The Badlands and Black Hills

We stayed in the Badlands until the 6^th, my birthday. If you don’t know which one it was, that’s too bad. The Badlands was more than interesting. It was also more than hot, but I understand that was pretty much a national condition.

July 1^st was hot enough that we just went out for a while in the morning and then pulled the TV from its home under the bed, tried out the DVD player and veged out under the AC. Nice every now and then. By Monday we got to feeling guilty and needed groceries so it was back into Wall, the only town in easy driving to actually have a grocery store bigger than a mini-mart. Then we hit Sage River Road, through the Badlands National Grassland north of the park and west and then down back to our campsite. Lots of wildlife. We missed a couple of prairie dog towns until we figured out what we were looking at. Once we had the trick of it, they were all over. Cute little buggers. We stopped at an overlook after seeing what we thought was a buffalo. Sure was. He spied us and came galumphing up a path to the overlook. By the time he was at the overlook, we were in the truck. Those things are huge! A couple of mountain goats finished off the wildlife portion of the drive.  There was still a bunch of geology to witness. The Badlands are mostly soft stone, melting away like a sugar cube in the rain. They’ve only been around for a half million years and in another half million they’ll have been reduced to prairie once again, present conditions continuing, of course. This brings up an interesting difference in the attitude of rangers. Almost nowhere do you see signs directing you to stay to the path to protect the environment. Quite to the contrary, you’re encouraged to climb anything you feel capable of. Minding the rattlesnakes, of course. Come winter, hard rain and snow will peel off another layer of hill and everything will be fresh and new with a little more sand at the bases of the features.



Prairie Dogs in Badlands



Lone Bison Bull who came when called. So we hurried away.

The Badlands

That was so much fun we decided to try again on Tuesday, this time off to Sheep Mountain in the southwest area of the park. Not quite as much wildlife this time but even more of those unearthly hills and canyons. Sheep Mountain had a great lookout and we met a couple of thoroughly unreconstructed 60’s radicals. He had served time for refusing the draft and she is still (at 75) substitute teaching in the village of Interior, population 67, just down the road from our campsite in the state park. After some interesting conversation we decided to continue past the lookout on a two-track. Posted warning; 4-wheel drive and high ground clearance only. Cool, we qualified. Lots of fun, tempered by the fact that this was our only transportation and must be cherished. Take it slow and easy and enjoy that giant diesel torque at 5 mph. Stop and look down 50 or more feet into v-shaped canyons with dry riverbeds way down there. Steer a little further from the edge and say hello to yet another prairie dog.

Badlands National Park with finger pointed to Sheep Mountain where we drove off road for dramatic view.

Yet another dramatic view. Yawn.
I've got hundreds of these now.
Great to see, impossible to adequately describe.

Sunset over The Badlands

The 4^th of July and town of Interior was having a rodeo. We couldn’t miss this, though we had no idea of what to expect. I’d call it the equivalent of Spartan Speedway, only with horses, calves and bulls and stuff. It was fully featured with bucking broncs, bulldogging, calf and steer roping, bull riding and barrel racing. According to the program this is one of the oldest rodeo's in South Dakota and in the 1920’s was considered the #2 rated in the entire country with excursion trains coming from Chicago filled with people. The announcer also made sure to point out this or that competitor was a former world champion in various events. Later that night they actually had fireworks. In fact, they seemed to have 3 or 4 town’s fireworks. They just went on and on, often at a pace that made it seem like a finale, only to slow down a little and then pick up to finale pace again.

Note: Fireworks were rare this year due to fires due to severe forest fires. Thus, Interior did have several town's fireworks and their fire departments.



Calf Roping



Bulldogging



Saddle Bronc Riding



Our View of Rodeo Audience from Stands

Laundry piled up so we wandered into Wall to use the laundromat. Also a chance to publish the blog, internet and 3-G being nonexistent in the state park, even a phone signal being a sometimes thing.  After that, a trip to the Missile Command Center. Absolutely nothing to see, the silos themselves are many miles away, launch controls also miles away in a different direction and all tours to be pre-scheduled. Oh, well. 

 On the way was also a real homestead complete with soddy house. The family who’d lived there fulfilled the required 5 years to get their free 160 acres starting about 1910 and then hung on until the dust bowl years of the ‘30s. The family still owns the land, though. The Badlands was no place for the Midwest-style family farm, being far better suited to large cattle farming (50 or so acres for every cow-calf unit) and hardly enough water even for that.  The day was blistering so back to  the trailer to stress-test the AC. Finished the evening drinking wine and shooting the bull with a couple of free-spirited ladies on their way from Vermont to California.



19th century finery on the Prairie

The Brown family's soddy

Your typical pioneer woman

Their 1910 Model T, bought used.

