Tuesday July 28th Badlands National Park, SD

Since my last entry in the blog, we have travelled south through the Dakota’s, spending time in the Thoedore Roosevelt National Park, watching wild buffalo and in awe of the scenery. We have driven through the wide open prairies, which to our eyes are just huge. They are a beautiful rolling contour, with vast areas in crop, sunflower (still not flowering), canola, flaxseed, soya and other beans, wheat, barley, oats, and massive areas mown for hay. And experienced temperatures over 37 degrees! As we have come further south, we feel like we are in the old west with ranches and cowboys. This is a big country.

Tuesday July 28^th Badlands National Park, SD

Woke to a beautiful morning and walked through the State Park we are staying in, bordering the Missouri River. It was pleasantly cool, enjoyed the walk, a good start to the day.

The drive through to Wall was in real ranch country, miles and miles of open spaces, hardly a house to be seen, and small towns few and far between.

We stopped in the small country town of Midland (pop 179), ended up popping into the only store in town, a thriving hardware and farm supplies shop. Got talking with Ray, a real neat old guy, who had lived in town for the most of his life, working in the Grain Elevators for 45 years until he had enough of the dust!

The town of Cottonwood (population 6) was a must stop for the camera, as it had “died” and the buildings were all falling down.

Wall has been made famous by its huge “Drug store” and the whole town is a tourist place, with a western theme. We had to stop and take a look, just to see ….but didn’t stay long.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally starts next week, and already thousands of motorcyclists are heading to this area around Rapid City, from all over the USA and the world…and even NZ (you will enjoy, Raewyn and Mark!). They expect 500,000+ to congregate in the small town of Sturgis.

In Wall today there were large numbers, dressed in traditional biker garb, jeans, boots and black shirts, with often a scarf on the head…quite a sight. Ian was stepping out the length of a trailer that was carrying motorbikes (20m!) when the owners arrived. They showed us what they were carrying, 17 bikes whose owners were flying to join them in Sturgis. They were more than happy to pose for me with their prize possession, worth over $100,000.

The Badlands National Park‘s boundary is just out of town and we drove the 40 miles through the park to the campground. We had wondered if it would be much the same as the Roosevelt Badlands in North Dakota, but these were even more dramatic and covering a bigger area. The colours and stratas of rock are amazing. Our campsite sits in the valley and the view is directly up to the mountains, the light and shadows on them as evening sets in is magic.