Chapter 41 – The Dakotas
July 24, 1999
7/10/99 We’re traveling on a schedule again, with a need to be in Minneapolis to meet a plane and pick up Andy and Kat Nagel on July 24. Knowing that in the next 10 days we have exactly X places to visit and must spend exactly Y days at each changes the entire feel of the experience. I'm realizing that I hate schedules. What a change from our working days, when an unscheduled day was a strange and uncomfortable rarity.
Leaving Rocky Mountain National Park, we retraced our path out of the mountains on US 36, down to Interstate 25, then went north on I-25 through Cheyenne, before branching off to the northeast on the "blue roads" - US 85, then SR 151, 88, 71, 2, 87, US 20. We initially marked a KOA in Scottsbluff as our first night's stop. But as we reached Scottsbluff, the day was still relatively young, we were still enjoying the drive, and we decided to keep going. The more miles we covered today, the earlier we could reach Badlands National Park tomorrow, improving our chances of getting a campsite within the park.
So we drove on for another hour to Walgren Lake State Recreation Area, where we discovered that Nebraska State Recreation Areas are a little strange. We drove down a rutted gravel road to find the place. It looked very nice, but when we finally deciphered the instructions at the entrance, we found that we would have to drive back to the town of Hay Springs, retracing our steps by around 10 miles, to get an entrance permit. The sign didn't even say *where* to go for the permit in Hay Springs. After driving the 20-mile round trip, we could then enter the campground, and pay our $3.00 for a night's boondocking. We chose to keep going toward our ultimate destination.
Our next stop, 45 minutes later, was Cottonwood Lake State Recreation Area, near Merriman. Similar problem – but at least this place had a more informative sign which told us where to go in Merriman to get the entry permit, and the town was only a couple of miles away. So we went back, to a place called "The Store". It was closed of course, late on a Saturday evening. But a handwritten note on the door said that when the store was closed we could get entry permits and fishing licenses next door at the bar. Indeed, this proved true, and I bought an entry permit for $2.75 from a cooperative bartender, in the midst of the Saturday night merriment of the local bar crowd. There was a saddled horse tied up just outside the front door of the bar.
Returning to the park, we deposited our $3.00 camping fee at a self-pay kiosk, and drove the rig onto the grass at a random, fairly level spot in the park. There were no designated camping areas – just pick a spot of grass and park the rig. It's a pretty spot – a small lake ringed with cottonwood trees, a little landing for launching fishing boats, a pit toilet, a well with a hand-operated pump (the old-fashioned kind with a built in squeak that can be heard a mile away), and many acres of grass and picnic tables. Three other RV's were there – also just stopping for the night. A noisy carload of teenagers was on the other side of the lake partying, but left about sundown.
Just after sundown, the kids were replaced by a noisy flock of Canada geese who flew in to camp for the night. There were also half a dozen large white birds - snow geese or pelicans? - which appeared about dark, too late to get a good look at them, and were gone in the morning. The night was dark and quiet (after the geese went to sleep), the two streetlights in the park were not lighted (thanks perhaps to state budget constraints), and the stars were magnificent.
7/11 Our route continued north on SR 61, which became SR 73 at the South Dakota border. After a 35-mile jog back west on SR 44, we turned north for a couple of miles on SR 377 and pulled into the Cedar Pass campground in Badlands National Park. Almost the entire 90 miles of travel in South Dakota was within the Pine Mountain Indian Reservation – home of the Lakota Nation of the Oglala Sioux. When we arrived, early Sunday afternoon, the 96-site campground was nearly empty. By dark, it was nearly full. Apparently, this is a one-day park – nearly everyone stops here for one night, and then moves on to somewhere else the next day.
The terrain didn't change much as we crossed portions of Wyoming, Nebraska, and then South Dakota. It's all gently rolling grassland, still verdant from the spring rains. We gradually began to see deeper grass, more trees, and more non-irrigated farming as we moved north and east and dropped in altitude, but otherwise could hardly distinguish one place from another. The roadside floral diversity is decreasing as we move deeper into the Great Plains. In the mountains, we could find dozens of different flowers along the road with little effort. Here, it's difficult to find four. The total diversity may not be any less, however. We spent some time in the Visitor's Center at Badlands learning about grass – and discovered that there are dozens of varieties growing locally. Now we can even identify a few of these.
