Day 3: South Dakota, Part 2
Today marked the first of our hiking days! Since we had a late night, we had a later start to the day, but we still left Rapid City quite early enough. It is probably worth stating that anytime I say “we woke up late” or that “we had a late start,” we were still up pretty early, especially for a nocturnal person like me. I will have to admit though, that starting our days early always seemed to be refreshing, in a way. We would always start our day as the sun was still rising and I felt as though we accomplished an enormous list of activities before the sun even began to set.
As we left Rapid City, we continued our drive west and made our way to the Badlands. As we entered the Badlands National Park, we immediately saw the huge white buttes on the right and on the left was a massive cliff that overlooked the valley below.
Look at these bodacious buttes.
At the entrance of the Badlands, me in my all-terrain Chucks…
At our first stop in the park, there were multiple trail heads that split off from one main point and seeing how we had never been there before, we picked one and just went with it. This path that we chose started out as a boardwalk, that was about six inches off of the ground. As it rounded a butte, we walked down some stairs and then were able to walk on the actual ground. Now that we were on the ground, the best way to describe the path from here would be like a very dry golf course that has recently experienced an earthquake. The land in this area was, obviously, not level and there were little cracks and openings every where in the ground. Additionally, since the ground was so dry and basically just rock with some loose dirt on it, you can imagine how difficult it would be to mark a distinct path for hiking. So instead, the “path” for this trail was marked by posts that had numbers, and you were then able to hike from post to post (thus why it reminded me of a golf course).
On the right, you can see the posts that they use to mark the trail. *In back: Mom hiking
When we reached the last post, we were able to look out over the valley (which we partially saw when driving in) and when we turned around, we could see the giant stone formations behind us. They towered above the land we were on, but I noticed that in a little notch on one of these formations, were people! They were standing, what looked to be right on the edge! Looking back now, with a few more national parks under my belt, I am truly not surprised at all that people were standing there, looking over the edge. Honestly, the part of the brain that controls rationality and reason seems to temporarily go on break while some people enter national parks or even any part of the wilderness for that matter; stay tuned for more of these “People in Parks Without Their Smarts” stories.
After walking back across the rocky ground and the boardwalk, Mom and I briefly explored the other paths in this area, but we did not stay too long. This was partially because it was getting pretty hot there were many more trails we wanted to hike and partially because the ‘BEWARE OF RATTLESNAKES’ sign was really starting to make me paranoid. But don’t worry, we never ran into one, if we had you probably would have heard me screaming from hundreds of miles away.
Something that I find wonderful about the national parks is that many of them have the option of driving, instead of hiking. I absolutely love hiking and I have spent entire days hiking all over national parks, but sometimes it’s nice to just sit down and enjoy the views, without having to work so hard to reach them. In between us hiking and stopping at the visitor center, we took advantage of the views from the road. We pulled off at a couple of over-looks, where we saw some bright green prairies, some wildlife and all of the massive rocks and formations with their varied colors. Some of the rocks were vibrantly white, some had red stripes running through them, and others were bright yellow.
At one of these overlooks, there was a plaque with a picture of how this land used to look over a century ago and the plaque also told of a group of Native Americans who traveled across the Badlands. It explained that while most of them hiked and climbed down the rocks, their chief was ill and not able to, he needed to travel in his horse-drawn wagon. So his tribe worked tirelessly to create a path down this extremely steep and uneven rock. In a surprisingly short amount of time, sure enough a path was created for the chief and he was able to travel down into the valley with his horse and wagon. As these Native Americans continued their journey through the Badlands, the plaque went on to explain that a few days later and some miles away, these same Native Americans became involved with the Battle of Wounded Knee.
We finished up our afternoon by hiking on a few more paths and the day was a 100% success in my mind because I did not see a single snake, tarantula, or creepy bug. I know that when one is hiking and spending hours in nature the probability of seeing creepy crawlies is rather high, but they have all of South Dakota to roam in, so I respectfully request that they keep their distance from me, thank you very much.
