Thursday, June 25, 2020

The good, the bad and the ugly - Badlands, SD

Tuesday, June 18th
We wake up in the Cracker Barrel in Sioux Falls, SD and have a quick breakfast so we can hit the road.  Today, we're headed for Wall, SD - the closest apparent town to the Badlands.  We get on the highway and immediately see a sign for Wall Drug saying to exit in 290 miles. Wow, that's far away, but ok.  We also immediately notice that it is very, very windy (gusts up to 50 mph).  Neil has the steering wheel angled like he's going into a left turn just to stay straight.  The whole RV is shaking and things are rattling around in the cupboards.  Anne is white knuckling the arm rest.  At one point construction takes it down to 1 lane and when a large semi drives by from the other direction, the RV gets jerked around like crazy. Definitely don't want to meet our maker in South Dakota... While driving we see a hundred more signs for Wall Drug, each cheesier than the last.  Finally, after the longest, most stressful 4 hour drive yet, we pull into Wall. Woohoo! Glad that drive is over!

We get set up at the campsite which is only a few blocks from Wall Drug. Score! After the hundreds of ads, we have to go check out Wall Drug and hope it can live up to the hype.  It's a tourist haven, but what's cool is that it's been that for over 100 years.  Advertisements for free ice water were to get people back in the early days of the automobile to stop in.

Is this how Neil wins all those poker nights??




Beautiful Downtown Wall, SD
Anne has found a new pet!!!
Who needs to go to Mount Rushmore, when you can experience it all at Wall Drug..   Neil admiring one of our nation's treasures.

We are about an hour and a half from Mount Rushmore and even though we are both pretty beat after the drive to Wall, we feel like we should go since Neil's never seen it.  On our way, we detour through downtown Rapid City for some dinner.  We do a stroll through downtown and the main street is lined with restaurants and shops. We order salads to go from a steakhouse and find a table outside in a park to eat.  We see dark clouds rolling in and so we start shoving salad down. We are barely half way through when it starts hailing. Hail! What next? We dash for the stairs, watching the hail storm and finish our salads.

Before the hail storm...  Eat fast!!

Hail?! Really?
We head back to the car and hope that this storm blows over before we get to Mount Rushmore. We get there and the rain has stopped (yay!) but there is a lot of lightning so they have cancelled the night light show (bummer!).  But at least the park is still open, so we are able to see it and take some photos.  On the drive home, it begins pouring rain and there is lightning everywhere.At least we are in the car this time. And Anne is driving the car, and since we love to share - she got to share in the tough driving today:)! Wind, hail, rain, and lightning in one day - oh yeah, and did we mention it was 100 degrees - We're starting to wonder if they call it the badlands because of the weather!

Mount Rushmore at night.


The obligatory selfie in front of the construction... At least it was free to get in!!!

Wednesday, June 17th - Badlands
Today we get to visit our first national park on the trip (well our first official visit at least - we are not counting our Smoky Mountain visit). The parks are open again!!  We've been watching Ken Burns documentary on our country's national parks and it's gotten us excited to explore our nation's greatest treasures.

We are driving toward the main gate and on the right there are 5 bison grazing - cool! A few feet later we see some prairie dogs popping out of their holes as if saying "hello and welcome".  It's awesome already and we haven't even stepped into the park.  We buy our annual park pass and cruise into the first scenic outlook.  Wow! It's hard to describe but the view is breathtaking.  We drive through the park on the scenic drive (about 30 miles) to the other end of the park.  We do 2 hikes - Notch trail, which has a 100 (?) foot wobbly ladder you climb and then walk along the edges of a cliff to a peak with a great view and then Door trail, which is less of a trail but goes along the top of a canyon to a lookout down into the canyon.  It's pretty unique in that you can forge your own path to the end of the "trail" with different lookout spots along the way.  The Badlands has a unique "open hike" policy, which means that you can hike anywhere in the park - you don't have to stay on trails.

National Parks are open again! Yay!

Our first glimpse at the Badlands - Wow.


Notch trail - let's do this!  Glad it's only 90 degrees and not 100 like yesterday. 
Yikes!  Hope we don't have any close encounters with one of these. One more reason to call it the Bad-lands

Notch trail selfie
The ladder on Notch Trail - Cool!  

Waiting to climb the ladder

We made it! View from the top of Notch Trail

Panoramic view at top of Notch trail

Neil admiring the view


This place rocks!
Going down the Notch trail ladder - Much harder than going up!

Door trail - you could walk anywhere on the rocks behind us following the yellow posts to the end of the "trail"
Up, down and around along the Door trail.



One of the canyons along the Door trail.

Don't look down!  There's a deep canyon behind us.























  
















We drive back through the park and stop at all the scenic stops a long the way. We debate another hike, but it is hot and we are running low on water, so we decide to head back to the RV for some air conditioning and dinner.  We take a dirt road which takes us the long way but hoping to get a glimpse of some critters, with a plan to come back and check out the stars tonight, as we were told that it is amazing on a clear night.




A friendly goat on the side of the road


Hundreds of prairie dogs live here!

Prairie dogs barking at Neil - "You're too close. Go away."  Sounds familiar (Hamilton).

Bison!   (Not Buffalo as Anne kept calling them)


So many bison!!



After dinner, we head back to the park to watch the sunset and hopefully see some stars. However, on our way over there, we realize that the clouds are rolling in, and we are probably not going to see too many stars this evening. Another ride through the park gives us some great views with some different colors, and we watch the badlands get dark - pretty cool. Of course, on our way home, we see another lightning storm, but we didn't get pounded with rain this time:)!






After arriving back home, we decide to have a relaxing night, as we are both totally worn out and we have a long drive in the morning. Neil did the math a little wrong, and we actually have a 7 hour drive tomorrow to Denver... We are parking in the city for the first time on this trip. We are stopping by the Leech's (Neil's sisters family) house and parking in front. This is a city street in Denver - fingers crossed! Thanks so much for following along, and until next time...

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