Despite dire predictions, we woke up to partly cloudy skies and cold temperatures. The temperature never went above 55 all day. This is June folks. JUNE. Catherine wasn't terribly pleased.
Having slept in a bit, we saw a couple of elk right before the park entrance. Then we headed out through the Badlands, about 5 miles in the wrong direction. Oops. Anyway, it gave us a great view of the northeastern corner of the park.
The park road follows this formation (known as the Wall) -- basically the 200 foot or so clay cliffs that divide the high prairie from the lower prairie / cattle ranches. It is weird to see the grass growing right up to the eroding edge and then have a clay wasteland.
The Badlands have been eroding about half a million years. In about another half million, the erosion process will be complete -- leaving one unbroken prairie. Be sure to visit before they are gone!
Of course, Catherine had to go walking out along the ledge. Denise said no thanks and opted to take pictures.
While the red rocks are pretty, we also enjoyed the wildflowers -- they are sprinkled all over the Badlands and along the roadside.
In the 1800s, the settlers attempted to colonize South Dakota. I say attempted because they were known as "starvation claims." After a few years, most were abandoned because they couldn't support a family. Even know, it takes huge tracts of land to support people and their cows and the ranchers need to save money for the years the rain just doesn't come.
For a little while, the Badands had a yellowish hue (known as Yellow Mounds). The apparently had to do with the jungle that was there 35 million years ago. The decaying plants stained the soil yellow. We have no idea why this area was unique -- ie, why the jungle wasn't spread all over the Badlands. Anyway...
We saw a couple of rather light colored bighorn sheep (thanks to a friendly ranger at an overlook pointing them out on the other side of the road). One even had a pretty red collar on. They were too far to take pictures of and ambled off through the Badlands.
For a change of pace, we headed north to the famous Wall Drug, in Wall. They have 5 cent coffee and free ice water (and plenty of mugs that you can buy advertising this fact). There are signs for Wall Drug for hundreds of miles around SD -- the store started the signs in the 1930s to try to help business during the depression. The store has become a tourist mecca -- the largest drug store in the world featuring everything from a real drug store, to t-shirts, to western clothing, to rocks, to an animatronic T-Rex that feeds every 12 minutes complete with lights and fog, to ice cream that was so bad Catherine threw it away. For those in NC, this is South of the Border, Dakota style. Note the deer heads and other stuffed critters on the walls of a drug store.
Having had our fill of touristy-junk, we headed back to the Badlands to drive the gravel road out of the park. It's not passable during heavy rain. Luckily it just rained lightly as we went along. It was also better maintained than roads around the Triangle that experience heavy dump truck traffic.
The road travels through miles of prairie -- complete with buffalo dots!
There's also a large Prairie Dog town, complete with Burrowing Owls. Uncle Tim, these are the same as those near your place (the FL Keys), but the western ones have a more pronounced white eyebrows. Oh, and let us reiterate, Prairie Dogs (and baby ones) are ridiculously cute and the animals interactions are hilarious. If you want to be a research ecologist, we'd suggest Prairie Dogs as your specialty. As we exited the park, there were more cow and hay fields. Occasionally, there was a "pothole" which is basically a big shallow mucky puddle with birds in it. We spotted Canada Geese, Blue Wing Teal, Northern Shovelers, Cinnamon Teal, Mallards, Ruddy Ducks, Green Wing Teal and a Wilson's Phalarope. Denise knew what a Phalarope was, Catherine sort of thought he looked like a hyper sandpiper (turns out she was right, but she had to flip through a lot of birds to find him in the book). Along the road, we also saw Killdear, Brown Thrashers, and huge quantities of
We stopped in Rapid City, SD -- population almost 70,000. We drove along the famous Rapid Creek. 30 years ago to the day, it overflowed it's banks, killing several hundred people. Instead of rebuilding, the city made the flood plain a series of parks. It's quite lovely. We stopped at the Prairie Edge (www.siouxtrading.com) which is famous for selling local and Native American crafts. Jeremy Green makes some fabulous wooden vases with inlaid turquoise (for a fabulous price) and some of the moccasins were quite soft, but nothing caught our eye. Much of the stuff was from the Lakota tribe (who have about as much claim to the Dakotas as the European settlers. They kicked other tribes off the land once they acquired horses). The bead work was often fabulous, but to Catherine doesn't seem authentic because they had to get the beads from Italy. If you are interested in Native American art and craft, you should check the website -- everything appeared to be of highest quality.
We also stopped at the jewelry store across the street. They had beautiful work including blue and green diamonds and they were very proud of their work. Denise talked with the young man working their (what, Denise talking with someone? never) who told her that the store was the store for 200 miles in all directions. Crazy, but true. There is nothing else resembling a city in 200 miles. Pasadena, CA has about 2x as many people.
We left Rapid City for the Black Hills. These "hills" have peaks over 7000 feet. Point of trivia -- the nearest point to Mt. Mitchell which is higher than Mt. Mitchell (highest point east of the Mississippi) is Harney Peak in the Black Hills. The mountains are much younger and have a much more rugged feel. Plus they are covered with Ponderosa Pine.
We stopped at Mount Rushmore which is more impressive to Catherine as an engineering feat than as an artistic one. We took the Presidential trail to get as close as possible to the statues. This is another time where effort is not rewarded. It felt like you were looking up their noses. Plus, you could see the round protrusions that come out of the eyes that make the lifelike "sparkle" far way, but up close, look less than appealing. Similar to impressionistic paintings, somethings are just better viewed at a distance.
That being said, we failed to take a good picture at a distance. Denise's camera was acting up and not focusing and Catherine thought Denise was taking pictures. But if you google Mount Rushmore, I'm sure you'll find some good shots.
The highlight of Mount Rushmore was unfortunately not mountain goats. They didn't cooperate. However, a Yellow-Bellied Marmot waddled around for a few minutes.
He was much more impressive than the statue. Sorry folks. Nature wins every time.
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