DAY 3: THROUGH THE BADLANDS
TO RAPID CITY
The next day has an early start: up at
5:30 with the aim of reaching the Badlands while the light's
still good. Walk into the hotel breakfast room, pour some
waffle mixture into the griddle and find ourselves a table
amidst the even-earlier-rising fishing parties. Catch sight
of the news and learn that four or five bombs have gone off
in London. Too early to say how many casualties yet, but it's
clearly not good news.
Hit the road in a slightly somber mood,
but our spirits are raised once more by Highway 14 which continues
to make its way through coarse grassland that must have looked
exactly the same to the settlers who opened up this country
in the nineteenth century. Stop to take a photo and, not for
the first time, a pick-up slows down to check that we're okay
for gas.
We're not going to make the Badlands much
before ten, so we'll miss the best light, but we get it
here instead. Empty roads, changing colors, the occasional
bird bouncing off the car to join the deer, raccoons and other
unidentified road kill that are visible from hundreds of yards
away on the otherwise perfectly flat road ahead. And the Wall
Drug signs.
Back in 1936, owners Ted and Dorothy Hustead
had the bright idea of tempting travelers to stop at their
drug store in the small town of Wall through the offer of
"Free Ice Water." The idea proved so successful
that people were already arriving as Ted returned from erecting
his first signs. Before this spark of inspiration, Wall Drug
was struggling for customers. The next summer they had to
employ eight waitresses. Today they get as many as 20,000
visitors a day, and their highway signs are world famous.
The store itself is so tacky it's brilliant.
There's a chapel, a pharmacy, what seems like dozens of specialty
stores, and a large café, still offering free ice water
and coffee at five cents a cup. The most memorable and certainly
the most photographed aspect of Wall Drug is its collection
of novelty items: a life-size bucking bronco you can sit on,
a T-Rex that roars every few minutes, various fiberglass characters
sitting on benches, and a whole range of animated groups that
can be activated for a quarter. It's not subtle, but it makes
no pretence to be. And after a few hours on the road, the
offer of free ice water still works.
If Wall Drug is the ultimate plastic attraction,
a hugely entertaining but essentially pointless diversion
in the middle of nowhere, then the Badlands provide the perfect
antidote.
Created over the last four million years through
a combination of wind, rain, and river erosion, the Badlands
is a quarter of a million acre National Park of almost indescribable
beauty. At first glance, the undulating layers of sandstone
look like waves on the sea. Walk a few hundred yards further
on, look over the edge, and the same formations have suddenly
become sharp and craggy, like the spines on the back of a
lizard. There are soft, smooth, rounded formations, pinnacles
that look like long-lost eastern temples, sheer drops, moonscapes,
distant rivers, patterns made up of different layers of stone,
and formations that appear so regular that it's hard to imagine
how they could have been created.
Every corner reveals a new scene, even
more stunning than the last. Look back at where you've just
been and you get another view. And when you think you've seen
it all, look ahead in the distance and there's a whole new
set of rock formations to explore, walk, climb and wonder
at.
There are buffalo, mountain goats, and prairie
dogs. There are fossil trails that let lazy tourists like
us feel like we're experiencing a bit of off-the-beaten-track
wilderness without actually going more than a few hundred
yards from our air-conditioned rental cars, and there are
real trails for those who've come prepared with boots, maps,
and water. There are viewpoints with railings where you'll
find a handful of other people ooohing and aaahing in whispered
amazement, and there are endless opportunities to escape the
crowds and enjoy the silent, tear-down-your-face wonder of
the place.
As we overheard an old guy saying to his family
as we were returning to our car, you sure can't beat Mother
Nature. And this was Mother Nature at her very best.
Later that day, sitting on the bed in
our room at the Holiday Inn Express in Rapid City, while the
thunder rumbled in the hills and the rain came down in buckets,
the map shows us that we'd seen less than half of the park.
Tonight's entertainment -- on the recommendation
of the reception team at our hotel -- is provided by the Colonial
House Restaurant & Bar which is "just over the road".
Looking forward to a little leg stretching we set off but
realize that not only is there no pavement but, unsurprisingly
therefore, no pedestrian crossing point either. Our options
appear to be either to return to the hotel and drive the no
more than 400-yard journey which, apart from being crazy,
would mean an evening's abstinence, or to brave it out and
hope for a gap in the multiple lanes of traffic flowing in
either direction.
To this day I honestly don't know whether
it was incredulity at this middle-aged couple's stupidity
or old fashioned South Dakotan courtesy (I really, really
want to believe it was the latter), but to our amazement first
one driver then another pulled up to a standstill and smilingly
waved us across.
This was a feature of our entire journey,
particularly noticeable in South Dakota but apparent wherever
we went. For years now, we Europeans have joked about what
we perceive to be the shallow insincerity of the "How
may I help you" American culture. It's only when you
experience it for yourself that you realize that, for the
greater part, it's 100 per cent genuine. There's an endearing
warmth and friendliness about the people we encountered, one
that we in the UK seem to have lost.
Next:
Rapid City to Deadwood>
Peter
Thody
January 8, 2006
