Travelblog episode 6: Badlands, Wall Drug, and in to the Black Hills of Dakota

So, as I mentioned before, at 6 or so we pried ourselves out of the cars and assessed the damage. Our tent was definitely hosed, and went straight in the trash. The girls tent was hosed for now, but possibly fixable since the two broken poles were only broken in one segment. And better still, the tent itself seemed to have held together. So it was possible we'd only have to buy one tent. But since there were more storms in the forecast, and since other than Logan none of us had slept well, we decided to spend the night in a motel. And thanks to the fine folk at Expedia.com the Ramada Inn in Black Hawk, SD was the motel for us!

But first it was time to do some touristing. We headed back up in to the Badlands National Park, stopping to walk up to the "Door" and "Window" and take more pictures.

Cool rock formation...


Cool dried out mud...


Cool kids posing in the "door"


And some crazy cool Badlands!

Then we drove down through the park heading for Wall, where Matt introduced me to "You Look Nice Today" podcasts, which are high-larious and led to far too many exhaustion-enhanced fits of giggling. Which make it hard to drive, I hope you know.

Our next stop was in Wall. First at the Wall Dairy Queen for lunch, then on to Wall Drug for yet more craptastic Americana. I'd been to Wall Drug back in the '70s when I was a boy (and possibly the '80s as a teen), but I had no recollection of what a carnival of kitch the place is. Oh my God. They had it all. Well, all except replacement poles for tents. But they did have big bins of shiny rocks for kids to buy, and funky earrings for kids to buy, and post cards for kids to buy, and ice cream and pie for parents to buy for kids. And it was air conditioned, which is always a good thing.

After we were crapped out we got back on the road and rolled through Rapid City up to Black Hawk and the Ramada, checked in, then piled in the Commander and headed off to Mt. Rushmore to see the lighting ceremony. The ceremony, as I mentioned before, is both inspiring and cheesy, both patriotic and almost jingoistic (although I'm sure I'm using that word wrong...). But the mountain looks really cool with the lights on, as you can see from the photo:

Finally, we made our way down the mountain and back to Black Hawk where the boy's room fell asleep and slept soundly, while the girls' room was filled with snoring (from Paige) and sobbing (from Maya) and non-sleeping (from Megan and Maya, and Paige since they kept waking her up telling her not to snore). So our night of motel rest worked for half of us, but not so much for the other half. Ah well...

Travelblog episode 5: Corn Palace, Badlands and Bad weather

Tuesday we were woken by the sun and the birds. We got up, ate some breakfast, and hit the road for South Dakota. First stop that day was at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, a building that is entirely deocrated by corn and grains and advertised for miles around by bilboards with really corn-y jokes. The history of the Corn Palace dates back to, um, the early 1900s. or maybe the late 1800s. One of those. Anyhow, they're on their third building now, after a couple wood ones burned down. The current Palace serves as the city's (and possibly county's) convention center, sports arena, and tourist trap. Every year the exterior is decorated in a series of murals around a central theme, all done with corn.

The exterior of the wonderous Corn Palace

On the inside there are more murals, these designed by an artist back in the, oh, 1930s or so, that show the ways the Native Americans and white settlers viewed the land and how they work together to preserve it. Or something. All I really remember was that it's made of corn and looked kind of cool. We bought some corny souveniers, and headed off to find some lunch and a grocery store for more ice. Once that was done it was back to I-90 and further west in to South Dakota.

Interior corn murals and the spacious corn-y gift shop


Maya and Megan picking the nose of a sculpture across the street from the Corn Palace

We pushed on across most of the state, finally pulling off the freeway at the exit for the Badlands. We were heading for the white River KOA, just south of the park. it was running about 95 degrees out, and we weren't really looking forward to getting out of the cars. But we did, once we got there, and set up the tents. Since none of us were hungry for dinner yet, we decided to split up: the girls and Logan changed in to their swimsuits and headed for the pool, and Matt and I went off to take pictures of the Badlands. And here are a few:

We met up back at the campsite at around 7, made some spaghetti, slapped more bugs (no-see-ums now in addition to the mosquitos), and spent some quality time with the internets. Said internets showed that there was a good chance that we'd see a thunder storm that night. "Well," I thought, "the tents have good rain flies, so we'll stay dry...I'll just make sure everything gets put away in a car before we go to sleep." Here's what the nice, clean camp site looked like:

We got in the tents at around 10, and Paige and I lay there watching the lightning in the distance. Maybe we'd luck out and the storm would stay to the south...No such luck. The wind hit at around midnight or one (I didn't check my watch). This was my first wind storm in a tent with fiberglass poles. I'd weathered a few storms in the Timberline, but not one like this. The wind was howling - no idea how strong it was, but I'd guess 60 or so on the higher gusts - and every time it gusted hard the tent basically collapsed on top of us. So I pushed on one pole with my hand and the other with my foot and tried to keep everything standing up. After 5 minutes of this or so Paige got up to check on the girls and I got up to make sure the guy lines hadn't pulled out of the ground. The girls evacuated their tent and came in ours, but with noone pushing out on the poles they were basically as well off as if they'd stayed in their own tent. And then...snap! one of the poles on our tent broke. And by "broke" I mean "split in two and punched a hole through the tent and the rain fly." Crap. Then snap! Snap! two poles in the girls' tent broke. Double crap. And then one corner of the timberline that the boys were in pulled free, which wasn't nearly as craptastic as broken poles, 'cause Matt could tie it to the conveniently nearby picnic table.

But by now it was raining. Hard. And even the timberline was getting wet inside thanks to the wind blowing the rain fly up against the wall of the tent, so we all retreated to the cars.

If you've never spent a night in a car in the middle of a thunder storm, I don't recommend it. Really. It's not comfortable. You have to crack a window so it doesn't get totally stuffy and hot, but then the rain drips in. And you can't recline the seat, 'cause either the back seat is full of crap or full of another person. So you can't really relax, and you can't really sleep, you can just doze and get dripped on. Which we did for another hour or so, until the storm had blown through. By then Logan was asleep curled up in the back of the Sebring, and I sent Matt back to the Timberline (which, even at 25+ years old, had weathered the storm just fine) to sleep on the dry side). I took the passenger seat, reclined it as much as I could without squishing the boy, and dozed until about 6. Not the best way to spend the night, but hey...we weren't dead!