Coming out of hiding here to tell you about the crazy weekend road trip I got home from last night. Teddy and I have been talking about going camping in western South Dakota for over a year, and recently we decided to just do it. So Thursday night, Teddy drove up from Northfield, and the next day (after we watched at least 40 minutes of One Direction videos and I convinced him that #Larryisreal) we grabbed breakfast downtown and then started driving. We didn't have a set itinerary, but the Corn Palace and Wall Drug were both really important stops to me, so we started with those. The billboards advertising the Mitchell Corn Palace state that it is "the only corn palace in the world!", and once you have been to the Mitchell Corn Palace, you begin to understand why no one has decided to build another one. Basically, it's an auditorium whose exterior they redecorate with corn and other agricultural products every year. Ok, if you're driving through South Dakota on I-90, you should probably stop, but try to moderate your expectations, especially if you're traveling with someone who enjoys puns ("So excited to be 'ear!" I swear to God, Teddy.). Now Wall Drug, on the other hand, you might want to check out. For you east coasters, it's kind of like South of the Border, except somewhat less racist, with fewer rides and more shopping. After I unsuccessfully tried to get Teddy to buy a shirt that may have been made with an actual American flag, and we put one of the free Wall Drug bumper stickers on my car, we bought some groceries and then drove out to the Badlands. Actually, before we got to the Badlands, we decided it was probably not the best idea to try to drive through the whole park with the fuel gauge on one bar, so we drove the nine miles back to Wall to buy gas. That was the first and only time we were appropriately prudent about buying gasoline on the trip, but I'll come back to that.
So, the Badlands are wild. As you drive through South Dakota you do see the landscape change somewhat -- eastern South Dakota is flat prairie, a lot like around where I live, but especially after you cross over the Missouri River it gets a lot hillier and more dramatic, for lack of a better word. The Badlands, though, are, well, more dramatically dramatic. The way Teddy describes them is the way you might imagine the surface of Mars to look. I don't know how to express it better than that, but I'd add that there's a lot of life and color in them, too. Once we'd gone through the Badlands, we decided to try to get to Mount Rushmore and then to try to camp at Windcave, so we hit the road again. Mount Rushmore isn't too far from the Badlands (all the good stuff in South Dakota is pretty close together), and we looked at it for a few minutes before agreeing it could have been bigger, and then getting back in the car and heading to Windcave. We got there as it was getting dark, and set up our campsite before the sun set completely. After we registered, we ate dinner and then drove out to a darker and more secluded area to set up my telescope. From my perspective, using a telescope was a little bit redundant, because it's not a good enough telescope that you get dramatically better images when it's really dark (and in fact it's a bit harder to use because you can see so many more objects that it's hard to focus on the one you're interested in), and because what I was most excited about was the sheer number of stars I could see, and the fact that I could really see the Milky Way for the first time (or what felt like the first time). It was worth it in the end, though, because we were able to find Saturn and see its rings, which I certainly don't do every day.
That night, I slept in a tent for the first time since I was probably 6 or 7 years old. It was basically a good experience, except that in the middle of the night, I woke up to find Teddy just TAKING MY PILLOW AWAY FROM ME. I was so disoriented and exhausted that I didn't even try to get it back from him, I just let him take it? At some point during the night he must have returned it to me, because when I woke up in the morning I was sleeping on it again. I guess that's not really a strike against camping, it's just a strike against sleeping next to Teddy. Anyway, I was pretty surprised by how well I slept, and we got up pretty early, packed our stuff up and headed over to the cave part of Windcave for a tour. Ok, here's the thing about caves: I don't particularly care for them. I mean, this was a pretty cool cave, it's really old for a cave, it's got all kinds of neat geological features and stuff, but I just don't enjoy being hundreds of feet under the surface of the earth. It's not a fear thing, it's just disorienting and a bit unpleasant to feel so closed in and isolated from anything that looks familiar. At one point our tour guide turned off all the artificial lights in the cave, and we were in the most complete darkness I've ever experienced. It was interesting, and I'm really glad we went, but I'm also really glad I don't live in a cave.
When we finished our tour of Windcave, I demanded we drive to Wyoming, so we got back in the car and headed out toward Devil's Tower. Basically as soon as we crossed the state line I started swooning. I was driving at the time, so I unfortunately didn't get any photos, but my God! Wyoming is the most beautiful place. It's all red rocks and grassy ranches and rolling hills and beautiful wildflowers. I even briefly entertained the totally illogical idea that I might go work on a cattle ranch for a summer after I finish my PhD. We stopped for an early lunch in Newcastle, WY, filled up on coffee, and then drove to Devil's Tower (that's the thing everybody met up at in Close Encounters of the Third Kind for all you Richard Dreyfuss fans). It's pretty impressive. What was almost more impressive than Devil's Tower itself were all the people who were climbing up it. Teddy says it's not a terribly difficult climb and that he could probably do it in seven hours, but that's a totally incomprehensible idea to me. Walking around it was totally adequate from my perspective.
Once we left Wyoming, things really got interesting. We hadn't filled up the tank since before we went through the Badlands, but as we were crossing over into South Dakota we still had four or five gallons left, which gets you 160-200 miles in a Prius. We passed a few gas stations in Bell Fouche without a second thought, and it was only about a hundred miles out that we realized gasoline might not be as easily accessible as we had assumed. Our plan was to cut a staircase through western South Dakota and North Dakota until we hit I-94 in Dickinson, but that plan was looking like it had been rather ill-conceived with two gallons of gas left and no major towns in sight. We saw a few town names on Google Maps, and decided to try our luck on the smaller roads we were on. Castle Rock turned out to be a total bust, and Hoover was worse than a bust, because Teddy and I both had the feeling that if we got out of the car we would be turned into lamps. We pinned our hopes on Reva, SD, which seemed promising because it was listed on a sign. As the needle hit "empty" we pulled into Reva, and we were both thrilled to see a gas station right at the intersection we were taking. Teddy pulled up to the pump, though, and we saw that the gas station was closed and that we couldn't pay with a credit card outside. A woman pulled into the parking lot and told us we should have filled up earlier (yes, thank you, that's helpful advice right now), and suggested we try Buffalo, about 25 miles west. We agreed that we had nothing to lose in trying to get to Buffalo, and that, in a worst case scenario, we could always call AAA if we ran out of gas, assuming we could get a signal to do so. So we got back in the car, and Teddy drove around 30 mph in a 65, trying to get the best mileage possible. We got more and more excited with each mile, and after almost an hour, we pulled into Buffalo, and saw, to our delight, that there was a gas station that was open. I cried. Granted, the fact that I had been thinking, "Man, this would make a great fan fic intro" during the drive made it a little bit less terrifying somehow, but I'm also convinced I'm about to die 90% of the time, so the idea of having my car about to break down in the middle of nowhere is also not exactly something I was cool with. I took over the driving after we filled up. We had added about an hour and a half to our trip because of the gasoline situation, but I drive too fast, and we made it back to Fargo around 1 AM. Lessons learned: there's a lot to do in southwestern South Dakota; camping is pretty great; I am ready to move to Wyoming; always, always, always stop for gas in Belle Fouche.
No comments:
Post a Comment