Oregon Trail: Badlands National Park

I had exactly one place on my must-see list before we left Virginia and it was Badlands National Park. That choice, in fact, informed our route: we would head west on I-90 through South Dakota rather than staying up north on I-94 through North Dakota. All our hustle of the day before to get all the way from Michigan to South Dakota was to set up today's visit to the badlands. I am afraid that the pictures in this post do the place no justice: pictures just cannot convey the texture of the land. The park is absolutely unearthly spectacular and worth spending a couple of days seeing.

Tuesday morning before leaving Sioux Falls for the Badlands, though, the first thing we did was to tick off one of the first items on the list that the guys gave us at the bar the night before: see the falls. I was worried about rush hour traffic, it being 8am and being from the DC area, that means hellish traffic. I needn't have worried; we were cruising down the interstate at 65 mph and 8-9 minutes later, on a very chilly and misty morning, we pulled into Falls Park on the banks of the Big Sioux River right downtown.

The falls themselves are spectacular and picture worthy, even in the light rain. The park surrounding the falls, Falls Park, proved to be one of the very nicest urban parks that I have ever visited anywhere in the world. Sioux Falls should be very proud of their treasure.

Stunning Sioux Falls

Falls Park, One of the Best Urban Parks Anywhere

Queen Bee Mill Ruins

Big Chute in the Big Sioux River

Rock Dove in its Traditional Habitat

Bison Sculpture

Sioux Falls Power and Light Hydro-Electric Plant

Annie Walking Among Huge Cottonwoods

Leaving Sioux Falls, we headed due west on I-90 towards the badlands through more farmland, surprise of surprises. Individual fields would stretch for miles along the interstate, boggling my mind at the time and equipment necessary to farm such vast acreage. In one field, we saw a massive 5-gang disc being pulled behind a huge 8-wheeled tractor. All along the interstate grew acres of sunflowers, sorghum, millet, wheat, and other grains. There's some serious farming going on here. As Ann drove, I saw the first of many meadowlarks flitting on the roadsides.

About halfway between Sioux Falls and Badlands National Park runs the mighty Missouri River, dividing South Dakota physically and spiritually into East River, characterized by grain farming, and West River, hillier, drier, and mostly given over to cattle. We were driving along I-90 through flat East River farmland when suddenly the ground fell away and we dove straight down for a long way until we came to the Missouri River. At this point, the wind had gotten up and we were experiencing some really big gusts. In fact, it was so windy that there were whitecaps on the river. After crossing the very narrow Mississippi at St. Cloud the day before, the Missouri seemed like a proper river.

In a total aside with a bit of relevance to this story, can I just say that the silly time zones just don't change at any logical place such as a state border? For example, Central time starts most, but not all the way through Michigan while Mountain time starts somewhere in South Dakota west of the Missouri River. For the longest time, we could not square our arrival time at Badlands NP as displayed on the Garmin with the number of miles remaining until Ann finally figured we had to be changing time zones. That got me looking into time zones in the US and I have to say that they are largely wacky.

The Color Palette of the Badlands in One Photo

Bad Lands to Traverse, Hence the Name

Gorgeous Banding in the Rocks

A Totally Different Look

This Could be Mars

Still Life in Mud

Trees are not abundant in this landscape. When we climbed to one of the peaks, there were a few juniper trees, otherwise, it is a treeless place. Here where these junipers are situated, Ann saw her first magpie and heard it chatter. Further west, we would see hundreds more.

Still Life with Junipers

The Dogs Enjoyed Sniffing About

Looking Way Out South

Love the Layers in the Rock

Annie in Front of Yellow Mounds

The color palette of the badlands is similar to the desert palette: browns, tans, golds, and colors of the earth. Vegetation is short and tough. Flowers in bloom were few and far between and mainly yellow in color, blending right into the buff colored grasses and hillsides. The most common yellow flower was the one just below, the Curlycup Gumweed (what a name!). I brushed the foliage and my hands came away with a sticky residue smelling distinctly of pine resin. This is no doubt a useful strategy to preserve water in an arid climate and no doubt most animals and insects do not want to eat something tasting like this.

