We trekked 430 miles through vast oceans of prairie to the Black Hills of South Dakota, ascending 2000 more feet to 4000 at journey's end (Rapid City, South Dakota), where we picked up another hour of daylight and met our good friends Jim East and David Johns. Along the way, we took a side trip to the Badlands and marveled at the harsh moonscape, ancient "big pig" fossils and barking prairie dogs.
Of course, we had to stop by Wall Drug to get our free water and ice cream. It's more of a mall than a drug store, though after a serious search, we found a small nook where you could purchase things you might find in a drug store. We met an artist named David from Charlotte, NC who painted beautiful portraits of native Americans, and we bought one of his calendars after talking with him for a while.
While Vicki drove the first leg of the trip, until we crossed the wide Missouri River (it was pretty wide, oh Shannendoa), I wrote the following trip anecdotes...
(43.77 N by 99.31 W 1713 feet elevation (10 satellites) – crossing the Missouri River)
We’ve had a great time on the road together, mostly cranking out the miles while the non-drivers read, play PS2, DS, or GameBoy, and listening to comedians, musicals, and sundry playlists on the iPod. I’m not sure what we would do without the iPhone GPS keeping us on track and informed about everything from miles to go to our elevation – and how many satellites are in range. Which is a good thing, since cell towers have been scarce since we crossed the Mississippi.
Several camps now have touted “Free WiFi” which turned out to be a WiFi signal that reached about 20 feet from the camp office. I spent a couple of hours updating our trip blog and pictures last night while doing laundry for the first time (evening of day 5). Cell coverage is iffy and frustrating, so we make calls from the road when we get a good signal, and talk until we don’t. It’s hard to even want to stay in touch, because the trip, well into its first of four weeks, already feels like we’re in a parallel universe.
We don’t get much news (or any news), we’re out of touch with most people, save the occasional FaceBook comment (which we can’t answer), and it didn’t take long to forget (or forget to care about) what day it happens to be. The trip becomes its own kind of world, where 380 miles is a short distance and each mile brings new vistas to marvel at and horizons to swallow us whole. This part of the journey has been consumed with heading west. We wake up in Wisconsin and go to sleep 500 miles away. So much of what we notice happens on the road. Interstate 90, to be specific.
We’ve seen more wind turbines that we can count. Just outside of Pipestone, Minnesota, we passed a turbine factory, where the propellers were lined up like planes at the gate. We’ve seen cornfields that stretch to the horizon in every direction, and soybean and wheat fields that do the same. Now that we’re making our way across South Dakota, we’ve seen Wall Drug signs every mile or so. We’ve seen trucks hauling a line of three trailers (that’s nearly a quarter of a million pounds!). And of course we’ve seen a nipsy-russle of RV’s of all shapes and sizes.
One thing we have not seen on this leg of the journey where the speed limit is 75: troopers, or anyone getting pulled, since we crossed the Mississippi.
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