Badlands National Park is known primarily for the sculpted cliffs of soft grey, orange, and yellow rock, eroded into fantastic shapes by wind and rain. The rock is barely worthy of the name – very soft. It was deposited over the last 60 million years, silt and sand, occasionally mixed with volcanic ash which drifted in from volcanoes far to the west. As the Rocky Mountains were thrust upwards, the Great Plains as a whole were gradually and smoothly tilted up, so that a band about 500 miles wide, extending at least 1000 miles north to south, slopes gently, imperceptibly, down to the East. (We've dropped from 5300 feet above sea level, on the high plains in the Denver area, to 2600 feet here, and will be down to 700 feet by the time we get to the Mississippi in Minneapolis - all without any significant hills.). This gradual uplift drained the inland seas and started the erosion process, but left the rock layers almost perfectly planar – an interesting contrast to the chaotically twisted and folded rocks characteristic of the Rocky Mountains.
The road through Badlands National Park follows the modest cliff edge for about 40 miles, sometimes on the relative flat plateau at the top, sometimes down on the relatively flat plains at the bottom, and several times climbing up or down through the surreal landscape of the transition zone. From viewpoints on top, the views were very interesting – we were standing in lush grassland, looking across the zone of steep, rapidly eroding, largely unvegetated slopes, out to a broad expanse of flat grass-covered prairie, broken in the south by the shallow canyon of the White River.
In addition to the badlands for which it is named, the park, and the adjacent Buffalo Gap National Grassland, are also important in preserving some of the last remaining natural prairie grasslands. Herds of bison wander the grasslands, relatively unrestrained. We walked through a huge prairie dog city. It looked just like the ones in the zoos – except that this one was several acres in extent. We stood and watched the busy "city" for some time – hundreds of these cute little animals scurrying about their business, while a few sentries sat tall and almost motionless, scanning the horizon for danger. Park naturalists have decided that prairie dog life in the park is too idyllic. They are in the process of reintroducing the black-footed ferret, which has been extinct in this area for many years and was the natural predator of the prairie dogs.
7/12 The drive northwest to Deadwood, South Dakota, began with a long stretch of Interstate 90, through yet more rolling grasslands. At Rapid City, we turned off on SR 44, and then US385, which winds through the Black Hills, climbing gradually into pine forest. We stopped at Fish'n'Fry Campground – a funky place with a bicycle on the roof, deer antlers hanging from the eaves, and a room full of random junk, called a "museum". But the owner is friendly and helpful, there are some large attractive campsites (mostly water and electric only), and they have a modem plug alongside the payphone, accessible 24 hours a day.
We arrived early enough to head out and do a couple of tours in late afternoon. We first did the tour of the Homestake Mine which mines and refines gold in the town of Lead (pronounced "Leed" – a mining term – not "Ledd", the metal). This is one of the largest and longest-operating mines in the world. The mine has both open-pit surface operations and hundreds of miles of underground tunnels, going down as far as 8000 feet. At that distance down, the rock temperature is approaching 140 degrees, and even with massive amounts of air conditioning, the employees are working at temperatures over 90 degrees, with very high humidity. The surface mining has resulted in a pit 800 feet deep. Over the years, as this pit has expanded, major portions of the city of Lead have been relocated further away from the pit on three separate occasions.
At the moment, the surface operations are shut down, waiting for the price of gold to improve. The deep underground mines continue to operate. We stood in the shafthouse watching a huge elevator bringing 25-ton loads of ore up from 1.5 miles down in the earth – one load every few minutes. The load is dumped into a hopper high up in the building, and cascades down into a series of rod and ball mills. The noise and vibration, as the huge chunks of ore are gradually reduced to a fine powder, are truly amazing. They process many tons of rock to get an ounce of gold (and perhaps a little silver as a byproduct).
Following the mine tour, we drove a few blocks up the street to the Mining Museum. The upper part of the museum is devoted to the history and geology of the area and the history of mining technology (specifically as applicable to the local gold mines.) Below the museum, a simulated gold mine has been constructed. The tunnels really aren't a very good simulation of real rock tunnels, but the interesting part is the exposition of past and present mining techniques. The collection of real mining equipment, installed in the simulated mine tunnels, is very interesting. The guide was a retired mine employee who knew his subject in great detail, making the tour very worthwhile.
Later, we drove through the town and around the area, enjoying the picturesque old buildings, the many old mines (some still operating, and the gigantic piles of colorful (and toxic) mine tailings.
