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The Unflatness

Many year ago, my brother and I drove across country. He had just finished at the Air Force Academy in Colorado and needed to quickly relocate with his car to an east coast post and I had a few days off before starting my summer job. We jumped on the highway in his little 2 seat sports car and made a quick job of it, stopping briefly at a few sights. I could now brag that I had ‘driven cross country, right?

Boy was I wrong.

Traveling on the highway did not give me a true sense of the areas I had traveled across. I did not see the subtle changes every area had to offer.
Traveling slowly on the backroads in the Rover with the windows open (our version of ac) has given me a whole new appreciation for the land we have crossed. It is definitely not flat, although if you look across the horizon at times it certainly seemed so. And the tornado warnings made it seem like we were quite exposed.

The trip from Florida to South Dakota has included rolling hills, sharp winding gorges, rollercoasters (see previous post) and long slow ups and ups and ups with very few actual flat areas.

The countryside has included corn fields, soybean fields, other fields growing I know not what, large open spaces fenced for cattle, and large expanses of horse country. We constantly remark on how the landscape can change in 150 miles (our chosen daily limit in our putt, putt vehicle).

While at times the trip has been challenging, the heat, the long days, the many miles, learning to live on the road (that is a whole other post or two!) I feel very lucky to have travelled the backroads and had the chance to experience all that we have, so far.

Did we see it all? No way. We could spend months or even years in each area and still have much to learn. I at least feel that I have a flavor of the many landscapes and what they have to offer and a new appreciation for their unflatness. Perhaps on our return trip in a few years, we will see or experience even more or find a state that really is flat!

261st Avenue! Not another road or a building in sight!
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No sleepwalking tonight!

After four wonderful nights at our camping spot in the Black Hills, we decided it was time to go to town. We were running low on a few essential items like toilet paper and Oreos😁  So, we got out the wash bucket, heated up the last of our water and cleaned ourselves up, we felt like the old trappers going to Rendevous, packed our stuff and headed to Custer, SD to stock up.

We hit all the important spots in town: we wandered the aisles of the grocery store choosing our staples and treats for the next week, snuck into a state park to refill our 5 gallon water jugs, sat outside the town library for free wifi so we could pay bills, order some things off the internet to pick-up at a later post office and reload books onto our tablets, treated ourselves at the local bakery, and hit the nearest lake for a swim with the fisherman, who were not at all thrilled to have us there.

Now to the most important part of our day, choosing a new camping spot. As you can tell by the map in the previous post there is a lot to choose from. We wanted to stay close to Custer because we wanted to visit Jewel Cave, but we wanted to be far enough up in the hills to ‘get away’. We chose our area, drove up in, and scouted for about an hour until we found the right spot. While we were scouting we noticed a few dug holes in the area, since this was gold country, we decided someone must be trying their luck. We thought nothing more of it, set-up, cooked supper and went for our nightly ramble.

As it turns out, we are camped right in the middle of the original Black Hills Gold Rush area where in 1874 Col. George Armstrong Custer, the same who would die shortly at the Battle of Little Bighorn, found gold in the French Creek River (near where we took the afore mentioned swim). During our ramble around our camping area we found at least a dozen old mines and another dozen shallow pits (no mom, we didn’t get too close).

We spent the evening reading about the gold rush and learned it was a very small, quick gold rush with the biggest impact being the Lakota’s loss of land to miners and the future battles it created between the new nation and the Lakota people.

We also tried to imagine what the miners life was like living in these hills. While the scenery is beautiful, living here year round in a tent or shack and working through the rock by hand must have been a very hard existence. I wonder how many actually found gold?

So, tonight we sleep in this beautiful spot amongst the shadows of the past. How cool is that?

P.S. If we don’t come home, we found gold is them thar hills! If not, perhaps we’ll try our luck in the Yukon!

One of the many mines we found. It looks as though they walked away yesterday and might come back any minute to resume digging.
Darrin standing next to a medium one for scale.
Some of them are quite deep.
I can’t fathom digging through some of this stuff by hand. The old miners had greater moxie than me and I’ve dug my fair share of ditches and post holes.
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Dispersed Camping

All National Forests, Bureau of Land Management, select Wildlife Management Areas, and a few other lands have what is called dispersed camping. This means that you can camp on the lands free of charge, if you don’t count the taxes we pay. Each have their own rules to follow, but they are minimal and the camping is awesome, if you are okay with shitting in the woods. There are no toilets, no showers and no drinking water. You have to pack in everything and pack it out.

Tonight we are camping in the Black Hills National Forest in SD. When we entered the forest, we stopped at the ranger station and picked up their detailed maps showing all the places we could drive in and camp. We picked an area on our route, drove in a mile or so (the road is what we would call a class 4 or maybe even a class 5 road at home – 4 wheel drive highly recommended), picked an amazing spot, set-up, turned on the Grateful Dead and cooked dinner.

Viola, a great place to spend a few days and the best part is there isn’t a soul in sight, just trees and hopefully some wildlife.

