The Good Badlands, Big Vistas, Sheep, Fossils, and Impermanence

After 50 years, Gwen finally got her wish to return to a place she had seen as a child on a family road trip through the Badlands with her parents. As a 10 year-old kid from Minnesota, they could have taken her anywhere and told it was the Badlands, but she swears they wouldn't do that. The good news is the scenery hasn't changed much in those fifty years. FYI, this is our first attempt at a selfie using our new, bluetooth, selfie stick!

The place was named the Badlands because it could not be crossed by westward migrating families with the rugged terrain and lack of water. Of course, the local Souix Indians had known this for a couple hundred years, and named the place Mako Sica, or literally, land bad. Like so much about the travelling across the country, the white man had to find out the hard way. Another reason for the name of the park is all the sheep. Get it? Baaaaad-lands. Sorry, I promise never to do that again. After years of not seeing mountain sheep, we actually pulled up to them right next to the road. This dude was like, "yeah, these are my girls and you should just keep moving!"

"Badlands" is plural for a reason. The Badlands National Park contains many areas each with a different look in the shapes and colors of the formations. The trip through the park consisted of a couple of hours slow driving on very curvy roads. There were lots of pull-outs each with a new grand vista.

As it says in the AAA Tour Guide, "Beneath the Badlands lies one of the world's finest Oligocene fossil beds of mammals which flourished 27-34 million years ago." When we were in the visitor's center we did see some weird looking fake animals from way back when. There was this ancient camel, with no hump, and which was only about three feet tall. I'm guessing he was mostly lunch for the big guys.

For me the park is less about the Oligocene critters and more about the enormous scale of time. The big picture takeaway for me is how our couple hundred years of history is represented by about a quarter of an inch of strata in the 69 million years of history I was looking at in the rock formations. Really folks, our being here at all is just a very temporary burp in the history of the planet. Hope that thought helps put your problems in perspective.

. . . time frozen in rock.

I guess time frozen in rock means if you want to see the Badlands there is really no rush. We learned the formations are eroding at the miserly rate of an inch a year. That's about four and a half feet since Gwen first saw it. Still awesome and will be for some time to come. Here is a cool panorama you can manipulate to get another view of the place.

I know I promised Custer State Park information also, but that will have to be the next post. Thinking in terms of millions of years, and our likely brief history on the planet, I don't see why we need to be in any rush.

Onward, but with all this time, let's just ease on down the road!

Earl and Gwen

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Open Spaces and A Little Advice from Road Warriors

Day 2 of the trip had us heading straight west on I-90 across South Dakota. When leaving Minnesota by car and heading to the southwest, for any way you go, the front end of the journey always has to include the Vast and Open Spaces of the Dakotas, Iowa, Kansas or Nebraska. For an urban guy, it's really breathtaking, like looking at the ocean everyday. It takes a while for your eyes to get used to not having much to settle on. In some areas, it's so wide open that a billboard, distant windmills or even roadkill are cause for a little excitement. On this day, we had pale blue sky, cool dry air, good road, and for most of the trip, golden fields of corn or the wide open prairies of South Dakota.

In honor of all this open space and car time, I thought I'd take a break from the scenery reporting and share just a little about us as road warriors. I'll tell you about the Badlands and Custer State Park in the next post. With this being trip thirty-four across the country, we've paid some serious road dues and learned some things you might find interesting and maybe even useful. For us, like the wagon train pioneers, it's mostly about the vehicle, the sights, and then a good night's sleep.

The Vehicle: Our highway cars have been upgraded over the years. A four-cylinder Subaru didn't do it in the mountains so we went to a six. After 10 years of that, this year we went to a much bigger SUV. This guy floats down the road, doesn't mind the big winds, loves mountains, and even has a Bluetooth connection that lets us swear at a human voice when things don't work. The Bluetooth also makes for hands free phone calls and access to Pandora, Public Radio, and TED talks in the middle of "Come to Jezz-us Contrie" radio. Big, floaty, and entertaining is best on the open road.

