Badlands, South Dakota

Saturday, August 13

I spent the first part of the day stretching and doing a quick workout, as well as meeting another single woman just two campsites down who was traveling alone. Turned out she was from Germany, just north of Stuttgart!

We had a great conversation in German. Her name is Brigitte, and she comes to the U.S. almost every year to visit her sister in Michigan. But she takes 4-5 months and travels throughout the country, wherever she wants to go, in this cool little mini-bus that she ships over from Germany. Was lots of fun to meet her.

Then it was off to explore the Badlands, this time with the sun fully shining. Wow. More beautiful territory.

[N.B. - I recognize that I keep using the word “beautiful” to describe things I’m seeing. And I recognize that word might be a little tired by now. Perhaps I could substitute “awesome,” “gorgeous,” “breath-taking” or “stunning” – all of these would also fit.

Washington, DC – my home – is a beautiful city. Yet I am truly amazed at how many truly beautiful cities and natural treasures this country offers. It’s been a very powerful experience so far.]

And the Badlands are a fine example of this. I’ll stop “talking” now and just let the photos speak for themselves.

And once we’d made it through the Badlands highway, thoroughly impressed by what we'd seen, we headed on to the town of “Wall,” to finally see the famous/infamous Wall Drug. We had made it through 355 miles of roadside billboards along the way. By the time we finally got there, we felt like we absolutely had to stop - our curiosity was so piqued by now! The billboards say it’s the #1 roadside attraction in the U.S., as covered by the “Today” show, “Good Morning America,” “The New York Times” and many other prominent news outlets.

Wall Drug is 76,000 square feet of tourist attraction, including shopping, western art, jewelry, restaurants and even a chapel. The Hustead family settled in Wall, South Dakota in 1931 in a place they deemed “the Middle of Nowhere.” They built up the business, first by offering free ice water to weary travelers. Throw up a few hundred billboards in every direction, offer 5-cent coffee and a sense of western humor and you got yourself a bustling tourist attraction. See Wikipedia’s entry about it here. (Jeff, thanks for the tip on this one!)

We bought a postcard and a few trinkets, got our free bumper sticker and headed back over the Badlands highway to our campground.

Oh, and did I mention the bikes yet?

On the way back, we stopped to watch a bunch of yipping prairie dogs do their thing in the wild. 

We saw more beautiful scenery. And we had dinner with Brigitte and talked till late while sipping a – ahem – “few” glasses of wine. 

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.

Minneapolis, MN / Drive to Sioux Falls, SD

Thursday, August 11  

Auggie and I said good-bye to Liz, Bryan and Kathryn and thanked them for a wonderful stay. (Sorry, Bryan – we didn’t snap any photos of you while we were there!) 

We weren’t in a rush, so we took a final walk around Lake Harriett, very close to Liz & Bryan’s house. It was another gorgeous morning, and the lake was in its splendor. Here are some shots of the scenery. And Auggie plopping around in the lake.

We stopped at a grocery store to fill the fridge for the road. Here’s my co-pilot, getting ready for take-off. And then it was off toward Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

What a drive!

Yes, it was pretty flat. And fairly monotonous with lot of cornfields. Some may call it boring, but I found it strangely beautiful. I had also started listening to Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” on CD, which Emily back in D.C. had given me for my birthday. I listened to the first and part of the second CD on the way across the prairie, exploring the “Beat Generation” for the first time in my life. What a cool thing to be listening to the stories of Jack Kerouac hitchhiking his way from New York to Denver through the cornfields of Iowa, when we were only a few hundred miles north in the cornfields of Minnesota. It was a cool parallel journey.

As we got farther southwest into Minnesota, we also started seeing lots of grain refineries. You know you are in corn country when …

I did a Google image search last night and saw that the refineries we saw were probably Ethanol refineries. (Not knowing much about these things, though, I am only left to assume.)

Also saw a ton of windmills starting to pepper the horizon. There is a ton of wind that can tear across the prairie at full-throttle. I found out later that evening from personal experience that South Dakota gets strong weather – winter and summer – so good to see the region is able to turn some of that natural resource into energy.

We saw our first sign for Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. It’s only 355 miles away! 5-cent coffee and free ice water. (There will be literally hundreds of signs advertising Wall Drug before us …)

Inside the van, however, I was noticing another problem. My “Check Engine” light was now on steadily. Ever since I left Silver Spring, the Check Engine light has been on and off, but always going off. I had been fiddling with the gas cap, and every time I would fill up, it would always go off within a few miles of driving away from the station. But when I filled up in Minnesota, it was on again and did not go off. My mileage has never been more than 14 miles per gallon (I know, I know – my carbon footprint is HUGE in this van!). But this time it was down to 12. Something was wrong.

When I got to Sioux Falls, SD, I was pulling in to the KOA campground where we were booked for the night. Then I noticed there was an RV dealer directly next to the campground – super! I stopped there and they told me they don’t handle any chassis fixes. But, I was in luck – there was a truck service shop just ¼ of a mile down the road that could handle a Chevy, and they were open for another 15 mins.

I drove down and the Service Manager hooked the Champagne Chevy up to a computer, which confirmed that I have a faulty O2 sensor. Ugh. I’m getting kinda sick of the things that go wrong in my ride, man! The good part of this story is, the engine is not going to blow up. And – Aaron the Service Manager said he thought he could squeeze me in tomorrow, probably early afternoon once he got the part in. Looks like Auggie and I will have some time to kill in Sioux Falls, SD tomorrow!