July 8, 2006: Devil's Tower, WY and Mt. Rushmore, SD
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Custer State Park

Our evening at Mt. Rushmore had been inspirational, and with a good meal at the campsite, it wasn't hard to get to sleep, even though the campground was full. Our campsite was in the Sylvan Lake Campground, which is in the northwest corner of Custer State Park. Although we'd passed a number of other campgrounds on our way in, this one was high up and, consequently, cooler (although the weather wasn't hot anywhere in the park).

After arising and breaking camp (for the last time on this trip), we headed off the short distance to Sylvan Lake to walk around and see what we could see. A short walk (our route is marked on the map) along the lake brings you to some really neat rock formations. The rocks seem to just jut up out of the lake and alongside it. One of the short side trails led through a maze of rocks to a stairway on the trail that led up to and through a rock hallway and another one led to a cul-de-sac where we found a shallow cave.

Another trail branches off from the main trail along the lake, and follows stepping stones along the boulder face and up a couple of stone steps to bring you out onto the small boulders that are at the beginning of the walkway across the dam that holds back the water that forms Sylvan Lake. The walkway across the dam doesn't continue around the other side of the lake, but just ends at a boulder, and that's as far as you can go. Coming back to the parking area from the trails, Fred got a good picture of me and the Sylvan Lake Dam.

We also stopped in the camp store and, not so oddly, found quite a few buffalo‑themed items.

Custer, South Dakota

After doing some shopping in the store, we headed south out of the park, stopping at the park entrance sign (yellow star) to record our visit. We continued down South Dakota 89 south to the intersection with ALT US 16, where we had seen a large rock and mineral shop the day before when we arrived at the park (green star). The rock and fossil shop looked too interesting to pass up. Rocks and fossils are one of Fred's interests, and I certainly like poring over them as well, so we stopped in. It turned out to be a gold mine (no pun intended) and we spent quite a bit of time there. Both of us found a number of items for our personal collections, and I found a few future gifts as well- some quite extraordinary- but all (or mostly all) at very good prices. It turned out that we spent more than an hour there.

Our intention had been to make a visit to Jewel Cave, which is west of Custer, SD on US16 (the highway going east-west through the map), so when we left the rock shop we headed west and immediately entered the town of Custer, South Dakota.

From the fossil shop (rightmost red star on the map below), we headed west through the town of Custer. It was a picturesque town, with lots of small shops, a few motels and restaurants and quite a few older buildings. As we passed through town, we noticed various buffalo sculptures along the main street and on some of the side streets, most within the yellow box I've drawn on the map. It looked like they had been done by artists and such. We thought we'd like to stop and look at them, but we had a lot to do today and didn't think we could spend the time to do so.

Then, as we were heading out of town, we ran across another big rock shop, and Fred remembered that he still needed a crystal for a gift. So we stopped at that second shop (the other red star). While we were there, we talked to the shop owner about Jewel Cave, and found that we'd have to wait a while for a tour (since it was a weekend) and that the tours took a while themselves. When we figured in the time it would take to get there and back, plus the time to photograph the buffalo plus the time it would take to get some lunch, we figured that didn't leave much time for the Badlands, something Fred wanted very much to see. So we decided to leave Jewel Cave for another time.

Returning to downtown Custer, we began taking pictures of the buffalo and their accompanying descriptions- Fred on one side of the street and me on the other. The painted buffalo are part of the Custer Stampede, a town festival held in late September each year. For a description of the festival, or to see pictures of the buffalo we might have missed, you can visit www.custerstampede.com. There were supposed to be 30 buffalo scattered about town, and I think we found most of them. There were some blue painted footsteps that were supposed to lead you from one to the next, but some of the footprints had worn away.

All these buffalo sculptures were really, really interesting. Some were extremely colorful, some were less embellished. But all had interesting stories supplied by their artists.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

We took pictures of eighteen of these buffalo, out of the 25-odd that our little guidemap said were sprinkled around town. Perhaps we should have gone to find them all, but we were anxious to see the other sights today. In any event, eighteen pictures is a lot for you to look at by clicking on thumbnails, so I've used the slideshow approach. I have constructed eighteen slides that combine the buffalo itself with a photograph of the descriptive plaque beside it, and these are in the slideshow at left.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

Taking pictures of all those buffalo was giving us an appetite for lunch, and partway through the town we were fortunate to run across a restaurant that fit in perfectly with our theme of the day- buffalo. Finally, just when we were about finished with all the buffalo we could find (and we only missed three or four of them), Fred ran across this interesting historical sign on one of the buildings in town.

Since we had decided to leave Jewel Cave for another trip, it was about time to leave Custer for the Badlands. So, we headed east, back through Custer State Park on South Dakota 87. The drive was really pretty, all the way to Hermosa and the intersection with South Dakota 79. There, we turned north for Rapid City. We'd found out from one of the guys at the last rock shop that there was a new bypass around town that would take us from Highway 79 right around to I-90, and we found it with no problem.

The drive to Wall, South Dakota took a while, and so there was plenty of time to compare notes on all the buffalo-themed stuff we'd done this morning, as well as the effect that last night's presentation at Mt. Rushmore had on us.