7/13 Moving right along – we stayed only one night and continued toward Devil's Tower National Monument, near Sundance, Wyoming. We chose US 14A, a winding road that heads southwest from Deadwood, wandering through pretty valleys in the northern Black Hills, mostly open Ponderosa pine forest, before eventually looping north and delivering us to Interstate 90 near Spearfish. Continuing west on I-90, the country is again rolling grassland. At Sundance, 20 miles after crossing into Wyoming, we turned off on US 14 and continued up to Devil's Tower, stopping at the Devil's Tower KOA – right at the entrance to the park, with a great view of the Tower itself. This is an unusually nice KOA – large sites, spacious layout, and convenient location. The weather has continued hot, and fairly humid, so we're generally preferring hookups and air conditioning rather than scenery and low cost when selecting campgrounds.
We had time in the afternoon to drive the park roads and see the Visitor's Center. In late evening, after the temperature had dropped somewhat, we hiked the 1.3-mile trail which circumnavigates the Tower. The tower itself is a column of light-colored igneous rock which intruded vertically through softer sedimentary rock during the formation of a volcano. As the rock cooled, it contracted and cracked – linear cracks along the flow lines, leaving long, smooth generally five-sided vertical flutes along all of the exposed surface. The soft rock eventually wore away, leaving the tower exposed. This is one of the world's premier rock climbing destinations, attracting thousands of climbers per year, and at several points along the path, we stopped to watch climbers struggling up the cracks between the 800-foot nearly vertical rock columns. Each face of the tower is a little different, and in the late evening sunlight, we stopped to take photographs from several different angles as we went around the base. The path is generally well away from the base, winding through a pile of huge boulders which have fallen away from the tower over the last few million years. In a couple of spots, the path winds right up against the base of the cliffs. Part way along the hike, Helen was pleased to find a little meadow with many Sego Lilies in full bloom – the first of the year for us.
A one-hour photo shop was conveniently located across the road from the campground, so we were able to get film printed - several rolls of film from the past few days, as well as a roll taken of the tower. It's rare that we get to look at our photos while we can still compare the pictures to the real thing.
7/14 Devil's Tower was yet another one-night stand. We got underway about 11 AM, headed north toward Theodore Roosevelt National Park – one of the National Parks of which we were completely unaware until we started systematically going through the list of parks while planning this leg of our trip. We followed SR 24 up the Belle Fourche River, over a pass, across the state line back into South Dakota, and down Hay Creek – about 40 miles of attractive country – alternating meadows and pine forest. Then, we turned onto US 85 and followed it for almost 200 miles north into North Dakota.
This is attractive country – with enough precipitation to support vast fields of wheat, hay, canola, flax, etc., without irrigation. There are even a few trees, along the streams and in the hollows. But it is also one of the poorest and least populated stretches of highway we've driven – rivaling the highways of eastern Nevada in this respect. The census data shows population densities generally around one person per square mile, and average per-capita incomes as low as $6,000, suggesting that ranching and farming isn't very profitable (or perhaps the profit all goes to absentee landowners?). We saw occasional oil wells, but none appeared to be operating. The highway goes through a few tiny towns along the way, but most are just a crossroads, with populations ranging from 49 to a few hundred.
We arrived at Medora, North Dakota in late afternoon, checked in to the Medora Campground, and fired up the air conditioner. Temperatures in the 90's seem to us rather strange for this far north – but we read that it's not atypical in the Great Plains.
7/15 A 36-mile scenic drive winds through the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, passing numerous areas of interesting geology. We walked the Coal Vein Trail, past exposed veins of soft lignite coal, some of which burned underground for decades. The burned areas left layers of red brick - soft shale that was baked into a hard ceramic by the heat of the fires. In some areas, the ground collapsed as the underlying coal burned away. Several prairie dog towns are close to the road. These animals are fascinating to watch. In several places we saw whole families (of humans) seated comfortably on the ground in the middle of the town, sitting quietly enough so that the prairie dogs got used to them and continued with their business - some scurrying around hunting food, and always a few sitting up tall on top of little mounds, ready to warn of danger.
7/16 A cold front finally passed through last night, heralded by a violent thunderstorm - some of the most spectacular lightning we've seen. We stood outside and watched the show for a long time, until finally driven in by a downpour of rain. Today was a rest day - relaxing at the trailer, enjoying the first cool weather in a while, catching up on labeling and indexing photographs, and other such tasks.