Curlycup Gumweed, Grindelia squarrosa

Butterflies on Broom Snakeweed, Gutierrezia sarothrae

Plains Pricklypoppy, Argemone polyanthemos
Annual Sunflower, Helianthus annuus

I've got to say that I was really excited to see bighorn sheep, the only large mammals that we saw at the park, a couple of deer aside. I have seen a bighorn before in the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rockies in northern New Mexico, a radio-collared ram at about 12,000 feet, but the radio collar kind of spoiled the experience for me. It was truly amazing to be just feet away from the ram in the second photo.

Big Horn Sheep Grazing Desolate Landscape

Big Horn Ram

As we were tooling along the park road at a sedate 30 miles an hour, I spied a familiar site. Round mounds of dirt poking through the very short grass as far as the eye could see. I used to spend a lot of time on the prairies near Denver watching prairie dogs and the ferruginous hawks that would hunt them, so I pulled over quickly knowing that Ann had never seen a prairie dog. Grace went absolutely nuts about the prairie dogs, body rigid and quivering, pressing her snout so hard into the window glass that I wondered if the glass would break.

Black-tailed Prairie Dog Town

As you can see in the photo below, prairie dogs are about the cutest creatures ever (unless you're a rancher and then you will likely take a contrarian position). They are pudgy; they waddle; they're super social and curious; and they are very vocal, constantly uttering high-pitched squeaking barks as they stay on the alert for predators.

Black-tailed Prairie Dog

Western Meadowlark, Sturnella neglecta

After touring the park, we headed back out to I-90 via the town of Wall SD, home of the infamous tourist trap Wall Drug, whose signs we saw every couple of miles for hundreds of miles. We did not stop; I don't play well with tour buses full of people. It was only about an hour into Rapid City SD, our home for the night, and we stopped along the way to get some take-out from a place that was supposed to have really good sandwiches. Not so much.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventure to Custer State Park, the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life.

Oregon Trail: Michigan to South Dakota

Monday was a necessary evil: a 12-hour long travel day designed to give us plenty of time later in the week to explore the best of South Dakota. To set up later in the week, we needed to get from Michigan to South Dakota, crossing Wisconsin and Minnesota in the process. I picked our route via St. Paul MN where we would cross the Mississippi River to avoid the Twin Cities and crossing the river there. I really just didn't want to deal with that again, having made plenty of trips there in the past to work with a customer in Coon Rapids. No thanks. Not again.

This post is just going to be a few snaps and anecdotes from the road; we didn't do anything touristy on this beastly travel day.

We got up really early because Charlie was going off like an alarm clock several times during the night at the slightest noise in the hotel, despite wearing his bark collar. Dog, enough! It was still dark when I took them out the side door of the hotel for a pee and on arriving back at the door from our little walk-about, we saw this very strange sign, very strange from the perspective of someone only recently removed from Virginia.

Not in Virginia Anymore

Every few miles in Michigan, we'd see a snowmobile sign alongside the road, your typical yellow diamond warning sign with the outline of a snowmobile on it. It took a few such sightings for me to realize that the signs indicate snowmobile crossings, where a snowmobile trail and the hard surface road intersect. The snowmobile crossings in Michigan are a special surface aimed at keeping the snowmobiles from damaging the road.

Seriously, We Mean It!

Rolling along Lake Superior west towards Duluth, we saw a bunch of deer and turkeys in the morning mist. And suddenly, a big grey lump sitting on a fence post: a Great Grey Owl. Near Trout Creek MI, we saw a couple of ravens in the road working on some carrion. As we approached, a bald eagle in fourth-year plumage swooped down across the road and languidly made a pass at the carrion. Compared to the ravens, already decent-sized birds, the eagle was immense. I say fourth-year plumage because it still had a few streaks in its white hood and not the fully white hood of adult plumage.

The further west we traveled, the more the countryside returning to farming. In one vast field, round hay bales in stark white covers were strewn about the field looking just like giant marshmallows. We finally crossed into the Central time zone in the western UP and then crossed quickly into Wisconsin, still following the southern shore of Lake Superior towards Duluth.

Hello Wisconsin!

We crossed the St. Louis River from Superior WI to Duluth MN in late morning and then started heading south toward the Twin Cities. Heading cross country north of the Twin Cities, about noon, we crossed the Mississippi River in St. Cloud MN. We thought we had been in farm country to the east of the Mississippi, but what we saw in west central and southwest Minnesota would show us what grand scale farming is all about.

