Bad Lands...
Sep. 26th, 2021 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanDay 17... South Dakota - Wyoming - South Dakota
Sept 27. Thursday – Keystone to Sioux Falls
A driving day. Also another three-State day, if leaving South Dakota for Wyoming, then coming back into South Dakota counts... Having been up ‘til late last night catching up on this diary, our rise wasn’t as early as expected, but we hit the road with Julia behind the wheel for the first time. Our destination was the Devils Tower in the Black Hills... of Wyoming. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it as South Dakota, does it & we’d assumed the Tower was in S.Dakota because of the Black Hills location. But no, it seems some geographies don't recognise arbitrary borders, so over the State line we went, by freeway & some winding back roads, until we reached the small town of Hulett, not far from the Tower itself. We went there first because we were incredibly low on fuel, having passed up all other filling opportunities on the way... for some reason. Anyway, it’s quite an eccentric little place, with a population of just over three hundred. Part frontier town, part backwater, but the local museum was an interesting place to wander through & the petrol pump accepted Australian credit cards, so the place was just fine by us
Come on in...
The road back to Devils Tower afforded a rear-view of the monolith, which revealed a vertical curve you don’t see in all the photos & films it’s been in. The more famous view is from the ‘front’, near the National Park entrance & good views can be had from the parking lot of the Trading Post, where you can also be had for the usual tourist trinkets, albeit with a space alien twist, thanks to the Tower’s featured roles in both Close Encounters.. & later Paul. We decided to not go into the Park, as the views from outside were probably the best – seen up close the Tower would look like just another large rock & we have plenty of photos of those
'Round the back...
No signs of an alien landing strip that we could see, but maybe you can only see it at the top. The rock itself is a volcanic ‘plug’, where lava came up through the earth, then rapidly cooled, leaving this National Monument sealing the passageway to the centre of the earth – we'll leave someone else to write that story... It was used as a landmark for settlers heading west, back in the 19th century, as kind of a ’Turn Left Here' sign for those bound for the western gold fields. Of course, such an ancient & striking feature would also be significant to the local Kiowa & Lakota tribes, who call it Bear Lodge Butte & have stories of its creation by the Great Spirit... which are much more fun to read than a dry, academic explanation about tectonics, mantles & minerals. Unfortunately, we didn’t really have time to explore the surrounding lands, nor to wait for evening to hopefully see a UFO come in to land... so, with Steve McQueen filled up & with a change of driver (me), we headed south-east for the Badlands, back over the border, backtracking towards Rapid City, then plenty of six-lane freeway
Badlands National Park was actually on our way towards Minnesota & Wisconsin, so it was only a minor detour to drive through these inhospitable-looking rocks & valleys which are really quite beautiful... as long as you aren’t trying to take a wagon train through them to California, as thousands of people did over a hundred years ago. Golden grass plains suddenly give way to volcanic, sharp-edged ridges & peaks with bands of red & white rock interspersed with some oddly yellow mounds in some places. You can understand how the area got its name when you imagine yourself at the head of a wagon-train, rolling cumbersomely across the grasslands, when you suddenly come across this lunar landscape that you can’t get the wagons through, so you have to go around... & it’s not a small area. Sure, we drove through it in a couple of hours, but we were using a far more powerful version of horsepower. Grass grows on top of some of the flatter features, but the only wildlife we saw was on the grass plains, where goats, wild sheep & prairie dogs competed with the rocks for photo opportunities
We met a couple from Minnesota at one of the viewpoints, who recognised our Australian accents, noted the Californian number plate on Steve & wondered what on earth we were doing in South Dakota. They were impressed hearing about both the varied trip so far & the scope of what’s still to come. Obviously most 'Middle' Americans expect tourists to only go to L.A., Vegas & New York. Well, two out of those three for us on this trip won’t be too bad, but we plan to see more than that. I mean, what about Chicago??!!. A few postcards from the Visitors Centre at the end of the trail & then we were back on the Interstate 90, with the aim of getting over the State line to Minnesota by evening...
