On The Road With Earl and Vangie: Enjoying South Dakota!

June 28^th – we arrived safely in Hermosa, SD today. This is a beautiful part of the country! We’re staying at Heartland RV Park – ($50 a night for my RVing friends). Nice enough park, but they’re had so much rain they’ve brought in truckloads of gravel to try to keep it from being a mucky mess. It’s not too bad. We have our mat out with our chairs on it, as the weather is lovely and nice to sit out. I’m pretty sure they have a pool, though I haven’t seen it, and likely we’ll be too busy while we’re here to use it. What is not to our liking is how close the sites are! We have an RV on either side of us and we feel almost claustrophobic. Also the wifi is sketchy at best. We got set up and went into Rapid City to get a desperately needed car wash and while there we ate at a really nice Chinese buffet. Earl loves Chinese food – I can take it or leave it, but this was pretty good.

Rapid City is the 2^nd largest city in SD, and is known as the City of Presidents. They have life size bronzes of presidents on the street corners! ALL of them up to the just completed project of George W. Bush, with Obama soon to follow. I know one or two I would not be interested in having my picture taken by them, but that’s another subject. Ha Very interesting! This is funded entirely by private donations, and the artists of each has ties to South Dakota. We’re going to go in and take some photos one day while we’re here.

Monday, June 29^th – We enjoyed a quiet day at home – we were ready for this! We got caught up on cleaning the RV (although we’d intended to schedule a professional detailing and found that we are not allowed due to water usage, they just can’t handle more water in the ground. Disappointing, as we really need it, and we’re not supposed to wash it either! Earl did get the windshield washed, but nothing else. Thank goodness it’s a color that doesn’t show it too badly. I balanced checkbooks and we did some research and planning for things to see this week. Late this afternoon, we read outside and just enjoyed a beautiful day.

Tuesday, June 30^th – MOUNT RUSHMORE DAY! We immensely enjoyed the ride around this area, scenic views everywhere you look! I think I could enjoy the life of a peaceful rancher. We strolled around Keystone and fell in love with this scenic, quaint town. Keystone was founded in 1891 with the discovery of gold-bearing quartz from the Keystone Mine. The city “boomed” however, in 1894 with the discovery of a large gold vein a few hundred yards away. Named the Holy Terror (after the locator’s wife!! Maybe we’ll hear more about the story behind that while we’re here!), the mine was closed down in 1903 following litigation related to several deaths in the mine. There was a brief flurry of mining activity again in the 1930’s but none since. There are lots of unique shops long the boardwalk.We enjoyed lunch on an upstairs balcony overlooking the main street of shopping.

Downtown Keystone.

Cozying up to this big guy.

What a lovely day. After lunch, we drove on over to see Mount Rushmore, and what a treat to be able to witness such immense artistic work with such meaningful history behind it.

We passed this beautiful lake and hiked down to it. Such serenity!

Along our scenic route, we came across this section of highway.....

We then continued our Scenic Drive down The Needles Point – a drive similar to the Dragon’s Tail in NC, for those of you who’ve had that pleasure! Incredibly windy and whoa…. The tunnels. Good thing we didn’t drive the RV here!

After viewing Mount Rushmore, we took a scenic drive over to Custer, an historic town where the first settlers followed the wagon tracks of the 1,000 strong 1874 Expedition led by General Custer. The scenery around this area is spectacular! We saw roaming buffalo! They don’t fascinate me quite as much as Longhorns, but magnificent creatures for sure! Surrounded by 1.2 MILLION acres of the Black Hills Nat’l Forest, Custer City has a lot of recreational activities events throughout the year. They have a huge event planned for the 4^th that we may decide to attend.

We decided to stop for an ice cream cone, and were enjoying sitting out on the porch and lo and behold, a truck pulled up and out popped our friends, Ray and Debbie Colburn! What a cool surprise! We knew they were in the area, and we’d planned to meet for lunch somewhere tomorrow, but had no idea we’d see them today. What fun!

We enjoyed seeing Hot Springs, established in the late 1800’s, and is known for generations of Native Americans for its rejuvenating warm mineral spring waters which were used by tribes for physical and spiritual cleansing and healing. In later years, it became known for its bath houses and health sanitariums, including Battle Mountain Nat’l Historic Landmark, which still today is an active VA Hospital renowned for its highly successful PTSD treatment program. In 2014, the State of South Dakota officially designated Hot Springs as “The Veteran’s Town” of SD. Here we found a picturesque community nestled along Fall River, which winds its way through the downtown area past the distinctive pink sandstone buildings, nearly all built from local quarries. You can still soak and play in the what they claim is 87 degree waters year round. We put our feet in, and did not believe it was anywhere near that warm, but still very pleasant.

Earl found this big overhanging cave-like formation so he decided to attempt this steep rocky climb. I was laughing at him coming down - much harder than going up. LOL I should have been using video.

Safely down..... Now, how about this steep stairway? It goes to a CHURCH! Would you attend a church where you had to get there by taking these stairs?