Crossing the St. Louis River into Duluth

Hello Duluth!

Across the Mississippi, we entered the land of unbelievable corn and soybean fields, miles long, the table-flat landscape dotted every 10 minutes with massive co-op grain elevators. Harvest hasn't really started yet, but is close: the soybeans are yellowing and the corn is looking very close. The railroad switch engines were hard at work all along our route staging hundreds of BNSF hopper cars by each massive grain elevator. No doubt a lot of the corn is destined for the ethanol industry. This is such a contrast from the northern spruce forest we went through this morning along the southern shore of Lake Superior.

Grace's Favorite Thing About Traveling

We popped out the very southwest corner of Minnesota, where Iowa and South Dakota meet it, on I-90 just east of Sioux Falls, our destination for the evening. En route, Ann googled for beer and from our choices, selected Hydra Beer Company, located in a strip mall just off I-29. After being in open farm country all afternoon the juxtaposition of being in a major metropolitan area was nearly mind boggling.

Finally, South Dakota!

Hydra is a heavy metal theme brewery that makes really good beer with metal-inspired names such as Death Breath, Unholy, and Immortal. You can almost picture Lemmy at the bar chugging Bourbon. Or Jack Black wandering in. We had a great time with these guys on a slow Monday night. Our bartender and one of the other guests, on hearing that we were visiting South Dakota for the first time, without prompting, grabbed a pen and paper and put together a list of things that we should do and see while we were in their amazing state.

Heavy Metal Beer at Hydra

As we started ticking things off their list, we started seeing just how good a list it was, starting with JL Beers burgers for dinner. JL Beers is a small beer and burger chain with locations in ND, SD, and MN, with two in metro Sioux Falls. On our way to the hotel, we stopped in and got a couple of burgers to take with us, it being pretty late and us having an early morning. The burgers were awesome and I don't say that lightly.

We would start ticking off the rest of the list in the morning. We owe these two guys we met in a death metal-themed brewpub a great debt of gratitude. Their list would send us to amazing places in South Dakota.

Oregon Trail: The UP

As the name of this blog might imply, we tried to let serendipity guide us in our travels, balanced with our need to arrive in Oregon on or about the 25th. It's often amazing to me the tips you can get from locals about things that you can see that rarely appear on the radar, that are so worth the small detour and the time to see them. A case in point: Saturday morning while walking the dogs in Cuyahoga NP in Ohio, we met a couple of women who were doing a bird census in the park. Ann started chatting them up: she would spend her entire day talking and never arrive at her destination if I weren't cracking the whip, or so it would appear from this side of the keyboard. ;) These local tips would really serve us incredibly well in South Dakota, but that's a few days down the road.

In any case, on hearing that we were considering a trip through the UP, the younger of the two women suggested that we had to see Pictured Rocks and to hire a boat to go see the rocks if possible. This would be something for us to consider for Sunday or Monday, and it being Saturday, we filed it away in the back of our minds as something to look at when we got settled in for the night and were sketching our route for the next day. At the hotel in Cadillac, we started looking at Pictured Rocks and found that not only was it another National Lakeshore, the photographs were stunning.

And so we found ourselves on Sunday morning heading north to the Mackinac Bridge, the UP, and Pictured Rocks. Timing was such that we could spend the afternoon in the park and head into the nearby town of Marquette MI, home to Northern Michigan University, for a late afternoon beer.

From Cadillac, right on the eastern edge of the Huron-Manistee National Forest, we headed east to the center of the state to pick up I-75 north to the bridge. On leaving the National Forest, we immediately found ourselves in serious farm country and I would say that dairy farming is the prime mover in these parts. We passed cluster after cluster of silos and milking barns for dozens and dozens of miles, the landscape dotted here and there with huge turbines of wind farms.

Farmland, Dairy and Wind

As we were navigating through the north-south and east-west farm roads to get to a major highway, Ann spied a long-legged bird cruising just to our right, a Great Blue Heron, certainly not an uncommon sight almost anywhere except the deserts and the Rockies. Another minute later, she spied another one just to our left. I had to duck down in my seat to see it and it was immediately clear that it was a Sandhill Crane, of which I have only ever seen one in my life, in a pond near Ocean City MD, probably blown way off course by a storm.