Pick-up a park map. All the dots are camping spots!
Find the road you want to camp on. They are all marked with these little posts.
A great camping spot!
With great views!
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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (if I may steal from Clint Eastwood)

We spent the last few days experiencing The Badlands.

We drove all of the main roads, stopped at almost all of the “viewpoints”, and took more pictures than photography should allow. We camped at the inner primitive Sage Creek Campground for 2 nights surrounded by mother nature and her creatures. And I’m still not sure how one describes it, majestic, awe inspiring, ancient? Desolate, rocky, barren? Windy, hot, overwhelming? All of these adjectives fit and in the vein of Clint Eastwood I have come to think of the Badlands as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The good: the buffalo roaming through our camping area, the majestic beauty of the formations that were formed so long ago and are constantly changing, the echo of the past all around, the birds and Prairie Dogs, the sheer magnitude of the park, and the amazing people we have been fortunate to meet, once again.

The bad: well, the Indians did call it the Badlands for a reason, the formations are stark, ominous, even cold and sometimes barren looking, they make you feel small and insignificant, they make you think, and feel.

The ugly: the wind initially feels freeing, not to mention cooling, but 72 hours later, the wind is unrelenting, it wears on you, just as the heat did earlier in our trip, but when it stops, the heat is there and you want the wind to blow again, there is no escape from Mother Nature.

I guess you could say the Badlands, like all of us has many facets, some of which aren’t palatable all at once or to everyone. To have been able to briefly experience them all was a gift and something I highly recommend to all. Drive the road, camp in the outback in Sage Creek Campground. Witness the wind, the sun and the amazing sunsets. Spend time alone with the silence and the rocks. Watch the wildlife…watching you. 😄  Experience as much as you can, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps it will teach you something new. It certainly did me, and I was only there a few days.  I can only imagine what would be learned if one spent some real time amongst the formations.

The majestic formations.
We found a troll living in the Badlands!
Amazing growth in a land that appears to be barren.
The amazing color variations tell the age of the rocks. The yellows are really old!
Our campsite, affectionately we called it the Sun’s Anvil?
Peeping perv🤣
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Peeping Tatunka in the Badlands

Last night, as usual, I had to pee in the middle of the night. I unzipped the tent, we were sleeping in the ground tent because if you’ve been to the Badlands you know the wind blows, I mean really blows, I mean hold the tent down or you’re going to parasail to Wyoming blows!

Well anyways, back to my bladder, so I unzipped the tent and crawled out, pulled down my shorts and started to pee when I heard a snort! I looked up and 15 feet away was a huge buffalo watching me pee. What was I to do? They had been roaming in and out of our primitive camping area for 2 days and seemed pretty docile. Should I finish peeing? He seemed calm, but wouldn’t stop staring at me, the perv. What’s a lady to do?

Of course, I finished peeing! Wished him a good night and crawled back into my sleeping bag😁

The buffalo spent the days on the hillside around our camp and wandered down to the camp at dusk to spend the night with us. Last night we had 10 hunker down with us.
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Laundry, showers and DQ, ohhhhh my

Today, we are taking a day off and going to the big city. Wall, SD, that is. A motel, showers and laundry are on the top of the list, closely followed by a visit to Dairy Queen.

We have been camping in the Rover for almost a month, and are due for a ‘cleaning up’ and some ‘treats’! Since they are predicting severe storms in the area, perhaps it’s not a good night to be sleeping in a rooftop tent.

We found a great little place online, The Sunshine Inn. John, the owner, treated us like we were family. We highly recommend staying here if you ever find yourself in Wall, SD.

The Sunshine Inn in Wall, SD. Our home away from the tent for a few nights.
John, the owner of the Sunshine Inn. Thanks John for everything!

First stop, after showers was the laundry mat.

We definitely smell better!

Quickly followed by our first trip to Dairy Queen, yes, I said first…we don’t have Dairy Queen at home, so this was a highly anticipated treat!

Yes, that crazy eyed DQ inhaler is Darrin! A very happy boy😁

All cleaned up and fortified, we ventured into the tourist world of Wall Drugstore, the main attraction in the town, and the other stores on the mini main street. We wandered through stores, buying absolutely nothing…really, where would we put it. We spent the majority of our time looking at all if the old pictures. There were walls and walls of them, very cool. And watching people.

The world famous Wall Drugstore.
The little tourist area around Wall Drug. I love the grain silos at the end.

That evening the predicted storm arrived. We stayed out on the balcony as long as we could with some fellow travelers watching it advance across the plains. It was really cool to see it start so far away and slowly make its way towards us. We definitely don’t get that in the northeast. And then it poured! And the wind blew! And the rain went sideways. It was a very grand storm, definitely not a night to be sleeping in the rooftop tent!

The poor little Rover weathered the storm quite well, only a few minor leaks.

Another night of storms arrived, so we ended up staying 2 nights…quite a luxury!

Time to get back on the road!