Saturday, June 9, 2007

Writing you from the future

We were running several hours behind for most of the trip but for the first time Thursday we broke schedule — and jumped ahead several hours.

When we got to Badlands, it was chilly, raining, and the winds had not let up. June high: 86; yesterday: 48. We decided to grab lunch in the nearby town of Interior and see if the weather changed.

Thus, Interior: population 67. Mind-blowingly small. We stopped at the general store — about the size of a 7-11 and, from what we could tell, the only commercial space in town — and scraped together what sandwich-makings we could.

The rest of Badlands was awesome — from the car. We wanted to give the weather a fair go so we changed out of our shorts and t-shirts in the visitor center bathroom (it'd been the high seventies when we left our hotel that morning) and tested the waters with a half-mile, boardwalked trail. But even that was too much — besides the cold, the rain came in bursts, and then — again — the wind. This was wind that, when we opened one of the car doors, sucked things out as if into a vacuum (we even lost our park map over a cliff on one such occasion).

So we drove the park loop and exited in Wall, SD, home of Wall Drug, which is advertised for over 400 miles along 80 as well as on billboards in Kenya and buses in London (it's sort of their schtick) and was tourist-trap hell-on-earth (take this from two people who liked the Corn Palace). We were in and out in less than two minutes, and were on the road again to Rushmore.

Rushmore was Rushmore. What can I say.

Rapid City, SD (pop. 60,000) was a change of pace. There was a big hill near the center of it — with Dinosaur Park on top — and looking at the stretch of suburbs was really eerie after the last 30-odd hours. (The couple that ran the Dinosaur Park gift shop had been to San Francisco once. "It's a... weird city," they said, and you could totally tell what they meant.)

We made Devil's Tower shortly after sunset.

Interior.

Faking these smiles.


It was still awesome.


Everything the light touches is our Kingdom.

Get that big honkin' butt out of the way!


From the Jefferson's Nostril Viewing Platform.


C'mere, big boy, and gimme a kiss.


Dreams can come true!


It's not a purse, IT'S A CAMERA BAG!!!


She said yes.


It's billboard country out here.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I was seriously missing your blog updates. Dad said, "Instead of checking every 5 minutes, just call. You're his mother!" But I told him that reading the blog was much more fun. Keep up the good work. Luv ya!

Unknown said...

Riding a Dinosaur could quite possibly be the single most awesome thing you ever do. I hope you enjoyed it.

Papertowns said...

yeah lauren get that bodonkadonk out of the picture! ;)