Paula and Grant got married today. It was a great celebration.
Despite the wonderful time I had, the point of this post is to provide a place to show everyone my ao dai rather than document the evening.
Early to rise makes a woman get a great latte in town instead of settling for airport coffee.
The two trams in the MSP airport are ridiculous. The tram between terminals travels through three stops, barely covering 100 yards, it seems like. The tram from one side of parking to the other side plus the light rail station just has two endpoints, probably barely covering 100 yards. I’m sure I walked more than 100 yards between these things. How much money did they cost?
Peanut-fed prairie dogs are skinnier than range-fed prairie dogs. Our personal naturalist chastised the people feeding peanuts to the prairie dogs to get them to pose for photos, but they just said, “They’re unsalted.” Bird and I took pleasure in running after the prairie dogs trying to instill some fear of humans in them. Goddamn people trying to turn wild animals into beggars.
Our personal naturalist, Drea, had the single goal of observing a burrowing owl, which live in abandoned prairie dog tunnels. It didn’t actually take long, once we knew what to focus our eyes on. I even spotted a couple out of the moving car. Drea and Ouija carried great binoculars, making me think maybe I should get a pair. Maybe someday.
We headed to the South Visitors Center, encountering bison in the road along the way. The ranger at the South Visitors Center was Enos Red Bird Jr, whose father had been a leader in JFK’s time. He was obviously proud of his people.
We headed out to the Palmer Creek Unit on Enos’s recommendation. We thought we’d be heading to the Stronghold Unit, but the unexploded ordinance from the US military’s artillery practice during WWII meant the NPS was recommending the non-contiguous Palmer Creek Unit instead. I think that Starship Troopers and Armageddon were filmed there. It was pretty excellent. Bird used the 4 wheel driveness of our SUV with finesse. We stared down cattle, forded creek beds and ultimately navigated ourselves to where we wanted to be.
Then we started wandering around. We all climbed some formations, though I ended up with a bone bruise and a cut finger when the popcorn rock started crumbling. We started to return along the creek bed, but Bats decided to cut across a field, saying the creek bed was never the shortest way. I retorted that distance and time weren’t strictly correlated once you got off the Interstate, and lo and behold we ended up at a dropoff. Bird and Bats decided to skitter down, ultimately doing it on their butts, but Drea, Ouija and I decided that the backtracking to the creek bed was the better route. I need to learn more map and compass navigations. My instincts are there, I just need some formal grounding.
We stopped for dinner at a Native run motel-diner recommended by the NPS ranger. Sadly they had no indian tacos, but they did have beef stroganoff on special. Two of us opted for that, and it was good. The chef came out to ask us how it was, he was obviously proud of it.
As we wound our way back to the campground we came across a car with its hazards on. I asked Bird to stop, since cellphone didn’t work out here, it was worth checking if the car occupants were ok. It turned out they were out of gas. We tried to siphon some out of our gas tank, since we’d bought a length of tubing earlier in case we needed gas for the campstove. Except that the Nissan Xterra had an anti-siphoning device somewhere in the tank. Eit. So we wasted two gallons of gas driving to pick up two gallons of gas for the guy. When we returned he told us he’d been waiting there for two hours for someone to stop. What’s going on? Do people recognize his beater car and refuse to help him anymore? (He seemed as though he was always running on empty, only filling when he had the cash.)
First a hike along the Notch Trail, which required us to climb a rope ladder. It was more of a wobbly staircase up a 45 degree hill. A little difficult to descend, but not really hard. The trail led us to the edge of a cliff in the formations, where we looked out over our campsite to the south. Bats and Bird climbed up and up, but I was feeling less adventuresome.
Then we parked our cars at either end of a six mile hike and struck out for some real backcountry hiking. Ok, not real backcountry, because the trail was blazed. Bird and Bats and I took an extra loop down and up 180 feet of trail climbing for an added challenge. It took approximately nine minutes down and seven minutes up, because the popcorn rock is so brittle Bats and I had to slow down alot on the way down as it crumbled under our feet. The handholds were more secure on the way up.
We found bobcat tracks along a dry creek bed, and at the end of the day, a theoretical marmot viewing turned into an actual housecat viewing. Plus a kitten or two.
The guided tours of the Minuteman Missile site were full, but we decided to swing through the self-guided section. First stop, a trailer-sized box just outside the Badlands entrance. A good 12 minute video displaying the launch control system and compound in effect throughout the Cold War covered most of what we would see on the tour, so we drove over to exit 116 to see a Minuteman missile silo. We ended up listening for over an hour to the guide stationed there who had actually been one of the members of the Air Force assigned to guard the base. He had lots of interesting stories, though his line about the US having proven that we’re not going to take advantage of first strike capability, because we didn’t do it in 1945 - 1949 when the Russians were still behind wasn’t convincing to any of our group. The leadership of the US has changed many times over the course of sixty years, and it can change even more.
Since this was the 90 degree day, we spent the hottest part of the afternoon in the Badlands Visitor’s Center. I breezed through, and went outside to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, because I get tired of reading the museum posters geared to a sixth grade reading level.
Once the sun neared the horizon we headed to the Window Trail. It was so short (a handicap-accessible boardwalk for a tenth of a mile) we traveled the Door Trail as well. That allowed us out into the canyons of popcorn rock. Being allowed off the marked trail is a neat feeling. I expect the marked trail concept doesn’t work well in the Badlands because there is little vegetation to wear down, and the Badlands themselves erode at a rate of an inch a year. I wonder how long you have to have been a ranger here to see the formations change significantly.
A morning hike along a popular trail in Custer State Park to Lover’s Leap, a beautiful overlook. Descending afterwards to run along a creek. I hiked it alone, needing some personal time after so much group time. I did get to see a little brown snake leave the path, but little other wildlife as I was speeding along, working up a sweat.
