The Badlands

Today was the day of insane heat and lots of unintentional driving. We ended up at Wounded Knee Memorial an accident, and very nearly entered Nebraska. We met some Lakota Indians who told us the story of Wounded Knee and has some hand made goods that we now regret not purchasing. They were a bit pricey, but passing up the porcupine needle Medicine Wheel was definitely a mistake. Darn! We finally go to the Badlands, which is really a drive through park, with only a little bit of hiking available. You can go backcountry hiking if you like, but we weren’t into that. It was after all 114 degrees!!!!!!!! The Badlands (which may have been originally more aptly named by Indians the “White Hills”) were ... hot. I think I may have been a bit jaded and not as interested in them after the hours of traveling in the hotness, but they were what I expected. I think they got better as the sun went lower and it “cooled off” to the 90’s. We ended up eating at the Badlands Lodge because it was too hot and windy to attempt cooking outside. The hiking we did do was awesome though. We got to climb up one of the hills (sadly those pictures too have been lost) and walk around the formations, and watched the sunset.


the Badlands

For more pictures of the Badlands, click here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=9gc0q893.89epk3ez&Uy=-h4u2x9&Ux=1

After such a long and hot day, we drove into Wall, South Dakota with the intent of getting a motel, but they were all full, or camp, but the poker motorcyclists were karoking too loud next door… so we just snuck in to take a shower (a trick I learned from my previous cross country road trip with Tim) and went on to spend the night in a rest area just outside Wall.

Quote of the day: “The thing I do most is look at maps. I study them. If I’m going to a place, I get all the maps and look at them. There’s a lot of information on a map.” Daul Theroux. This would have been good advice for us today – especially the part about looking at all maps… especially ones that are Drawn To Scale so as to avoid hours of extra driving to the Badlands!