On my birthday, the 6^th, I got to pull the trailer again as we moved from the Badlands to the Black Hills. We thought that after the 4^th the rush would be over. Shows how wrong you can be. We were able to get a site in the state park, but only for two nights. This place is full of tourists! Something about a couple of mountains that got carved on. The RV camps outside the park look more like parking lots than actual RV parks. We’ll probably move on down south of Wind Cave where there’s less pressure.

Okay, Mount Rushmore is pretty darn cool. We spent the entire afternoon and evening admiring it and walking the trails, but only after seeing Crazy Horse. Well, Crazy Horse’s face and right arm that being the only part finished. It’ll take another 50 or so years to finish him up. Meanwhile, the original sculptor’s family is making a pretty decent living with the welcome center (viewing is free, parking costs 10 bucks per person). Actually, it is pretty impressive and pretty damn massive. All of Rushmore could be carved on the area between Crazy Horse’s and the rest of the mountain and his arm alone will be 200 feet long. They’re just starting on the horse’s head.



Obligatory "We were there" photo

Look, you can see right up his nose!

Crazy Horse

As usual, I got lost and ended up in an unauthorized area.

Sunday we hit the Woodcarver’s Museum (Okay, it’s a real tourist trap but still interesting and worth the 8 bucks each entry) and then took the Wildlife Loop through the park late in the day and were rewarded by sight of a herd of buffalo, maybe 100 head. A few antelope and the usual prairie dogs (cute little buggers) rounded out the trip. On the way back we came upon a lone bull buffalo walking on the right side of the road, against traffic. As we stopped for him, he crossed in front of us and merged into a gap between cars, two ahead, two behind, all of them moving at a walking pace and proceeded on his way. We were simply too amazed to remember the camera.



One of dozens of scenes at the Woodcarver's Museum,
most of them animated.

Lots of buffalo

Our time at Custer was up the next morning  so we hitched up the trailer and drove the entire lash-up to Jewel Cave. We’d wanted to do it Sunday but it was so crowded we had to make a reservation. This is only one of several cave systems in the Black Hills, but second longest in the world at 163 miles and counting. Its major feature is lots and lots of dogtooth and nailhead calcite with a few stalactites and stalagmites with a few bacon strip formations. Also a constant 49 degrees cool. Just the thing for a summer day. Then a couple of hour drive to the KOA near Hot Springs. Nice place, even has trees for shade and a pool.



Okay, that does it. No more cave pictures.
One simply cannot capture it properly!

One cave just won’t do, so in the morning we hit Wind Cave. At a hundred twenty or so miles, only the sixth longest in the world. In the words of our guide, not even the longest in the county. Major features are boxwork, a formation caused by cracks in the limestone infused with a more solid material before the limestone begins getting eroded away and low, very flat ceilings, in some places resembling a really good plaster job. Neither cave has much in the way of stalactites or stalagmites, there not being much moisture seeping through.

One more try. This is an example of boxwork.

I was worried that the Mammoth Site would be some kind of tourist rip-off. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hundreds of Mammoths caught in a sinkhole  smaller than an acre some 27,000 years ago and dozens of volunteer paleontologists make a heck of a science show. Highly recommended, especially if you are entranced by ancient bones.



Height of luxury, digging up fossils indoors!

Liz experienced some tooth twinges and needed a dentist. She located one in Rapid City with an open appointment of 8:40 on Wednesday. It's only a short hop from Hot Springs to Rapid City and we figured on just squatting in a Wal-Mart parking lot for the night. Since we got into town by 10 AM there was plenty of time to see what sights were available. Well, look at that, Ellsworth Air Force Base is just down the road and has a museum. While not nearly as extensive as Wright-Patterson in Ohio it does have a B-1b on display as well as a B-29 and a B52 along with a smattering of warplanes from WW2 through the present. Remember our turning down the Minuteman site as too much trouble? No problem, it's all right here. This is where they trained all the crews so the stuff is right on the base. Okay, just the deactivated training stuff, as if anyone could tell the difference. Great way to kill a few hours, especially coupled with the geology museum at the South Dakota School of Mining and Technology, whose logo happens to be a yellow M on a blue field. The museum is a flagrant case of mislabeling as its highlight is a stunning display of dinosaur age and older fossils.

B-1b

B-52



B-29

Looking down the Minuteman silo.

Launch Control, behind glass.

Plesiosaur (sp?)

Mosasaur

Good old Triceratops

We intended to make a cheap night of it with a stay in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Dern thing was posted! So were all the other lots in town. Apparently they don't like squatters here. No choice, hit the local KOA. Well, at least it's nice here, has wi-fi and tomorrow morning we'll be close to Liz's dental appointment. Meanwhile some people we met informed us of some sights we'd missed at Custer State Park.. So tomorrow, we'll postpone Devil's Tower for a couple more days in the Black Hills.