Does This Road Ever End

WHY IS SOUTH DAKOTA SO LONG?

Woke-up late and spent two hours catching-up on emails and paying bills on-line. Finally headed out on the road around 10 am and made a bee-line for Wind Cave NP. I knew this was going to be a stop-and-go type park based on the research I had done prior to my visit. Wind Cave NP is based around, you guessed it, a cave. Tours are 2 - 3 hours in length and start at $20, two things I do not have; time and money. So I stopped by the entrance sign, made a quick trip to the visitors center and then drove through the park. As one could imagine, there was not a whole lot to see above ground.

After Wind Cave NP I headed East towards park #30 on my list, Badlands NP. I took the scenic route along SD Highway 2 which was a 63 mile dirt road that posted a maximum speed limit of 35 mph. The sand and gravel on the road was so deep that anything over 35 mph and you would fish-tail into a ditch. If you do the math, it took +2 hours to cover the same distance that the interstate would have covered in less than an hour, but it was scenic.

I stopped a half dozen times along the way to take photos of the landscape and just bask in the beauty of the prairie land. As far as the eye could see there was fields of yellow grass that waved in the breeze and looked like an ocean of grass. I entered Badlands NP through the backdoor or the Oglala Sioux Tribe side; bad idea. This section of the park is affectionately known as the "ass" of the park and is rarely traveled by anyone outside of the tribe. Needless to say it was unimpressive.



Video: SOUTH DAKOTA IS GETTING TO ME

So with 4 hours gone and 0-2 on the "scenic" views of the parks I hit the road, hard. I needed to make it to at least Sioux City if I had any dreams of making it to Virginia by 2:00 pm on Thursday. So I put the pedal to the medal, put my head down and just drove. I only made one other stop; sunset to photograph the beautiful prairie sunset (it was cooler in person), before settling for the night in Little Sioux, IA. (check out this cool bug net I made prior to leaving Vegas to keep the mosquitoes out of my 'bed' - thanks for the reminder dad!). Until tomorrow.