driving back roads to find this place so once we were back on the interstate we stopped at the first rest stop we came upon for a picnic lunch.

 

And speaking of back roads and interstates, they are almost identical.  The interstate has two lanes and there are very few cars.  The back roads have two lanes and no other cars.  We were cruising down 14a when 8 identical Cruise America RVs flew past, one after the other, all sporting German flags flapping on the side.  I guess it was a reunion. How fun!  I think those were the only vehicles we saw for an hour. 

Soon we left the prairie of Wyoming to discover the gorgeous sites of South Dakota.  We headed for Spearfish Canyon, a Scenic Byway.  It sure was.

Our first order of business was the trail to Roughlock Falls.  Only a mile each way, it was so beautiful and different from my usual hikes; so many different trees and plants.  It was warm with just the tiniest breeze caressing my face and arms.

Someone left an autumn bouquet on one of the many benches along the way.

 

Nice waterfall

 

One of the things I did during my turn in the "office" was to check out the info on Spearfish Canyon.  Using my iPhone to look up the area on Google, I found out about two hikes.  The one to the falls and another one called The '76 which was described as a steep mile and a half hike to the canyon rim with one section, about half a mile, 1,000 feet in elevation gain.  We found the trail head across the road from the first hike and off we went.  It wasn't too bad until we came to a sign that said Steep Trail Ahead.  They weren't kidding.  Huffing and puffing, we made it to the top.  Eureka!

 

Resting along the trail

View from the top

 

 

 

 

That turquoise roof is next to the parking lot where our car is parked.

 

Hiking back down, we walked through a fern forest, all of them yellow but looking like they would come back to life in the spring.

 

Our final stop was in Deadwood, SD.  It was at the end of the Scenic Byway after the town of Lead, a gold town and twin city of Deadwood.  Some of you might have watched the HBO series, Deadwood, a few years ago.  We couldn't pass this by.  I was so afraid it would be a tacky tourist place like Tombstone, AZ or Virginia City, NV.  There were a few tourist traps but mostly it was just a town of a little over 3,000 people going about their business.  We headed for the cemetery to find the grave of Wild Bill Hickock.  It cost us a dollar a piece.

We found Wild Bill's grave right away.  He was only 39 when he died, shot by a former buffalo hunter named Jack McCall (better known as "Broken Nose Jack"). 

 

Calamity Jane's final request was that she be buried next to her friend, Wild Bill.

 

 Wild Bill

 

The Cemetery

  

Looking down on Deadwood

 

Seth Bullock, town sheriff

 

Seth was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt and had a memorial built to him on Teddy Roosevelt Mountain.  He requested that he be buried above the cemetery and facing the mountain.  His grave is a steep hike 750 feet above the cemetery. 

Beautiful home in Deadwood

 

Neighborhood in Deadwood

 By now it was 4:30 and we were ready to be "home" and relaxing.  We drove the last 25 miles to Rapid City, our location for the next 2 nights and with a recommendation and 10% off card from the hotel receptionist, we raced over to the Texas Roadhouse.  I was starving and as usual, my eyes were bigger than my stomach.  I felt like exploding when we left.  I have to say, the service was amazing and when they asked whether we'd been there before (no), we were offered a Cactus Flower starter plate as first timers.  We started with margaritas.

 

 Cactus Flower (onion rings)

 

 My side dish of homemade chili (delicious)

 

My sirloin kebab with fabulous grilled veggies and rice

 

 Chuck's 8 oz. sirloin with sweet potato side

 

The end to a beautiful day.  More tomorrow.

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. ~ William Hazlitt