We drove around Rapid City to a truck stop for a shower, my first truck stop shower. Newly installed, so not sketchy at all.
Then to the Badlands campgrounds via I-90, with a stop in Wall for groceries. But not at Wall Drug. Just a nice little food mart.
The Badlands are impressive at sunset, sharply peaked rock formations with layers of color. The colors wash out in broad daylight.
Good day sunshine. Of course the first thing we do is descend into a cave.
Wind Cave is only the fourth largest cave in the world. It has about 120 miles of explored passages. Both of these caves add about three miles a year or so. I think it would be funny if someone decided to explore extra in Wind Cave to beat Jewel Cave, but since apparently Wind Cave is about half-explored, according to the same barometric studies, it would be a temporary win. Since both caves are managed by the National Park Service, I expect they’ll keep the explorations in step.
Wind Cave is also a mostly dry cave, which allows it to show off its noteworthy formation: boxwork. Something like the webbing of calcium in a bone, something like three-dimensional cobwebs, boxwork got its name in Wind Cave when people referred to the room full of it as the Post Office, where explorers left messages to each other. Apparently ninety percent of the boxwork in the world is in Wind Cave. It is the result of the initial limestone fracturing, filling with calcite (or something hardish), and the limestone being worn away before the calcite. Neat stuff.
Our afternoon consisted of walking to the end of a canyon, discovering pipeline infrastructure and skeletons along the way. We deduced that the pipeline was carrying the park’s water (the well had to be drilled as far as possible away from the cave), and the skeletons were likely all bison. The last skeleton was definitely a bison, since its head and hide were still attached. Stinky.
I forgot my GPS on the walk around Devil’s Tower. C’est la vie. It’s a nice little walk, a mile or so. The channels of stone that make up the tower are impressive five- and six-sided prisms. The clouds were thick, but not dramatic, making for sad grey photos. We left by 1pm and it started to rain soon after.
Jewel Cave, our next real stop, is the second largest cave in the world, at 150 miles explored. At the very end of the tour, our guide revealed that due to barometric indications, the current known volume of the cave is approximately two percent of the entire cave. Jewel Cave has only one known natural opening, a good distance from the elevator entrance installed around 1960 in order to bring tourists into the really stunning area. The elevator took us down about 300 feet, to maybe 4500 ft above sea level, still significantly higher than we were earlier that day standing at the bottom of Devil’s Tower.
Jewel Cave’s most stunning features are basically crystals like the inside of a geode. And the bacon, a thin strip of calcite streaked with iron ore. It does look an awful lot like bacon, and apparently the term has become common in spelunking to describe that type of formation. Jewel Cave’s formations are as stunning as they are because it has been a predominantly dry cave. Few stalactites and stalagmites have formed, covering the crystals.
I thought the most interesting part of the experience may have been seeing the map notation used to describe a cave. No GPS short cuts allowed.
Sadly, it had not stopped raining by the end of the tour, so Bird and I leaned on our group to do the scenic drive through the Needles before heading to our campsite at Wind Cave National Park. There was a little grumbling from the group when we realized it was going to cost us money to drive through, plus it was snowing when we got to the Custer State Park entrance, but we persevered. The snow really made it worthwhile, but the rock formations were entertaining to view and climb on. Not to mention drive through.
The snow changed into cold rain as we descended from the higher altitudes of the Black Hills. So we got to set up camp in the dark and in the rain. Ouija and Drea had brought a rain/bug shelter for the cooking table area, and it was welcome. It wasn’t even too hard to set up, with all five of us working on it. I got to observe the pulse width modulation of my LED headlamp looking at the rain drops moving discretely through the beam. Nifty.
Apparently there were coyotes yipping that night, but I didn’t hear them.
So many errands. Great espresso at Dunn Bros. Farmers market. Food coop. Grocery store. Brewpub lunch. Sporting goods store by mall on I-90 (gaaaah).
When approaching Devil’s Tower from the north, it appears taller and narrower than its canonical shape. But impressive as hell.
My first viewing of a prairie dog town. Fat fat prairie dogs. Not particularly shy, but not begging, like the ones in the Badlands. (Damn peanut-feeding tourists.)
I fell asleep to the hooting of Great Horned owls, (identified by Drea, our own personal naturalist).
Three items of note on my first day in South Dakota:
I got to stay at the Hotel Alex Johnson, the same hotel in which my grandmother stayed during high school basketball tournaments in the 1930s. She told me she always came home with a cold because she took a bath every day, since there was hot running water, a novelty for her. The lobby is impressively decorated with thick carved timbers, mostly in the Norwegian style, but also with carved heads of Native American chiefs instead of Norse thunder gods in the rafters.
Bats, Bird and I ventured out for a beer at the Firehouse Brewing Company. We sampled perfectly good IPAs (not too too bitter, Jofish) and the Smoke Jumper Stout. It was a nice night so we sat out in the courtyard with the live band. They started with a cover of “Ring of Fire” and continued with Green Day, “Stray Cat Strut” and others, but it was when they played “Billy Jean” that we realized we were listening to the Hello Kitty of Rapid City. The lead singer didn’t try as hard as our good friend Lifto to hit all of the high notes, but the few he hit were memorable.
Bats had recently visited TEP and heard current undergrads retelling stories that he had lived through. Of course, facts are never critical for a good story. Apparently he heard someone describe an event that occured when I was a freshman as happening “way back in the day, maybe when Droid was Chancellor….” which boggled my mind for a good twenty minutes, since I was a freshman four years before Droid was, and he was Chancellor three years after that. Boggle boggle.