Wall Drug and the Badlands

Hidden among the many miles of prairies, are Minuteman missile silos, the Badlands National Park, and the somewhat (?) famous Wall Drug of Wall, South Dakota.

I didn't get a picture of the Minuteman Missile National Memorial because all you could see was the visitor center, which was very good. There were many displays and photos of an active silo.  The rest was all prairie.

Our next stop was Badlands National Park. In looking at the photos, you may notice a strong resemblance to Tent Rocks in New Mexico. We thought it was amazingly similar. Although the Badlands stretches for many more miles.

It wasn't a very hospitable place, as the Visitor Center placard tells us.

Lastly we made a stop at Wall Drug. This place covers an entire city block in a tiny town that stretches maybe six blocks by four blocks. Here you can pan for gold, take a mining tour, eat lunch at a café that seats 350, sit at an actual soda fountain and have a malt or a shake, view the art gallery, play in the water park, go through about 50 independent shops, and oh, they do have an actual drugstore in the center.

A bit of serendipity happened today. The Great Race is a car road rally held using vintage cars. It just so happened they were traveling the same stretch of road between Rapid City and points east. We saw them going through Badlands and on the interstate; here's one car.

Mount Rushmore!

Tom had been here as a child, but I had never been here before. So after all these years I was very excited to finally see Mount Rushmore in person. We spent a couple of hours hiking around the trails looking at the monument from various different angles, and just generally enjoying the nice weather and cool breeze. 

We have now moved on to Ellsworth Air Force Base.  After a quick replenishment stop at the commissary we found our place at the family camp.  It's chore day for the rest of the day. Laundry, wash the rig, clean the inside. Tomorrow we head out to see the Badlands.

Custer

We left camp early this morning in Hot Springs, and proceeded to Wind Cave National Park. It was a good thing we went early, as there was quite a crowd of people already starting to form. This cave is nothing like the one at Carlsbad, but it does have a unique formation called box work.

Something else interesting about this cave, is that there is a one square mile surface area which the cave is under. Within that one square mile going down about 250 to 300 feet there are over 100 miles of passageways. And they are not yet done exploring the passages. This makes the cave at least the sixth largest cave in the world.

Having had two very busy and full days in a row, we chose to end today fairly early. (Thank you Betty!). We are camped at Custer's Gulch RV park. It is near Custer, South Dakota and it is in the same ravine where George Armstrong Custer had his encampment.

Last but not least I included two photos of one of the quilts that was hanging in the visitor center at Wind Cave National Park. Some of my friends will really appreciate the quality of the quilt work.

This is a quilted representation of Mount Rushmore for the National Park Centennial

Detail of Washington

Hot Springs

Drove up today through Nebraska. Stopped at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, which is really great if you're into fossils. Not so exciting if you aren't. Then we stopped by the Museum of Fur Trading.  Excellent museum that covers fur trading across the entire continent. Amazing artifacts and explanations of how the fur trade helped to establish the United States.  "The Revenant" costumes on display, as this museum was the technical advisor for Period Authenticity on the film.

There is also a little trading post which was actively used for many years.

Despite the record-breaking heat, that's our intrepid trader awaiting us at the door where inside it's a cool temperature because most of the trading post is built into the side of the hill.

Our last stop for the day was the Mammoth Site, which is an ongoing archaeological dig in the middle of the city. They have found the bones from over 61 Columbian and woolly mammoth here. There was a Hot Spring that was so attractive to the mammoth that they fell in but could not get out.

It was so hot today that by the end of the day all we could think about was jumping into the pool back at the RV park. They named it Hot Springs because of the natural Hot Springs waters that bubble up here, but today it was just plain hot everywhere.

Traveling the Oregon Trail in Nebraska

It was an interesting night last night. The smoke alarm went off about an hour after we went to bed.  We both leapt out of bed but couldn't figure out how to silence the alarm.  Tom finally yanked it off it's mount and shoved it underneath the covers. That muffled it enough that we could deal with it later. It finally turned off and we went back to sleep after the adrenaline stopped pumping. Not sure what set it off but we blew some air through it and it seemed to be OK and did not go off the rest of the night.  Then when leaving this morning we somehow got out of sync with our regular routine and didn't do all the things we normally do and managed to leave our temperature gauge behind somewhere at our site, plus we didn't get all the tanks empty.  

It was turning into a real comedy of errors at that point. We had an uneventful drive up towards Scotts Bluff and then we took the scenic detour. Nothing happened on the detour but we did take the long way around. We saw Courthouse rock, Jail rock, Chimney Rock, and finally Scotts Bluff.  By the time we finally got there we felt just like the original pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail leaving bits of our things behind and making do with the supplies on hand.

America's First RV's

The intrepid pioneer spies Chimney Rock near the trail.

The view from atop Scotts Bluff

We never expected June to be this Hot!

Neither did the folks who live here.  We arrived this afternoon at our camp stop for the night just south of Pueblo.  The temperature is 99 degrees, and most of the park has jumped into the pool to cool off.  Not wanting to cook, we stopped at the conveniently located Obie's Fillin' station and bought Texas style real smoked barbecue for dinner. Gassed up the rig at the same time and we're ready to roll in the morning.  Supposed to be cooler in Nebraska tomorrow.

Here's a little picture out the window, we got very lucky and have a shady site with trees, which help a lot with comfort, but we are really happy to have air conditioning!

I just noticed when I looked more closely at the picture...that's the smoke plume from the New Mexico and/or Arizona wildfires causing the haze over the mountains in the distance.

Here we go again....

Well folks, the sporadic and occasional blog is warming up and about to get some use again.  We leave on Sunday for an RV trip to the Midwest and to add about four new states to the travel map.

Actually, this is just Cheryl's map, because Tom has already visited every state except Maine.  And technically I have been in both Wisconsin and Massachusetts, but I am not counting them yet as they were just an airport transfer or a drive across a bridge and then turning around.  But I do expect to add both of those on an actual visit this year.  Wisconsin in the next couple of weeks and Massachusetts this fall.   So stayed tuned for more.