July 7, 2006

July 7, 2006

This morning we decide to get off I90 and follow Lewis and Clark’s trail up the Missouri to the state capital of Pierre, SD. We head back east over the Missouri river and follow it north and west crisscrossing it a few times. The landscape has changed dramatically. It no longer resembles Illinois farmland. The scenery is right out of Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. There is nothing but rolling grassland. Apparently rain is more scant here as greenery and trees are very scarce. The wind is also unrelenting; it rolls across the prairie.

Once we hit Pierre, we decide we need some exercise and unhitch the bicycles. We pedal past where Lewis and Clark first met the warlike Teton Sioux tribe. The temperature is near 100F, so we cut inland to the state capital building and cool off in the AC under the rotunda dome. Somewhat cooled off we return to the RV and head straight south back to I90 and continue west again. As we approach the Badlands, storms appear to both our left and right. Lots of lightning and wind but very little rain.

The Badlands are very eerie, like multicolored mounds of mud and gravel popping up on the edge of the prairie. The interpretative signs explain that the badlands are a wall of erosion from one prairie elevation to a lower one. The rocks are soft and the badland ‘wall’ is eroding back at a rate of one inch per year.

We drive through the first few miles of the eastern end of the park and stay the night at a private campground just outside the park in the town of Interior. We feast at the park diner on Buffalo burgers and beer as we are too tired to cook.