Just moments later, we passed a newly harvested field dotted with perhaps a hundred cranes, grubbing along the ground for whatever it is that they eat, no doubt gleaning the leftovers from the recent harvest. We were still not quite used to not being at home and finding ourselves in an alien context and cranes certainly added to that sense that we were no longer at home. Throughout the remainder of the trip, we would exclaim, "We're not in Virginia any longer!" several times a day.

We also passed a small herd of buffalo in a feed lot. We certainly were expecting to see bison on our trip, but not in Michigan. Other things along the way that let us know that we were no longer at home: finding so much polka on the radio, motorcyclists without helmets, golden brown carpets of ferns sprouting contrasting brilliant white trunks of paper birches.

Cruising up I-75 at 80 miles an hour, we were getting passed left and right by vehicles; it seems clear to us that speed limits in Michigan are more like guidelines and not absolute limits. Nobody seems to have any regard for speed limits there and the cops don't seem to care. At one point I remarked to Ann, "Can you imagine going more than about 20 minutes on any eastern interstate and not see a cop making a traffic stop?"

And so in short order, we came to the Mackinac Bridge, a long suspension bridge called variously Big Mac or Mighty Mac, that joins the lower part of Michigan with the Upper Peninsula where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron come together. We drew a toll both with a pony-tailed, über-friendly Native American tolltaker, who wished us with a broad smile, "Have fun in the UP eh you betcha!"

Mackinac Bridge

At this point, the slightly overcast day had given way to low clouds and a constant mist interspersed with small patches of rain. Across the bridge on the UP, we exited immediately onto US 2 which follows the northern shore of Lake Michigan and except for the northern species of conifers lining the north side of the road, our drive reminded us of driving along beaches in a lot of places. Lake Michigan as an abstract concept is a freshwater lake; in actuality, it resembles an inland sea with dunes, sandy beaches, waves, seagulls, and shorebirds.

Waves on Lake Michigan, US 2

Driving a bit more than half the length of the northern shore of Lake Michigan, we turned north in the Hiawatha National Forest and set our sights on Munising MI on Lake Superior, home of the visitor center for Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, where we encountered an NPS ranger who clearly loves her job and her park and spent 15 minutes explaining to us the best places to visit in the 42-mile long park.

Sadly, we were really tired from days of driving and didn't want to be out on the road all afternoon, so we concentrated on areas near the visitors center. Our first stop was Miners Falls where we walked the dogs, then on to nearby stunningly beautiful Miners Castle. Working our way back west towards the visitors center, we stopped at the beach at Sand Point before viewing Munising Falls on the way in to Marquette for Happy Hour. Not that we had time, but because of the weather, all boat tours had been cancelled for the day.

Dogs Got to Walk to Miners Falls

Miners Falls

Mini Bay at Miners Castle

Miners Castle

Waves on the Cliffs

Cliffs North of Miners Castle

Sandstone Formation, Miners Castle

White Campion, Silene latifolia, at Miners Castle

Oenothera at Miners Castle

Sand Point Beach

Sand Point Grasses

Semipalmated Plover, Charadrius semipalmatus

Munising Falls

Munising Falls Outflow

Fall Color, Munising Falls Creek

When we finished at Pictured Rocks, we drove a short distance into Marquette to Black Rocks Brewery, where we chatted with locals including a UNM student from Warrenton VA and enjoyed the sunshine outside the old house that houses the brewpub. While Ann checked out the swing, I sat back in an Adirondack chair made of old skis. After a couple of beers, we would head to our hotel and order a really crappy delivery pizza. The beers more than made up for the terrible pizza. Although we knew at the time that the beers at Black Rocks were excellent, we had no way of knowing that they would be the best of very many great beers that we would sample across the country.

Enjoying the Sun and a Beer

Embracing Her Inner Kid

We were very hesitant to leave the dogs in the car, but with the cool weather, we decided to try it for a short while. They did very well and curled up on one another and slept while we were gone. I had some worries about Grace trying to eat the car while we were away, but they both did awesome.

Two Sleepy Dogs