We were still full from our delicious lunch, so decided not to try to eat out again, and just have a light snack in the RV whenever we felt hungry, so we came on home, worn out from our day of trekking all over, but full of happy memories already made!

Wednesday, July 1 – Today starts our FOURTH month on the road! Wow….what an awesome time we’ve had, with the one major negative is going so long without seeing our family. Don’t know if I’m going to make it till Christmas! Facetime helps but just doesn’t cut it.

Today we went to meet our friends, Ray and Debbie Colburn for lunch at Sylvan Lake Resort. What a beautiful place and what a perfect day! We sat outside on the patio and just marveled at the perfect weather – I think it was maybe 82 degrees, slight breeze and sunny. We ordered delicious food and enjoyed chatting and catching up, comparing notes on our trips and just enjoying friendship. What a gift God gives us in good friends. We enjoyed a 2.5 hour lunch, and the conversation was great.

We shared this yummy creme brulee.

Taken in the beautiful lodge....

We then parted and we went on over to see the Crazy Horse Monument. It was impressive, but I somehow felt a bit disappointed, honestly. You had to see it from such a great distance and in my view, it wasn’t worth $22 but to each his own. The monument was begun before Earl and I were even born, and it’s just the face that is finished – you’ll see the plans for the completion of it in the photos, but really it will not be finished till long after we’re gone, so….. maybe our children and grandchildren will come and enjoy a more completed project.

This is what the completed project will look like in another 100 years or so....Right now, they just have the outline and partial part of the face completed.

You can see what is finished, and this is an interesting outline of the plans. The day we were there, a bulldozer was up there with men working on the pointed finger.

We thoroughly enjoyed the scenic vistas down Iron Mountain Road on the way home. See just a few of the photos.

You can obviously only fit one car at a time, so you just take turns. Ray was telling us they had to pull in the side mirrors on his truck to make it through!

Interesting to see the curve in the road and the overpass shown here, knowing you'll be going up over that overpass in a minute and looking back down!

This was something I don't remember seeing before - along this section of road they often just briefly divide the road so that only one lane is going and then it doubles back around to a double lane.

We saw a lot of these road signs and lots of these hairpin curves. It reminded me of the road going to Boone, NC. Note in the photo below how you can see the road in this hairpin curve.

Aren't these views just so peaceful and lovely? I had no idea South Dakota was such a beautiful state!

Thursday, July 2 - What a great day! We left about 10:30 and even though we had ½ tank of gas we still filled up because we were going to be driving where we knew there would be no gas available. The Badlands! Just amazing! We took so many photos as we drove and again at every overlook spot. The ultimate destination was Wall, and the only thing in between was the big town of Interior, population 94! And there was gas available at $4 a gallon! Glad we filled up before we came out here. It seems strange to us, as at home diesel had gotten much higher than regular gas, and out west, diesel is much cheaper than regular gas. We generally pay anywhere from $2.55 - $2.79 for diesel and gas is anywhere from $2.89-$3.15.

There is little in Interior BUT a gas station and a couple of general store type places where you can buy limited groceries and miscellaneous items. I can’t believe they have to drive all the way to Wall to get normal things! Mostly a very depressed area, trailers and very small homes. They did have 2 churches, a Presbyterian church and a TINY Catholic church. It always amazes me that people would choose to live so far out!

Believe it or not, there is a KOA in Interior! We wanted to go check it out, and we could not believe this sign. 12 FURLONGS???? I had no idea how long a furlong is, but we got there in a few minutes - actually a pretty nice park, just so far out, you are removed from any potential of wifi. LOL I thought this sign was funny on our way out of the park.

I've never actually seen anything like the Badlands.

The Badlands is a National Park, and would be a dream for anyone interested in the science of erosion. This is what we learned. For approximately 30 million years, layers of mud, sand and gravel were laid down. In those layers are fossils of many different prehistoric animals preserved for modern study. According to the literature, one to four million years ago, erosion began to outpace the deposits, leaving colorful spires resembling castles! Seriously, that’s what I kept saying was how much several looked like sand castles. We read a lot of scientific facts about what happened to make the Badlands, such as upheaval and volcanic activity pushing the sea floor up. Also we read that 25 million years ago three-toed horses, no bigger than the average dog, camels, crocodiles and sabre toothed cats and other prehistoric animals roamed the area. I’m certainly glad there were none of those around. We would love to know a Biblical perspective to all this – we wondered how much the Great Flood waters receding could have caused a lot of this The Badlands National Park covers 244,300 acres of the White River Badlands. The landscape often takes on the appearance of great castles, a great wall and even statues. Some areas have vibrant colors caused by mineral deposits. On the whole, it seems a wild, desolate place, but we did see some amazing mountain goats. We marveled at their agility as they quickly ran up the steep areas, seeming as sure footed as can be. Unlike US (LOL) as we climbed several of the peaks for better views and photos!

