It was a slow start this morning, but only half an hour down the road, we pulled over to take a family photo by the entrance to our first National Park, the Badlands. Minutes later, after lining up surrounded by motorcycles, we purchased our 'America the Beautiful' Annual Pass to the National Parks of the USA. Of course, we won't be here for anything like a year, but this pass grants us unrestricted entry to all the parks we will be visiting over the next fortnight. (Interesting side note: here in the US, people don't use the phrase 'fortnight', it's always just two weeks.)
The Badlands are so named because this is the translation of the Lakota Indian and French Trapper names for this area. The homesteaders didn't think they were so fantastic either, since they had to traverse the rugged wall of eroded hills that separates the Lower Prairie from the Upper Prairie in wagons pulled by horses or oxen. Not an easy task. Nowadays, the Loop Road is bitumen and takes advantage of every one of the so-called 'passes' that the homesteaders discovered.
We spent the later half of the morning and early afternoon following the Loop Road and Sage Creek Rim Road (the latter being a gravel road) through the Badlands. We stopped at several overlooks and the Visitor Centre, where we browsed the museum and shop, and collected our first Junior Ranger booklets. Unfortunately, since we left the park via the Sage Creek Rim Road rather than either of the main entrances, the kids weren't able to collect their badges, but they had a lot of fun playing Badlands Bingo. We also stopped at the Fossil Exhibit Trail, which I walked with Sam and Abi while the older kids listened to a ranger-led talk on the local fossils.
Inspired by the Badlands Bingo Junior Ranger activity, we kept our eyes peeled. We saw prairie grass and wild flowers in the grassland areas. The flowers included wild sunflowers, to our surprise. In the eroded areas, we saw sandstone and silt-rock, cracked mud flats and dry creek beds, pinnacles and gulches.
It was the wildlife that truly captured our imagination, however. At first, we only saw a small kinkajou (I only use that word for the sake of my brother Daryl; for those not already in the know, 'kinkajou' means 'small furry animal with a tail') which might have been a grey squirrel or a gopher. Whatever it was, it was camouflaged nicely against the grey silt-rock of the Badlands. Then, we began to notice the birds, also camouflaged marvellously, only visible when they darted and hopped from place to place.
Then, when following a group of five or more bikes, we were suddenly pulled up by the sight of them all slowing to a sudden stop. What had caught their attention? It was a bighorn sheep, grazing peacefully in the prairie grass by the side of the road, ignoring the fuss it was causing. Crossing the road, we saw another bighorn sheep, whose coat was visibly shedding in the South Dakota summer heat, down in a valley. Abi and Sam were just as excited as the bikers.
It was on Sage Creek Rim Road that we saw our most hoped-for sight. Once again, it was drivers stopped ahead at the side of the road who drew our attention to the wildlife in view. This time, we all piled out of the car in a scurrying hurry, because we had glimpsed - with bated breath - our first bison! The bison was far off in the distance, which is just as well, because they are able to gallop at 30mi (45km) per hour, which is well and truly faster than I can run! We clambered out onto the grey silt-rock plateau and gaped down at the Lower Prairie below, where the bison was grazing heedless of spectators above. Though in the distance, its immediately recognisable humped shoulder bison shape was clearly visible as it turned side-on to us.
Eventually, of course, we had to return to the car and continue on. Just a little further was the 'Roberts Prairie Dog Town', and we were once again excited to witness the wildlife. This time it wasn't just one or two, however. Little Prairie Dogs were propped up on their back legs all over the place, popping up from their burrows and back down again if we walked too close. Again, Sam and Abi joined me as we stalked one of them in an attempt to obtain a close-up photo. We clearly heard his 'pip pip' call as we approached nearer, and heeded his warning that this close was close enough.
Sage Creek was a strange sight in the bottom of the valley just before we left the park. Its waters were white with silt, collected as it meandered through the Badlands. I can well understand how the Badlands earned their name, but for us, they were a magnificent and marvellous introduction to the National Parks of 'America the Beautiful'.
Next, we drove on to Mount Rushmore National Monument. This was a completely different experience: an edifice carved not by water and wind, but by jackhammers and dynamite; carved not according to the Master Creator's intent, but by the hand of over 400 sculptors at the direction of a master-sculptor named Gustav Borglum.
The tourist town of Keystone is barely a few miles from the granite mountain, in the Black Hills. Here, motorbikes swarmed both sides of the streets, which were lined with billboards announcing one tourist attraction after another on Wild West style shop facades. A biker at the Mount Rushmore car park told me there might be as many as 40 or 50 thousand bikers in the area for the Sturgis Rally, and that that many could not possibly stay in Sturgis itself. Thus the bikers have booked out all the nearby accommodation. When we checked in at our motel last night, we overheard the manager tell someone they had no more vacancies, and it is clear that the same is true tonight, in Keystone at least.
One turn up the road showed us the Mount Rushmore National Monument sign, where we once again took a family photo. This time I managed to use the timer on my camera, with a deal of success, for the first time. It was raining gently as we piled back in the car for the last little drive. Once at the monument, we walked under the great granite entrance way, and up the Avenue of the Flags (with flags for each state on either side) to the viewing amphitheatre. Then we traipsed around the viewing path, up and down, (mostly down, thankfully) many stairs to view the four faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln a little bit closer.
The Sculptor's Studio had an exhibit of a 3m (10ft) tall practice sculpture of the presidents, as busts that include a few hands as well as the presidents' arms, jackets and coats down almost to the elbow. Only one was a head, sandwiched between the others. The mountain carving was never intended to include this much, but shoulders were planned, and had to be left undone for some reason or other that I can't remember at this moment. There was also a 2m tall plaster cast of Abraham Lincoln's face, which the sculptors on the face of the mountain had access to as they decided just where to place their jackhammers.
Anna, Abigail and Samuel completed their Junior Ranger activities for Mount Rushmore while Mr Jackson and Joshua bought us some buffalo stew, a buffalo burger, and two buffalo hot dogs for dinner from the monument cafe. For dessert, we bought ice-cream cups, and I tried some vanilla ice-cream which had been made to Thomas Jefferson's original recipe. Who knew TJ could find time for inventing ice-cream recipes in the middle of brokering the Declaration of Independence? Not me, that's for sure. Then on the way out, we turned the kids' booklets in to be signed by the duty ranger. They had earned their first Junior Ranger Badge!
As I type this, Mr Jackson is driving us to our next motel, in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. Since leaving Mount Rushmore the rain has increased and we had a bit of lightning to keep our attention for a while. Now it has settled to a light drizzle. We have just crossed yet another state line, into Nebraska, our seventh state, at 9pm at night, and still have over an hour's drive, perhaps two, to go. The kids are listening to The Lord of the Rings on audiobook, or sleeping in their seats. I can see the lights of Chadron on the horizon and am wishing we had booked in there instead of Scotts Bluff, but I didn't realise we would spend so long enjoying the Badlands. And I would rather put up with traveling at night than miss out on those stunning sights.
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