7/17 We drove to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and took the long scenic drive through the park - a round trip of about 170 miles from our campground, but worth it. The park land is high grassy plains, cut with impressive canyons leading down to the Little Missouri River, which runs through the middle of this section of the Park. The geology is interesting - sedimentary rock eroded into extensive "badlands" of fantastic forms. In some areas, huge slump blocks are visible - sections of the upper bluff which slid intact down to the valley floor. At one stop, we saw a collection of "cannonball concretions" - almost spherical boulders of hard rock, some of them several feet in diameter included in the softer sandstone. As the sandstone erodes, these cannonballs come loose and roll down to the foot of the cliff. The park interpretive material offered no speculations as to how or why these spherical rocks formed.
From the end of the road, we walked a trail across the prairie to an overlook where we could see many miles of the Little Missouri. This section of the park has substantial herds of bison. One herd was quite close to the road. At one point, we crept slowly past a huge old bull, who was ambling slowly down the shoulder of the road.
7/18/99 As we towed the trailer east this morning, without a specific destination planned, my concerns about the truck handling returned. The steering definitely pulls to the left, under any driving conditions, and I've been noticing abnormal wear on the outer tread edge of the left front tire. Bismarck, ND seems like a good place to stop for a day or two - big enough to have everything we need, small enough to get to everything without driving many miles. There's a big grocery list, film to be developed, and we both need haircuts too!
The drive to Bismarck, entirely on Interstate 94, was uneventful, passing through rolling grassland, much of it now being cut for hay. The occasional burst of drying hay odor was pleasant. Even the shoulders of the expressway are cut for hay, with hay bales sitting randomly along the roadside waiting for pickup.
The farmers have a sense of humor when it comes to building haystacks (or perhaps it's only that we have a sense of humor in viewing them.) Apparently, the typical weather here is dry enough so that baled hay can be left outdoors for a full season or more. Most of the hay bales are stubby cylinders - perhaps 4 or 5 feet in diameter and about the same length along the axis. The stacking options aren't as plentiful as with the smaller old-fashioned rectangular bales. Some are simply left lying randomly in the field.
We saw occasional fields with hay bales that have been there for a couple of years or more - turning black and slowly oozing toward the ground, morphing from a neat bale into a blob. Other bales are stacked in neat, symmetric pyramids - typically 3 bales on edge on the ground, two stacked in the cracks between the bottom 2, topped off with a single bale. This structure can be continued longitudinally (along the axis of rotation of the bales) for as long as desired - and some extended for 100 yards. More typically, the piles were short - a perhaps half a dozen bales long at the base, and stepped in - each longitudinal layer stepped in by half a bale, so that the pile is a tapered pyramid when viewed from any direction.
One farmer had a different strategy. He used a single long linear row down the center of the field. Each element of the row was two bales - the bottom one laying on its flat side, and the upper one on edge on top of it. This gave a mushroom-like appearance - with the round upper bale squashing enough to hang a bit out over the sides of the lower bale.
Interspersed with the hay fields were pastures full of fat happy cattle, and occasionally, other crops - we identified beans, wheat, and canola, the latter in bloom, providing occasional bright yellow accents in the overall picture. Other grains, flax, and sunflower seeds are also major crops through this country.
We stopped in early afternoon at the Bismarck KOA - a pleasant, very well maintained RV Park, perfectly located in a grove of trees on a quiet rural hilltop, but only a few miles from the central business area. The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping at Wal-Mart and a grocery stores (the favorite grocery chain here seems to be Dan's).
7/19 While Helen slept in, Dave did some research in the yellow pages and headed out to find a wheel alignment shop. At the second stop, and only a couple of miles from the RV Park, a cooperative shop offered to take me immediately. Unfortunately, they quickly found worn tie rod ends, and also found that there weren't any replacement parts available locally. They promised to get parts shipped in overnight, and asked me to come back first thing in the morning. No big problem - we still have a day's slack in our schedule. Headed to a barber shop, then back to the trailer, and got out the tools for some trailer maintenance while Helen left to shop and get her own haircut.
7/20 I showed up at the repair shop at 8:30, AM, and as promised, the parts had just arrived. They installed the parts, did the alignment, and were finished by 10:15. But they also showed me a big sidewall blister on the inside of one front tire. It should be replaced under warranty when I find a Goodyear dealer - but it's yet one more hassle. Back at the trailer after fueling up and checking tire pressures, I swapped the bad tire with the spare and decided to wait until Minneapolis to get it replaced. We hooked up and were on the road by 11:30.
