The Trip – Part 1: We hit the Road to the Badlands and Black Hills
We left Madison and headed west on I-90. Our first stop was a quick overnighter at a park in Minnesota. After battling clouds of mosquitoes (when I hear ads today for “the cloud” I always get itchy) we ended up eating our supper of spaghetti in the tent. The next day we drove across South Dakota, which seemed to take forever, but we finally made it to Badlands National Monument (it’s now a National Park).
I found western South Dakota to be quite interesting, especially after driving across southern Minnesota and the rest of South Dakota. Despite their proximity to each other, the Badlands and the Black Hills are as different as the truth and anything that Rush Limbaugh says. The soft sediments in the Badlands are heavily-eroded, fossil-rich, and worn into strange formations in the surrounding grasslands. The Black Hills are a small, heavily-forested mountain range with outcroppings of granite and other very hard metamorphic rock. When you add other nearby attractions like Custer State Park, Wind Cave, Mount Rushmore, and, of course, Wall Drug — all of which we visited during our several days in the area — we had quite an enjoyable time there.
In case anyone younger than 65 is reading this, it might help to put things into perspective. Driving across the country took a lot longer in 1973. The speed limit was 55 MPH, and, due to an OPEC oil embargo, gas prices were rising quite rapidly. This added a real financial incentive to drive more slowly. Also, we didn’t have one of those fancy 8-track tape players in our car so we had to rely on our AM radio for entertainment. It was sometimes very difficult to find a station that played any kind of music, much less good music. As a result, we often found ourselves listening to the local stock report or to call-in shows where Becky Sue would share her grandma’s famous recipe for rabbit pie.
When we continued west into Wyoming we left the interstate to take a more scenic route on US Highway 12. A night in the Bighorn Mountains provided us with some interesting experiences. We were the only people in a small National Forest campground. As we wandered around we noticed a lot of animal tracks and droppings. Could it be from buffalo or grizzly bears?! We soon realized that the land we were in was open range, which meant that we shared the campground with cattle. Fortunately, no cattle were around. When we climbed into our tent for the night we were kept awake by the sound of howling coyotes. The temperature dropped to freezing that night so when we took down our tent early the next morning it cracked and crunched as we folded it up. We were happy to get into the car, turn on the heater, and head for Yellowstone.