Jason and I wanted to ride our bicycles in the park so we started at the prairie dog town and went about six miles though the park. Here is Jason making time going downhill towards the park exit.
After exiting the park, we then headed for the bike path leading out of the town of Medora. It was being resealed for the season so we had to detour (you can see the taped-up bridge entrance, the road crew was at the other end coming our way; it was beginning to seem that all our plans were being altered) and turn around at the river then make a loop through the city park. We then made the mandatory stop at the park entrance and up and down every street in Medora before heading back to our campground. We had to get in our miles!
After our bike ride, we headed for the evening production of “Live, Laugh, Love” at the Old Town Hall Theater in downtown Medora. The performance included a magician, a card magician and a singer, one of the headliners from the Medora Music Festival. Once we lined up in a Covid protocol and were seated accordingly in the theater, the show was actually pretty entertaining.
In the morning we headed out for our next adventure, due south of Medora, into South Dakota. We made a final stop at the Painted Canyon and saw some bison. They take pooper scooping SERIOUSLY here!
Continuing on, we headed south about 10 miles east of Medora towards South Dakota. We made a change in route and decided to go a little out of the way, through Reva to see the “Slim Buttes 30 Battle Sites” (1876), but it was pretty poorly marked with absolutely no parking and we blew by at 50 mph! We drove for miles without a place to park and disconnect so we continued on. Oh well, it was only a “little” off track.
Entering the Custer National Forest, we came across these bales of hay, and because we hadn’t seen another vehicle in 40 miles, we decided to let Jason climb the bales.
We drove through Sturgis on the way to I-90, through Rapid City and on to our initial intended destination, the Wall area to spend the night. We continued on to a campsite near the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in Cactus Flat (find that on a typical map). We made a fuel stop near Wall to take advantage of diesel at less than $2.00/gallon! Jason got to see the scale model of a brontosaurus. It looked like a giant Sinclair Oil ad! However, there are actually a lot of fossils found in the immediate area.
In the morning we took the scenic byway through the Badlands National Park. We saw these bighorn sheep, so we stopped to watch them and hike to the nearby cliffs to take in the view.
The valley below was incredible. It is hard to capture the dimensionality of the area. Jason commented that it did not look real. The undulations, the striations, the canyons, the pinnacles; just wow!
And yes, these bighorns were at home on the cliffs as they basked in the sun.
Even the prickly flowers were blooming and beautiful.
These are a couple of photos of the nearby area.
We posed at the feature known as the “Window”. You can see the canyon, about 100 feet below us.
This canyon was created by wind and rain erosion.
The colors of the minerals in the sandstone were amazing and the grasslands on the flats were lush. We stopped for these random shots along the road.
This was at a place were the canyon dropped off immediately to our right and the road can be seen winding steeply down to the visitor center and campground.
After spending more time than we planned in the Badlands, we headed for the Pine Ridge Reservation (Lakota Sioux) and Wounded Knee. As we were approaching the site, we were stopped by a makeshift roadblock maned by Native Americans. It was a Covid checkpoint and they were not permitting non-residents into the area. We turned around and had to backtrack. We stopped and developed a new plan, taking us though the town of Martin then due south to Nebraska. We drove for miles without seeing another human, home or car. We did see deer, antelope and a lot of cows. We drove about 500 miles and wound up almost to the Wyoming border, arriving at a NE border dry camp at about 10:00 PM, but we did make up some time and distance, Colorado was only 150 miles more!
Travelling with the Schinglers 