Sioux Falls, SD / Drive to Badlands National Park

Friday, August 12

Annoying to have to spend another couple of hours in a mechanic’s waiting room, indeed. But we are glad to at least have it fixed so quickly. (Not like the wastewater pipe, that’s for sure!)

We were off on the road from the mechanic, and drove quickly down to Falls Park in Sioux Falls. An unexpected pleasure, that’s for sure. How pretty.

And then, it was off onto the road again. We passed exit 350 and a sign for the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. (So this was the famous prairie where the little house was!) Shortly, we saw signs telling us the “Corn Palace” was only 20 miles ahead in Mitchell, SD. I had heard about the Corn Palace and decided to stop. Turns out, there wasn’t much to see, other than the outside of the building. The Corn Palace is a concert hall, of sorts. The real attraction is the outside, which gets re-designed and re-done every year – in corn cobs and local grasses! The designs are done by local artists. Now that’s kinda cool. (Yes, the browns and tans on the front of the building are corn cobs and grasses.) 

We snapped a few photos and were back on the road.

My Check Engine light is on again!  (Are you kidding me??? Bleep!  Bleep!  Bleep!  L)

We drove and passed fields of corn, sunflowers, wheat, beans and cattle. We noticed lots of pro-life billboards (guess we’ll keep our politics to ourselves in these red states!). We crossed the lush and broad Missouri River. We crossed into Mountain Time Zone. We noticed lots of American cars. We saw the road twist and turn, just to give the driver something focus on. We noted lots of American cars – and everyone was hauling/pulling/trailing something! Four-door sedans out here look like tiny single-family homes amidst crowds of apartments and high-rise buildings. 

Lots of classic rock on the radio, which we were happy to turn on, to get some weather and catch a bit of news, just to be sure aliens hadn’t invaded in the last couple of days.

We were profoundly impacted by the beautiful colors of the prairie. Greens, yellows, browns, tans, some pink, some red. And that vast big blue sky, filled with puffy white clouds. And clouds that can suddenly fill that huge open sky with an ominous visage. 

And bikes. More folks on the way out of the Sturgis rally.

We crossed into the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. 

And then we saw them. Suddenly, the Badlands popped out of the prairie, seemingly out of nowhere. Oh. My. Gosh. We’ve already seen some beautiful country, but these are very powerful. And we were lucky to be hitting them as the sun was starting to set, so we saw some amazing colors. And the moon hanging just above the rock formations. Holy moley. That’s some pretty beautiful scenery! 

We checked into our campsite, amazed by what we had just seen. We also noted that today was Friday – we’ve been on the road now for four full weeks.