After we got on I-94 headed east, we got down to the serious business of deciding where to go next. Since we still have a free day in our schedule, we decided to take a long detour south to McCrory Gardens, at Brookings and then Pipestone National Monument. So we turned south on Interstate 29 at Fargo and drove for several more hours through the same rolling grassland.
McCrory Gardens turned out to be a huge place. The extensive display gardens were attractively designed and well-maintained. Beyond the display gardens is an extensive arboretum and area of research test plots. We walked through the whole area, not leaving until the mosquitoes drove us out at sunset. Brookings SD is the home of South Dakota State University. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to see much of the campus. The small city seems prosperous. Sexaur Campground is part of a city park, in a quiet area on the outskirts of town - big cottonwoods, quiet and peaceful - paved pullthrough campsites with 30 amp electrical outlets at each site.
7/21 From Brookings, we headed 30 miles southeast to Pipestone National Monument, just across the border in Minnesota - another of the many National Monuments we'd never heard of until we stumbled across it on the map, not too far from our planned route.
Our DeLorme Map'n'Go software has a neat feature called "Along the Way". After we enter a starting point, a destination, and perhaps a few planned stops, and the program calculates a route, we can ask the program to find all tourist attractions (or campgrounds, or restaurants) within a specified number of miles of the route. The program then searches the large AAA database, gives us an ordered list of items meeting our preferences, and offers to plot them on the map and/or alter our route to add a stop at a particular attraction.
Anyway, Pipestone National Monument contains a shallow inconspicuous quarry where the local Indians mined a soft red rock for several centuries. This rock was the their preferred material for carving ceremonial pipes, and also carving some other decorative or ceremonial items, and the quarry was a sacred place to several Indian tribes in the region. Chunks of this stone were also valued for trading, and found their way through Indian trade routes all the way to the Pacific Coast.
The Visitor's Center traces the human and natural history of the area, contains modern and ancient examples of the stone carvings, and has an area where Indian craftspeople demonstrate the carving techniques while making objects for the tourist trade.
Of just as much interest to us, the Monument preserves and interprets a big chunk of virgin tall-grass prairie - one of the few types of native ecology which we hadn't yet seen. The tall-grass region extended north to south in a fairly narrow band on the eastern edge of the great plains, bounded on the east by a transition to forest and on the west by a very gradual transition to the western short-grass prairies. We greatly enjoyed walking an interpretive trail which led through the prairie, along an attractive stream and waterfall, and past the pipestone quarries.
After Pipestone, we plotted a fairly direct route for Minneapolis - taking us along SR 23 and SR 19 - pleasant, sparsely traveled, roads through endless cornfields and occasional small towns. Part way along this route, we saw a long line of dozens of huge modern wind turbines lining the top of a ridge on both sides of the road. We were used to seeing this in central California, but this is the first large "wind farm" that we've been aware of elsewhere.
Alexander Ramsey Park - a municipal park in Redwood City, MN, provided a convenient place to spend the night. We're parked under mature trees on the bank of the Redwood River. The 20 campsites have electrical outlets and free firewood. We really appreciated the electricity - the inside of the trailer was near 100 degrees during the day, while we were driving, but the air conditioner cooled things down fairly quickly when we plugged in.
The large park is nearly deserted. At dinnertime, there were two picnicking families near a playground at the far end of the park, and just before dark another small motorhome pulled into a campsite almost hidden from us in the trees a few hundred yards up-river.
7/22 From Redwood Falls to Minneapolis, the route is "blue routes" all the way - SR71 up to US 212, and then on 212 all the way into the Minneapolis metropolitan area, which we mostly bypassed via Interstate 494, continuing north up I-94 to Maple Grove, where we had made reservations at the Minneapolis NW/Maple Grove KOA, a few miles off the Interstate. It's an expensive but spacious and nicely maintained place. When we made reservations, several weeks ago, the first three places we called were already full (that is, the full-hookup sites were full. We didn't consider doing without hookups since the heat wave has returned and we would have guests staying with us in the trailer for a week.) Anyway, this place, with some juggling of other reservations, found us a site for the entire two weeks, and we're settled in comfortably.
We've got a day to do some "spring cleaning" before the Nagels arrive.