Upon returning to Rapid City, Mom and I were pretty hungry (this was a constant state of being for me on this trip) and so we found a Perkins to eat at and began discussing our plans for the next day. We had originally planned on visiting Mount Rushmore in the morning, but the more we talked about it, we actually thought visiting it that night may work better. It was only an hour away and the rain had stopped much earlier than predicted, so on a last minute change of plans, after dinner we took off towards Mount Rushmore.
When you first get to Mount Rushmore, you begin by walking through the Avenue of Flags, then under this large stone arch, and then just like that, you are standing right in front of the presidents’ faces. Besides looking up the address and business hours on Google, the only knowledge I had of this place was from movies like National Treasure and North by Northwest, so obviously it looked quite different than what I was expecting, but it was honestly better than what I was expecting.
Avenue of Flags
On the other side of the Avenue of Flags, near the entrance, there is a bookstore that has all kinds of fascinating books about the presidents, the monument, the stories behind myths and all kinds of other historical stuff that we all secretly find cool. Sitting on the other side of the bookstore was a little café that, most importantly, had ice cream, so of course that was Mom and I’s first stop. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson had the first written recipe for ice cream in the United States (no wonder he was presidential material) and now this little ice cream shop uses his recipe to make their ice cream. With ice cream in hand, we began walking along the Presidential Trail, which leads you closer to the base of the hill and carvings above. This path, we came to find out was tricky, not because of uneven ground or tight squeezes or anything, but because there were a whole bunch of steps that we had no idea we had to walk up. When you start walking on this trail, you go up and down some small hills for a while and then on the other side, tucked away behind the trees are a whole slew of stairs. These stairs lead you down to the very bottom of the hill and like they say, what goes down the stairs must regrettably come back up the stairs. Before we embarked on that pleasant climb, we took some time to look at tools and generators that were housed in a small building. The sculptures who worked on Mount Rushmore used these tools and generators to sculpt the faces. It was pretty cool to see these tools and the trail was not ridiculously long, so I would recommend it, but take this as a heads up that the trail ends with 100+ stairs that lead back to the amphitheater.
After summiting about 100 too many steps, we found a place to sit in the amphitheatre and gave our gams and glutes a rest while we waited for the night program to begin. While waiting, people began to find their seats and a couple came and sat on the bleachers in front of us. As they were taking their seats, the couple next to us goes, “Hey, you have a Cincinnati shirt on, are you from Ohio?” and the couple in front of us turns around and verifies that “yes” they were from Ohio. Oddly enough, the people sitting next to us then stated that they too were from Ohio. It was at this point that I noticed that the wife had an Ohio University shirt on, so of course I now felt the need to join in. So I say, “Hey, my mom and I are also from Ohio!” This then naturally leads the one couple to ask us where we are from. Now, if you are also from a small town then you already know that the answer to this question always begins with “you’ve probably never heard of it,” and is then followed up with something like “I’m live 30 minutes south of *insert name of large city*,” however, I think this time I actually did say where I was from. The one lady then all of a sudden listed off names of people, wondering if I knew them, and to my utter astonishment, I knew every person she listed off. *Cue Twilight Zone music* After some more talking, we learned that her and her husband traveled around to many schools throughout Ohio for their jobs, so not only were they familiar with the area, but they were friends with many people who lived in my hometown.
Hey, it’s like Zazou says, “It’s a small world after all.”
After that surprising conversation I had with my fellow Ohioans, the night program was ready to begin. It opened with a park ranger speaking about the four presidents whose faces looked over the amphitheater where we sat, then they played a short movie about the history of Mount Rushmore, and as the sun set, lights were shone onto each of these influential leaders’ faces. The whole program then concluded with all past and present members of the military being invited to the stage while the American flag was lowered and folded and the National Anthem played. The whole program, and evening, were wonderful and unexpected and I truly would not have had it any other way.
“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children.” Theodore Roosevelt