South Dakota Fanning = Great Faces, Great Places

Hi, All!

Sorry for the lack of updates yesterday, but we were in the middle of South Dakota with no internet.  Thanks to Starbucks' new free wireless in all of their locations, this blog post is coming to you from Casper, WY.  Thanks, Starbucks!

It's been an exciting couple days.  After leaving the KOA in Mitchell, we drove through South Dakota to the Badlands National Park.  For those of you unfamiliar with Badlands, it is this amazing spectacle of crazy amounts of erosion.  Basically, you drive through miles and miles of flat corn fields (or, as Tammy likes to sing, "wide open spaces") and then, out of nowhere, you come across this:

We had originally intended to take a short hike through the park, but it was over 90 degrees and the rangers warned us that the hikes we were considering were not best suited for a hot day like today.  Thus, we settled on doing the 30 mile (air conditioned) drive through the park, which led to some pretty incredible views.

Of course, Mooses enjoyed the ride as well.

We also were able to see our first wildlife spotting!  At one point just outside the park there is a place you can get out and see a bunch of prairie dogs hard at work.  We got to get really close to them before they dipped back into their hole, which was pretty cool.

We then left Badlands and continued on our route toward Custer State Park (our stopping ground for the evening).  As we drove, we were surprised by the number of motorcycles on the road.  Literally every other vehicle we saw was a motorcycle.  While we both agree that motorcycles are awesome, it's a bit intimidating sharing the road with so many of them, and we were both confused as to why the road was so cluttered with Harleys.  That confusion ended, however, when Tammy opened up the Road Trip guide and realized we were heading right into the middle of South Dakota during STURGIS!

For those of you as unfamiliar with the Sturgis Festival as we were, you can check out the webpage here: http://www.sturgis.com/  or the wikipedia site here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgis_Motorcycle_Rally.  Basically, it is a giant motorcycle rally that happens in the middle of South Dakota the first two weeks of August every year.  Recently, attendance has been over 500,000 cyclists, which is a pretty incredible number given the size of these South Dakota towns.  These small motels and restaurants are literally sprawling with bikers heading into the rally:

Now understanding why there were so many cyclists, we decided to follow some of them to the local hotspots for Bikers.  Being in South Dakota, this naturally took us to the local favorite: Wall Drug.

Wall Drug is about as hokey, if not hokier, than the Mitchell Corn Palace.  Basically, this couple in the 1930s opened a drug store in the town of Wall, which did not succeed very well.  Facing financial difficulty, one of the owners realized that the solution was to offer free ice water to drivers coming through.  Since then, the drug store has exploded in tourism, now spanning a block long and including such favorites as an animatronic T-Rex, a fake shooting gallery, and lots and lots of souvenirs with your name written on them.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Drug

Tammy, however, viewed Wall Drug as a historical landmark given her recent reading of The Grapes of Wrath, and so she thoroughly enjoyed it.  I suppose driving through the dust bowl, and seeing an offer of free ice water, would be very appealing.  However, I think the billboard 350 miles away from Wall Drug pronouncing the exit you should get off at is probably a bit much.  That said, there are literally hundreds of billboards along the way, and in other foreign locations like both poles, Europe, and Africa.

We then proceeded to the National monument, Mt. Rushmore.

We went on an awesome ranger walking tour of the monument, and both came away with a lot of really cool information.  Tammy's historical fun fact for the day actually arose from the tour.  Apparently, the monument, as envisioned by the sculptor Borglum, is not finished.  Borglum had wanted the monument to look like this:

But, Borglum died before Lincoln's face was even completed.  His son, Lincoln, then proclaimed that the monument was finished, and it has remained as such ever since.

Finally, we spent the evening driving from Mt. Rushmore to Custer State Park, where we stayed for the night.  Along the way, we got to drive this amazingly beautiful 15 mile scenic drive through the park.

The roads were windy and thin, but it was so breathtaking that we couldn't both help but feel awed by the power that the Black Hills bring.

After camping for the night, we hit the road early again this morning and will be at the Grand Tetons/Yellowstone within a few hours.  It's unclear how our internet access will be the next few days, but we'll definitely try and update again once we're out of the park on Wed and back on the road!

Until then, we'll keep on driving through beautiful Wyoming!