09/11/09 Eight years later – all the flags are half-staff It doesn’t seem that long ago.
Did everyone see the weather map that showed the big storm - the one with all the thunder and lightening that came across South Dakota? We heard it early this morning but by the time we were up and ready to hit the trail, it had slowed to a drizzle. Once out on I90 it was behind us. In front of us was the long winding ribbon of road that has lead us all the way from Indiana and across South Dakota. The landscape has changed again. In central SD, the green in the fields were sunflowers with their pendulous heads waiting for the sun to track across the vast sky. Farmers have cut and baled the grasses by the sides of the roads and the hay fields were also full of large round bales, some stacked one on top of the other, resembling big pole barns set up on the horizon. In western SD, everything is miles and miles of miles and miles of waving grassland!
Coming thru Minnesota we passed several windmill farms, which were not going around very fast, if moving at all. South Dakota should install windmills to use up some of the winds that were blowing across the open plains! Gas mileage is also down on the minivan. Was it the wind, or the speeds we were traveling, or the gas?
Murdo was another stop on our way across SD. We had camped there on one of our bike trips so we HAD to see what has changed. Another exit was to follow the loop road thru the Badlands. Amazing place! When the sun is behind the clouds the colors range from light gray to charcoal. When the sun is out, the stripes in the crags and peaks and what looks like enormous piles of sand turn on their colors of burgundy, pink, white and yellow. Down in the deep valleys where the moisture settles the color is rich green. We saw no animals other than a pocked field of prairie dog holes, each with a chattering, barking little varmint at the entrance.
The end of that loop took us right to Wall and the notorious Wall Drug. The billboards toting the “free ice water” or “ 5c coffee” started back in Minnesota! There really was free ice water and we did have a 5c cup of coffee but everything else was pricey – as all tourist traps are. But the unusual shopping and the extra “stuff” there was fun to see. The “Backyard” has things to do and several photo ops.
Farther along I90 we exited once more at Sturgis and found our way into the Black Hills to “historic downtown” Deadwood, a restored western town that is now lined from one end to the other with casinos. Not the huge, neon lit castles but all the old vintage storefronts, old hotels and even gas stations turned into mini casinos.
Our days journey ended as we completed that “loop” as it drew us into the Spearfish Canyon which followed the babbling creek on it’s way down the side of the “Hills”, past barefaced cliffs standing proudly above the towering dark green pines. In the town of Spearfish, our resting place is an old but clean Inn by the namesake of Spearfish Creek Inn.