This was a long STEEP climb, but we wanted to get the view from the top so we did it! It would have been much wiser to have different shoes on, but we survived.

I'm a long way up here!

Here's some views from the top....

We kept debating how the name originated, and were told that the French trappers who explored the west in the early 1800’s called the area “a bad land to cross”. The Dakota Indians labeled it “mako sika” meaning “land bad.” Remember there were no paved highways back then to make the traveling easier. I can hardly imagine what it was like!

We finally arrived in Wall, SD to find Wall Drugs, the famous place so many of our friends on Facebook had said not to miss! We had read about it in some of our travel literature, and I had the thought, “why would we drive 2 hours or more to see a drug store?” But….. this place, one of the sales clerks told us, receives 20,000 visitors EVERY DAY!!!! When Sturgis has their annual bike rally, they generally get about 500,000 bikers coming through, and this year is the 75^th anniversary of Sturgis, so they anticipate there will be well over a million bikers coming through!!! Let me give you a bit of the history as its fascinating. Ted and Dorothy Hustead moved into the back of Wall Drug Store in 1931. It was in the middle of nowhere, with a population of only 326, all poor people, and business was really bad. But they prayed about it and felt that was where God was telling them to go. So one day in hot July, Dorothy came up with the idea of offering Free Ice Water to people if they stopped by. Long story short, they now serve over 20,000 people every day! And they sell 5 cent cups of coffee. Hard to imagine from such humble beginnings, it’s now such a huge attraction. It’s almost like a mini International Drive, (my friends in FL will know what I mean!) But it’s still just that one street.

Earl waiting in line for homemade ice cream.

They even have a little tiny Traveler's Chapel....these were Christian founders and it shows...

This is a map of the street! Gives you an idea of the scope of what you can see....

Friday, July 3^rd – another sightseeing day , we had planned! Not so quick. We were supposed to get the mail Lisa sent to us priority mail. It was supposed to be here yesterday, but it wasn’t so we checked on our way out this morning. No mail! Lisa had sent us the tracking number so I tracked it and it said it was delivered in Hermosa on the 2^nd, and delivered here later that afternoon. So we went to the post office, nope, they printed out the tracking sheet and it was clear it HAD been delivered, so the postal lady said she’d meet us back at the RV office to discuss. She told them where she’d put the mail and showed on her chart where she’d keyed it in as delivered here at 9:28. NO one could find it! The desk person said they have a Mr. Perry staying here, and wondered if he’d picked it up by accident so she was trying to track him down. We were getting stressed and some of that mail was important! We asked them to please call us if they were able to track it down. By now it was noon –

We took out and enjoyed amazingly scenic vistas going to Lead, Deadwood and Sturgis, and Spearfish. These are old western towns that are on the 50 Top Small Towns in America list, but to be honest, while they were quaint and scenic, not of much interest to us, with mostly old Indian Trading Posts, Saloons, Casinos and motorcycle places, particularly in Sturgis. So didn’t take us long to “do the towns” but oh the drive through Spearfish Canyon! Wow…. God sure is an amazing creator of beauty!

Our lunch spot in Deadwood.

Sidewalk entertainment - these guys definitely needed to keep their day jobs. haha

So interesting to see houses built right into the mountain and above the top line of the town.

Now remember our mail saga? We got a call from the RV park, that our package had just been delivered, and we’re like WHAT? Apparently it was still at the post office!!!! The carrier had keyed in the tracking number as delivered but never had done it!!!! Grrrrr is this what happens in small towns? AT any rate, we were more than grateful to know it was waiting on us! Funny timing, we had been so stressed and both of us were in a less than stellar mood, just frustrated with dealing with incompetent people, and when we got to this scenic spot, we got out to walk along the lake. Earl just hugged me and said the sweetest prayer, quoting parts of the 23^rd Psalm and told God we knew He knows what we need and to just help us to relax and enjoy the beauty and serenity of this lovely place and so that’s what we did. Shortly after we got back in the car is when we got the call they had delivered our mail! Coincidence? Maybe, but we choose to believe God cares even about the silly little frustrations of life we face and helps us through them!

Beside the still waters....

When Frank Lloyd Wright visited Spearfish Canyon in 1935 he described it as "unique and unparallelled elsewhere in our country." It truly is beautiful. If you're ever in this area, traveling down the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway is a must!

Bridal Veil Falls.

On the way to Sturgis, Earl got this hairbrained idea to see if he could roll one of the huge bales of hay over, so here we are, after walking out in the field. They are way heavier than you'd think, but he did move it a few inches.

Sturgis, home of the legendary Motorcycle Rally. This year marks the 75th Anniversary and they are expecting 1.5 million bikers!

I don't think there is any amount of money that would entice me to be in a crowd like this! This huge banner was on the side of a building in downtown Sturgis, taken during one of the recent rallies.

We came home by way of Rapid City again, we really like this pretty, clean “City of Presidents” – so this afternoon, we went in and walked around downtown to get some photos of a couple of our favorite presidents.