Didn’t happen. Due to roadworks & other delays, we made it as far as Sioux Falls, in the bottom-right corner of South Dakota, at about 8.45pm... only it was now 9.45pm due to us having crossed into another time zone somewhere on the road. This in turn made getting any decent dinner rather difficult, as all the food places were closed or closing. Shamefully, we had to patronise McDonalds. Again
Checking in at a Motel 6, the girl at the desk asked me “Is that your real voice?” when we walked in to ask for a room overnight. Having been assured that I wasn’t being a smartarse (for a change), just Australian, we lugged in the suitcases & the Nespresso machine for a reasonably early night, before another day of miles to go tomorrow. It’s a seven hour drive to ‘House on the Rock’ in Wisconsin, according to Jeeves the Navman, so re-named for the crisp British male voice we’ve found for it
Sept 27. Thursday – Keystone to Sioux Falls
A driving day. Also another three-State day, if leaving South Dakota for Wyoming, then coming back into South Dakota counts... Having been up ‘til late last night catching up on this diary, our rise wasn’t as early as expected, but we hit the road with Julia behind the wheel for the first time. Our destination was the Devils Tower in the Black Hills... of Wyoming. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it as South Dakota, does it & we’d assumed the Tower was in S.Dakota because of the Black Hills location. But no, it seems some geographies don't recognise arbitrary borders, so over the State line we went, by freeway & some winding back roads, until we reached the small town of Hulett, not far from the Tower itself. We went there first because we were incredibly low on fuel, having passed up all other filling opportunities on the way... for some reason. Anyway, it’s quite an eccentric little place, with a population of just over three hundred. Part frontier town, part backwater, but the local museum was an interesting place to wander through & the petrol pump accepted Australian credit cards, so the place was just fine by us
Come on in...
The road back to Devils Tower afforded a rear-view of the monolith, which revealed a vertical curve you don’t see in all the photos & films it’s been in. The more famous view is from the ‘front’, near the National Park entrance & good views can be had from the parking lot of the Trading Post, where you can also be had for the usual tourist trinkets, albeit with a space alien twist, thanks to the Tower’s featured roles in both Close Encounters.. & later Paul. We decided to not go into the Park, as the views from outside were probably the best – seen up close the Tower would look like just another large rock & we have plenty of photos of those
'Round the back...
No signs of an alien landing strip that we could see, but maybe you can only see it at the top. The rock itself is a volcanic ‘plug’, where lava came up through the earth, then rapidly cooled, leaving this National Monument sealing the passageway to the centre of the earth – we'll leave someone else to write that story... It was used as a landmark for settlers heading west, back in the 19th century, as kind of a ’Turn Left Here' sign for those bound for the western gold fields. Of course, such an ancient & striking feature would also be significant to the local Kiowa & Lakota tribes, who call it Bear Lodge Butte & have stories of its creation by the Great Spirit... which are much more fun to read than a dry, academic explanation about tectonics, mantles & minerals. Unfortunately, we didn’t really have time to explore the surrounding lands, nor to wait for evening to hopefully see a UFO come in to land... so, with Steve McQueen filled up & with a change of driver (me), we headed south-east for the Badlands, back over the border, backtracking towards Rapid City, then plenty of six-lane freeway
Badlands National Park was actually on our way towards Minnesota & Wisconsin, so it was only a minor detour to drive through these inhospitable-looking rocks & valleys which are really quite beautiful... as long as you aren’t trying to take a wagon train through them to California, as thousands of people did over a hundred years ago. Golden grass plains suddenly give way to volcanic, sharp-edged ridges & peaks with bands of red & white rock interspersed with some oddly yellow mounds in some places. You can understand how the area got its name when you imagine yourself at the head of a wagon-train, rolling cumbersomely across the grasslands, when you suddenly come across this lunar landscape that you can’t get the wagons through, so you have to go around... & it’s not a small area. Sure, we drove through it in a couple of hours, but we were using a far more powerful version of horsepower. Grass grows on top of some of the flatter features, but the only wildlife we saw was on the grass plains, where goats, wild sheep & prairie dogs competed with the rocks for photo opportunities
We met a couple from Minnesota at one of the viewpoints, who recognised our Australian accents, noted the Californian number plate on Steve & wondered what on earth we were doing in South Dakota. They were impressed hearing about both the varied trip so far & the scope of what’s still to come. Obviously most 'Middle' Americans expect tourists to only go to L.A., Vegas & New York. Well, two out of those three for us on this trip won’t be too bad, but we plan to see more than that. I mean, what about Chicago??!!. A few postcards from the Visitors Centre at the end of the trail & then we were back on the Interstate 90, with the aim of getting over the State line to Minnesota by evening...
Didn’t happen. Due to roadworks & other delays, we made it as far as Sioux Falls, in the bottom-right corner of South Dakota, at about 8.45pm... only it was now 9.45pm due to us having crossed into another time zone somewhere on the road. This in turn made getting any decent dinner rather difficult, as all the food places were closed or closing. Shamefully, we had to patronise McDonalds. Again
Checking in at a Motel 6, the girl at the desk asked me “Is that your real voice?” when we walked in to ask for a room overnight. Having been assured that I wasn’t being a smartarse (for a change), just Australian, we lugged in the suitcases & the Nespresso machine for a reasonably early night, before another day of miles to go tomorrow. It’s a seven hour drive to ‘House on the Rock’ in Wisconsin, according to Jeeves the Navman, so re-named for the crisp British male voice we’ve found for it
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Date: 2021-09-26 03:21 pm (UTC)