We pulled out of our driveway in our red Retro trailer Sunday morning, September 18, 2016 heading for South Dakota’s Badlands and Rocky Mountain National Park. We planned on driving 200-300 miles on travel days and then stay in the best places like the Badlands and Rocky Mountain National Park for several since we had four weeks planned for this trip.
Our first stop was Madison, Wisconsin, 136 miles from our driveway. After that we’d only have 700 miles to go to reach the Badlands in South Dakota.
The three things we wanted to do in his trip were check out bike trails, hike and shoot photos. Madison fit in with its good bike trail system.
From Madison we made our way west through Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota.
In South Dakota we stayed in the town of Mitchell, home to the “World’s Only Corn Palace”. I thought it’d be a rickety building with some murals made out of corn on the outside, but actually it’s a frequently used modern event and exhibition space. The exterior corn murals are changed yearly, probably because the pigeons are hard at work pecking out kernels, but the interior ones are permanent.
We finally arrived at the Badlands after 7 days touring. The temperature was in low 80s days / 40s at night. The Badlands are surreal, the towering spires eroded out of what was a lake bed some 75 – 35 million years ago. The 40 mile Badlands Loop Road goes right through them, many people drive through making a stop here and there to see a vista or the prairie dog village and then go on their way like the pioneers did, assessing the area as unproductive and a “Badlands”.
We made our way to Custer, South Dakota for the 51st annual Buffalo Roundup in Custer State Park. The cow pokes slowly herded hundreds of buffalo into pens. They are inoculated and counted before being released back into the park.
While in Custer, we pulled the bikes down and rode the Michelson Bike Trail. The stretch north out of Custer is stunning, through valleys with mountains in the background. We even had views of Crazy Horse Memorial at one point.
We heard there was a Volksmarch at the Crazy Horse Memorial so we laced up and hiked 6.2 miles through woods & mountains right up to the Crazy Horse memorial with a few thousand others.
We decided to go to Mt. Rushmore for the lighting at 8 pm, it was the second to the last one of the year so our timing was good. The lighting ceremony was quite patriotic and moving. It’s a video with narration about Washington (the nation’s birth), Jefferson (nation building), Lincoln (nation in crisis), and Roosevelt (our nation becomes a world power). Following the video, the mountain faces are lit. The master of ceremonies invited all the veterans in the audience to the stage for a flag lowering ceremony. Each gave his or her rank, name and branch.
The limit of our westward travel was Estes Park, Colorado. We’d been there before* and revisiting Rocky Mountain National Park was magic.
*(It was June 1972 and I thought Colorado mountains would be warm like Chicago…I shivered in the tent every night.)
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After Rocky Mountain National Park we visited Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A most amazing place set right in the heart of a metropolis.
We pulled back in our driveway in Glen Ellyn, Illinois after 32 days and 3,687 miles in time to watch the third presidential debate of 2016!