Because it's mostly fast-food places at the gas stops during the day, we provision the car with healthy snacks. I also like beef jerky for protein and sunflower seeds to help pass the time. Along with our digital toys, we carry a real laptop with a car charger. We have a dreaming/planning document that we work on along the way. The open spaces are the perfect time for talking about how the last season went, and how we want to live together, with others, and where to go in the next few years. Being us, we connect that document to a budget, so we have the opportunity for heated discussions about priorities. Yup, 5-8 hours a day, day after day, sitting side by side and talking about the sometimes hard stuff IS asking for some heat, even if it's a big floaty car.

For gas stops, we like the freeway truck stops, like the Flying Js, Love's, and the poorly named Kum and Go. They are lively places with everything the over-the-road person could ever need. I love the diesel smell outside, the vibrations of all the big trucks at idle, all the vehicle gear in the shops, the graffiti in the bathrooms, and hearing the numbers being called for trucker showers. Plenty of bad snacks, too. Seeing a trucker carrying a burrito, a bag of doughnuts, and a quart of coke to the cab of his gazillion pound truck gives me pause knowing this guy is driving the same highway!

The Sights: Simply stated, I'm blessed with a partner who loves car trips. I swear she's like a reincarnated dog, which, if it was possible, would have her face out the window, ears and hair blowing back, and wet nose into the wind. I can honestly say that on each of our crossings, along with coaching from a friend who works at AAA and about 5 pounds of AAA Tour Guides, she has managed to find lots of interesting places along the way to visit. I've been to countless pioneer museums, pony express stations, Mormon trail exhibits, Oregon Trail sites, and lots of State and National Parks, just for starters. We always plan to be landed by three in the afternoon to stretch out, have time to see the sights, and let the temperature in the car come down a little. At least one 2-day stop some place interesting helps, too. Everyone should see the country this way, at least once, or thirty-four times if you have Gwen planning the trip.

A Good Night's Sleep: Accommodations can be a little tricky, and early on we were burned a few times with interesting sounding B&B ads and even good reviews. On arrival, we'd find the pictures often didn't match the ad, the hosts were lonely and needed to talk, and the promised breakfast to be flat out creepy. We suspect they did their own reviews or had their relatives do the deed. There have been some good ones, too, but mostly now, we go for the bland but predictable.

Predictable means places near the freeway with words like Americ, Lodge, Inn, Suites, or even Grand, as in last night's Grandstay Hotel. They are safe, boring, equipped with WiFi, a good bed, a chair and table, couch, flat-screen TV, small refrigerator, and usually a free breakfast, all for around $100. Even at this price, you have to be careful though. We've been rudely awakened at 5 AM by howling dogs in one hotel. We later realized we were in a pet (vs human) friendly hotel. Nothing like the idea that your bedspread has been the bedroom of a countless string of cats, dogs, lizards, snakes, or gawd knows whatever creatures people want to travel with these days. Always ask, especially if the room smells funny!

Then there is the matter of the alarm clock that glows red at night, and whose controls no one has ever figured out. That means it will likely go off in the middle of your deep sleep cycle, raising you abruptly from the dead. Add to that all the digital stuff in the room these days. Seems like everything electrical in a hotel room has a little LED indicator light. At night, a dozen of those little blinking eyes cast a rainbow of colors to softly light the room. Add to the disco ball lighting the nighttime conversation between the off and on running of the heating/cooling unit under the window that is randomly talking to the motor driving the little refrigerator! It can be a real party in there. I say unplug almost everything before bed, effectively sleeping in the 1950s.

Our trip through the Badlands was a beautiful end to a long driving day and we're settled into the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park. More about all that in the next post. We've had a nice meal, most everything is shut off or unplugged, and we're turning in early to be rested for a day of sight-seeing and hiking tomorrow.

Thanks for the use of your eyeballs and more soon...

Earl and Gwen

Corn, Pipes, Bison, and Cheese Wiz

Well, we're on the road again so I thought I'd revive this blog. This time we're again driving cross-country from Minneapolis to our winter digs in Tucson, AZ. This is trip number thirty four across the country and, thanks to Gwen, we've seen a lot along the way. We're not doing the most direct route this time in favor of visiting friends, family, and a couple remaining landmarks. I'm thinking this will result in 3-5 posts.

Our first day had us heading from Minneapolis to the southwest corner of Minnesota. The day was one of those deep grey days with spits of rain which Minnesota does so well. Once in the country, we drove past a small town about every twenty-five miles. Each town had a grain elevator next to the railroad tracks, a couple of churches (Lutheran and Catholic), sometimes a water tower, and a crumbling and almost deserted brick main street with a tavern or two holding things together. I don't think the pubs were divided along faith lines.

