From Mount Rushmore, we headed northeast to Rapid City, South Dakota, and rejoined Interstate 90. A mere 70 miles east and we entered the Badlands. This stop was not on our original itinerary but was added on the recommendations of travelers we met on The Road.
We turned off the interstate and into the grasslands, and stopped at the first view point. Wow. Our surprise was not only what we saw, but that the Badlands even existed at all.
One of the recurring themes in the National Parks literature we have accumulated on the trip is to “Expect the Unexpected.” I have learned to appreciate these simple three words. The Badlands were completely unexpected.
From a geological perspective, the area is terribly interesting if one is into geology or archeology.
75 million years ago, the Great Plains (the area we know today as the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, and Iowa to Wyoming) was covered by a shallow sea, so the fossil history here is second to no other place on earth. Then eons later, there was the colliding of tectonic plates, rising of mountains, parading of glaciers, and resulting changing of climate. Species came and went. The sediment from each period left a distinct mark. These layers are on brilliant, if incredibly eerie, display.
Conservation writer Freeman Tilden described the region as “peaks and valleys of delicately banded colors – colors that shift in the sunshine,….and a thousand tints that color charts do not show. In the early morning and evening, when shadows are cast upon the infinite peaks or on a bright moonlit night when the whole region seems a part of another world, the Badlands will be an experience not easily forgotten.”
Paleontologist Thaddeus Culbertson had a different reaction: “Fancy yourself on the hottest day in summer in the hottest spot of such place without water – without an animal and scarce an insect astir – without a single flower to speak pleasant things to you and you will have some idea of the utter loneliness of the Badlands.”
“What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal…., an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it”. Frank Lloyd Wright,1935.
"It is no longer difficult to imagine life on another planet." Linda & Ron, 2021.
Car Talk
Distance: 206 miles
Driving Time: 5 hours, 34 minutes
Mileage: 30.1 mpg
Average speed: 37 mph
Trip Total: 8,140.3
[Editor’s note: if the statistics in Car Talk look familiar, they are. This is not a mistake. Linda & Ron traveled through Mount Rushmore and The Badlands on the same day, so there is only one set of data for Car Talk. Linda decided to write two blogs for that day, for reasons that will remain a mystery.]
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