07.06.07
South Dakota Road trip begins! Day 1
We left Illinois at 5pm on friday June 29th and drove through the night. We arrived at the Badlands just as the sun was rising. We were a little tired, but since Bela had driven the last round I took over once we got there. We stopped at the first overlook to watch the sunrise. We both were still awake so we hopped around on the ridges while we each took photos. Once the sun was up we decided to continue on into the park. We stopped a few more times to explore. We started working our way around the Loop and Bela opted to stay in the car to get some much needed rest.
On my first hike alone, i took my time and just enjoyed the solitude. It was a small loop near the Cliff Shelf. I took the opposite direction of the trail than the few other tourists that were up early as well took. I happened upon the cutest little bunny. A tiny little guy who was a little jumpy but very curious. He ran away at first, but then worked his way closer as i tried to photograph him. He’d hear something then run away like a bat out of hell, doing a funky little jump where he’d kick out his back feet. Then sneak back to say hi. Eventually he got quite close, so we enjoyed our little time together until someone came and scared him away for good.
I continued back to the car and on to more overlooks while bela continued to nap. I took some photos but decided to wait until he woke up to do much else. We headed over to the visitor center so i could get a stamp in our NP Passport book, as well as pick up a map so we could do a longer day hike. At this point he woke up and we had over an hour to wait until the visitor center opened up. So i suggested we watch Thunderheart to get us in the mood for the park. It actually worked really well, most of it was filmed in the park. Once the center opened up we picked up a few items and were on our way to hike up Saddle pass to do the Medicine Root Trail to the Castle Trail.
Saddle Pass was pretty steep, but short – just .2 miles. Once we made it up to the rim it was mostly flat hiking. 2 miles on each trail completed the loop. We really enjoyed the different scenery. Having left the ridges behind, we now played with butterflies, the hardened sand and random rock gardens. We saw very few people, of course it was supposed to get up to 98°! It was mostly prairie grass with a few flowers here or there. It was also quite green in some areas, which we found surprising.
We made it back to the car around 12 and decided to skip most of the viewpoints, the midday sun wasn’t the best for photos, and we kind of liked the A/C. I did stop at 1 or 2, just to see if they were really different from what we’d already seen but most weren’t. I did end up taking a few panoramics that turned out pretty cool and really show the extent of the park. So we decided to go hunt down some buffalo (aka Chuffs).
A few years ago I had been on a road in the park with my sister Kendra where we saw a huge herd of chuffs. Bela and i headed out to the same road and there they were again. We had fun stalking a few of them. The seemed to be quite hot and were attempting to cool down by lying on their backs. We got pretty close to 1 of them, but made sure to stay quiet and ready to get the hell out of there if needed.
We stopped by the Prairie Dog Town where they chirped at us. They were pretty cute, but we were getting hungry so we decided to go to Wall to see what all the fuss was about. We got lunch first, both of us had Buffalo Burgers (we just had to try them at least once). We then continued on to the Wall Drug- the infamous place that all the bumper stickers and ten billion road signs refer to. We went in and quickly realized this wasn’t the place for us. A lot of knick-knack kind of stuff, i did buy a book that was on clearance but after that we quickly left town. We really just wanted to get away from all the people.
Back on the road we headed to Rapids City, then on to Hill City in the heart of the Black Hills. We bought some climbing guidebooks from Granite Sports. The guy working was only semi-helpful, and not helpful at all for camping suggestions. We decided to hit a cafe to make plans for the next day, download our pics, recharge our electronics, and have some dessert. We timed it really well, as we were eating our pie a storm rolled in producing hail.
We stocked up on some groceries and headed to Custer State Park to check out our next day’s climbing area- The Needles. We found our first climb in the Needle’s Eye Area. It had easy access (read belay from the car) and was a nice intro to the area. Having chosen our climb we decided to go and find our campsite for the night.
After a bit of driving we found the perfect spot. Right off rt. 89 in National Forest land there was a pull off. There was 1 tent already pitched with a slackline, but plenty of room for more. We put up our tent and made our dinner, “delicious” beef stew. We finished the night by watching the end of Thunderheart, with even more appreciation for the area, and then doing some reading from the books we had just picked up that day. Our neighbor never showed up, so we had a nice quiet night all by ourselves.