After about four small towns there would be a bigger town built around an Ethanol plant, maybe a feedlot, or chicken or turkey operation for a National Brand. The larger towns would have a more lively main street with some actual commerce going on. Their might be a movie theater (one older movie), a clothing store, a bank built from fancy stone, a grand old hotel (now rental apartments), sometimes an old train depot repurposed with a coffee shop, maybe a dinner with a woman's name. Near or often on the opposite side of the main highway you'd find the supperclub. The locals would say it was the only good place to eat dinner.

Between all the towns there were seeming endless oceans of cornfields. Most were shaved clean, leaving the post-harvest stubble on the very black earth. The results of the harvest were being delivered in big trucks to the grain elevators, or more frequently these days to the Ethanol plant. For the better part of three hours we drove through this scene, over and over again. Then we got to Pipestone.

The area around Pipestone, for hundreds of years, was considered a sacred gathering place by many Native America tribes. For generations, they came from all directions to mine, by hand, the beautiful and soft red stone found only there. With it they made the pipes that were, and still are, at the center of Native spirituality. Today, because of treaty rights, it's preserved as sacred ground within the Pipestone National Monument. Only approved Native tribes have access to the quarries and are allowed to mine in the area.

I may not have all of the history just right because I was really just expecting to see an interesting quarry with some important history. By the time we left, I realized I was surprised by the smallness of the quarries, amazed at the history, and a little overwhelmed by the spiritual story of the place.

As I learned, it's not just getting the red pipestone that's important. It's the spiritual journey associated with the creation and use of the pipe. It begins with the combination of the physical and spiritual approach to the land. The people would often fast and pray prior to even going to the area. Different tribes that may have been enemies knew that because of the sacredness of the place, no fighting could be tolerated. The pipestone area was a place of peace for all. Then came the very hard work of unearthing the pipestone, by hand, from beneath layers of hard Sioux Quartzite. The work would require many strong hands and often weeks just to get the raw stone. Then there were the many long hours of working the stone to create a pipe. This is a truly spiritual path to create a ceremonial object, which in its smoke will carry your prayers to Great Spirit.

Forgive me for the details I've missed. I'm still trying to get my head around a few hundred years of spiritual history from a people I had already held in a degree of awe. I'm so glad we made this stop. You can check out the National Park Service page and this page of Google images to get a sense of what we experienced.

Thanks to photographer Jim Brandenburg

With a rainy, 40 degree cold, 25 mile per hour wind blowing, we pretty much missed walking around in the prairie at Blue Mounds State Park. The "Mound" is basically a high cliff overlooking Luverne, Minnesota. The story is that to the settlers going west in the 1860s and 1870s, the cliff appeared blue. The park is home to a naturally evolving herd of wild bison today, but it's a tiny remnant of the huge herds that used to inhabit the area. There is a belief that the cliffs were used as a hunting tool for Native Americans. You get the herd running and then point them at the cliff.  Think about it, at the bottom of the cliff was a giant meat market, a gift of spirit to be shared!

We set up shop in Luverne at the Grandstay Hotel, and quickly headed out to a pretty typical rural supper club across the freeway for the $1 an ounce ribeye steak night. Kind of like the Pipestone quarry, the place and food were fine, but the real story is always in the theater of the people. I'm too tired now for the whole story, but here's a couple tidbits. The waitress spent about six minutes trying to explain to the old farmer in the booth behind me what made up a pulled pork, Cubano sandwich. After what I thought was a fairly dramatic description of all the somewhat unusual ingredients for this part of the world, and in spite of his wife's almost continuous encouragement, Opting for tradition, he asked for a BLT. On our way out of the place we walked past a blue-haired grandma table where all four women seemed to be talking at once. I was only able to catch, ". . . but with the sliced olives and cheeze wiz on the tater tots, it was a big hit."

Tomorrow it's 7 hours mostly straight west on I-90 to the edge of South Dakota. Gwen wants to see the Badlands and we plan a couple nights in Custer State Park. I should have the time to drop you a digital card from there.

Love to all and rolling, rolling, rolling!

Earl and Gwen

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