South Dakota and a Slice of Wyoming

We turned our route southward as winter started nipping at our heels.  Watching weather forecasts, we figured (or at least hoped) that we would be able to spend a little time in South Dakota, so we booked 10 days in Sioux Falls.  We stayed at the local KOA (KOA's have been appearing on our list of parks a bit too frequently lately).  The park is a typical KOA--gravel roads and pads.  Our site was plenty long enough--we could have parked an additional couple of vehicles behind us.  Most KOA's are situated close to busy roadways; this one is very accessible to I-90.  In fact, it's a bit TOO convenient.  In the picture below, you can see the small rise behind us--that's I-90.  A lot of trucks travel on I-90 all day...and all night.

The main attraction in Sioux Falls is the park where the city's namesake falls are.  They are impressive, and we can only imagine how much nicer they are when the area has not gone through an extended drought, when the Big Sioux river sends a much higher flow through them.

We drove to the nearby town of Mitchell to see their famous Corn Palace.  The outside of the structure, including several murals with changing themes, are covered every year using local corn, corn cobs, and straw/grasses.  Due to the ongoing drought this year, they are doubtful that they will have enough materials to replace the entire surface of the structure, but have started working on a bit of it.

Still watching the weather, we decided to leave the RV in Sioux Falls, and drive the Saturn west across South Dakota to the Badlands, Black Hills, and Mount Rushmore.  If the weather turns dicey, we can vacate an area much faster with the car than the RV, so off we went.  South Dakota is a wide state--over 400 miles.  And most of the landscape looks like this.

But after driving through about 250 miles of that, the terrain begins to change.

And then suddenly you get to the Badlands, and all their splendor.

The imagination begins to create scenes from so many of those westerns we watched as kids.  And it's tempting to take a picture at every turn, knowing full-well that pictures rarely do the views justice.  But we took them anyway as we drove the 40-mile loop through the Badlands National  Park.  (When we invite you over to see a 'slide presentation' of our trip, you may want to have an excuse ready to politely decline.)

We spent a couple of nights in Rapid City.  That was our base to visit Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills.  The scenery in the Black Hills is so pretty we again found ourselves taking picture after picture.

As we approached Mount Rushmore, we took shots of it every time it appeared in the distance.

After viewing the monument, we had lunch in the cafeteria.  They offer buffalo burgers, so we had one.  Flavor is not bad, texture was very dry.  We prefer Whataburgers, with jalapenos.

Crazy Horse Memorial is a work-in-progress that seems to be moving at a snail's pace.  It is the life's work of one family that is determined to keep the project under private control rather than accepting any federal funds.  The entry fee to the memorial is rather steep ($20 for the 2 of us, compared to $11 for Mount Rushmore).  And the progress has been really slow--it was started in 1948 (HeM says that was a good year), and it is FAR from being completed.  Maybe some additional resources, if any are available, should be considered...just our humble opinion.

The weather turned much colder while we were in western South Dakota.  In fact, they experienced their first snow of the season while we were there.  It wasn't a lot, and it was mostly at the higher elevations, so we extended our stay by one more day so we could see a small bit of eastern Wyoming.

Our first stop was in Sundance, WY.  This small town claims that The Sundance Kid stayed in their jail for a short time, and adopted his name from that.  They even have a statue of him on their main street.

From Sundance we headed to Devil's Tower.  This national monument is truly impressive; and it's especially fun to see the landmark from the Close Encounters movie.  In fact, seeing the rock formation up close, I'm surprised that Richard Dreyfuss was able to climb it. But, anything is possible in Hollywood. :)

We spent our last night in Sturgis, SD.  After driving through the town, we decided that the Knuckle Saloon was the place to have a beer and imagine what the town is like when all the bikers roll in for the annual motorcycle rally.

As we left western South Dakota and headed back to Sioux Falls to pick up the RV, we mourned a development that is destroying so many of the pine trees in the Black Hills.  A beetle has moved into the area and is very quickly killing many large stands of trees, leaving many bare hills.  The forest service is fighting them as hard as they can, but the beetles are winning.  A very sad situation.

After Sioux Falls, we're continuing a straight line south toward Texas.