We checked out the paltry breakfast our hotel provided, and decided to take ourselves for a treat to the local Starbucks. Got there to find a long line of cars and no one allowed inside. Covid restrictions in the Midwest still seem to be part of the consciousness of the people who live here. The line went fairly quickly, and we ordered up coffees and breakfast.
Then we had some trouble finding the way out of town, first to I 35 and then to I 90 that is currently taking us due west to Rapid City, South Dakota. This is one of our longest days, some nine and a half hours and over six hundred miles. While we were still on I 35 in Minnesota, Rosalie commented that the farms looked particularly tidy.
CROSSING THE MISSOURI RIVER IOWA TO SOUTH DAKOTA (SD): Amazing landscape change as you cross the wide Missouri! On the far side you have reached the hills and scrub brush of the west.
Now it is mid-afternoon and we’ve still got 300 miles to go on this straight-away interstate. We are in South Dakota, where the trees are bigger, there are many more cows grazing, farmers that have bailed their first crop of hay, and the landscape is getting flatter. We are trying to figure out whether or not to make the day a half-hour longer and do the last few miles to Rapid City while driving through the Badlands National Park, or whether to save that for tomorrow.
SOUTH DAKOTA: Badlands National Park. Otherworldly ugly eruptions in the landscape.
SOUTH DAKOTA: Badlands National Park. Otherworldly ugly eruptions in the landscape.
We ended up doing the loop around the Badlands National Park and were so glad we did. The Badlands are an extraordinary explosion in the prairie of sunken valleys and rock outcroppings, with ground-level as well as below-valley-level formations that sometimes almost look man-made. It reminded me of the national parks in southern Utah, that are even bigger in scale. The hour was getting late, so we got back on I 90 (which we had been on all day) but not before driving through the two blocks of Wall’s Drugstore, which is a two-block tourist attraction that is advertised for hundreds of miles before you come upon it.
SD BUFFALO halfway shed of their winter coats. Spectacularly big animals!
Our Rushmore Hotel and Suites has a conference going on, didn’t have enough parking and didn’t have the handicapped shower bedroom promised, but we took what was available and stayed in the hotel for a delicious if expensive dinner. Tomorrow night we will venture further into Rapid City to eat, and will get directions tomorrow morning to the Black Hills, Custer National Park, Mt. Rushmore, and the statue being sculpted of Crazy Horse.