There was also plenty of time for me to explain to Fred the significance of all the signs he kept pointing out referring to "Wall Drug." I thought he had heard of Wall Drug before, but apparently it was new to him, but it wasn't until he'd noticed five or ten signs that I undertook to explain the whole story to him. Actually, I had forgotten some of it, and I had to dig out one of our South Dakota brochures where there was an explanation.

We arrived at the exit for the town of Wall (which was the same exit we needed to take for Badlands National Park), so we took a very short side trip into town to see the famous Wall Drug. As I remembered when Tony and I came through here years ago, it was a tourist mecca, and it seemed as if every non-local vehicle traveling along I-90 in either direction had stopped here. Not surprising, since signs for the destination appear 500 miles in either direction along the Interstate.

We crossed back over the Interstate and took South Dakota 240 to the Pinnacles Entrance Station for Badlands National Park. As usual, we let the national park sign record our entrance into the Park. I also thought it would be a good idea to take movie before we entered the Park to show you the incredible diversity of terrain in this part of South Dakota. Watch this movie using the player at left,

Badlands National Park

Note:
On many of the maps you've seen thus far, I've made notations (either with little yellow or colored stars, or with numbers or both) to tell you exactly where some of the pictures were taken. For this drive, I think that is going to be overkill, especially since all the points of interest are labeled on the park map used here. So, I'll just refer to the name of the overlook or feature, and simply say that the first section of pictures from Badlands National Park were all taken between the Pinnacles Entrance (yellow star on the left) and the Ben Reifel Visitor Center (yellow star on the right). I'll repeat the map as needed so it is never far away as you read the narrative.

Driving the Badlands Loop Road

Our first stop inside the Park was at the Pinnacles Overlook, and I made a movie here that you can watch with the player at right. It which offered us our first view of the Badlands.

At the overlook, we found some information about the Sage Creek Wilderness, which we might of traversed had we visited Jewel Cave. From Jewel Cave, over by Custer, the most direct route to Badlands National Park isn't along I-90, but rather a more southern route, making use of a number of South Dakota highways as well as some BIA roads. Coming that way might have been more scenic, but it would also have taken more time.

The views of the Badlands from the Pinnacles Overlook were pretty neat, as this picture of Fred at the overlook shows. It was at this overlook that we learned that, instead of being purely sedimentary in nature, the Badlands formations were actually volcanic in origin, although water action certainly played a part. We also noticed that, in many a small valley in the Badlands there can be some relatively thick vegetation, although it is more normal to see very little.

After one last movie of the view from the Pinnacles Overlook (that you can watch with the player at right), we piled back in the vehicle and headed off.

At the Ancient Hunters Overlook there wasn't much to see except a deep gully and more of the Badlands landscape, but, according to the sign, this had been a place where Native Americans drove buffalo to a fall. From the Ancient Hunters Overlook, the Badlands Loop Road leads through a section of the Park that is almost a continuous vista of starkly beautiful craggy peaks, formed by the action of both water, what little there is of it, and wind. In the valleys below the peaks, the low hills that have been softly rounded have colored strata at the base and grey strata on top, and the result is that they look like formations lit from below. The combination of the colored ravines and colorless peaks was certainly interesting and, in its own way, quite impressive.

From our stopping place near Dillon Pass, I made a movie of the landscape around us, and you can watch that movie with the player at left. We could see the road ahead as it goes over Dillon Pass. From a short distance down the highway are more of the layered peaks that are so representative of the Badlands. For an area with absolutely no water visible, it has its own stark beauty, and it was an amazing contrast to most of our trip, where water and water features figured so prominently.

The next feature along the Badlands Loop Road are the yellow mounds, so named, of course, from the contrasting color of these mounded hills that cover only a small, defined area along the highway. From a good ways further along the highway, at the Conata Basin Overlook, we could see the entire Conata Basin and get also use the telephoto to get a good picture of the Yellow Mounds Overlook.

For the next 15 miles or so, from Conata Basin to the visitor center, the highway wound through one spectacular area after another. At one stop on the highway, we could look to the southeast at the very edge of The Badlands, and it was extremely interesting how the formations just end abruptly and turn into flat grassland to the south. From approximately the same point, here is Fred and The Badlands boundary looking back west. From a bit further on, the contrast between the scenery on the south side of the highway- exquisitely layered formations with prairie beyond- and on the north side of the highway- barren rock formations stretching to the horizon- was very dramatic. The same layered stone formations continued for miles and miles, and you can see excellent views of them here, here and here.

About a third of the way to the visitor center, we came to a stopping place that had a very short trail that led out away from the road so that you could get an uninterrupted panoramic viewof the Badlands topography; the stopping place is marked on the map as Panorama Point. I made a movie here and you can watch it with the player at left.

Next, at the White River Valley Overlook, there were particularly nice views of the banded rock formations where you can see that the various layers extend, at exactly the same level for mile after mile. It loks for all the world as if you are looking at a television picture of some mountains and there is an interference pattern on the screen so that there are static lines drawn straight through everything. From this viewpoint, the Badlands seem to go on forever.

The rest of the way to and past the visitor center offered views of the Badlands that after a time became remarkably consistent. I could certainly understand how someone trying to cross this area could easily get lost- there are no landmarks to speak of. Even looking at the road itself, as in the views here and here, everything is so similar that it would be impossible, save for mile markers, to describe to anyone just where you were. We rarely saw very many cars until we got close to the visitor center, at a point where I stopped to get a picture of an unusual balanced rock formation near the roadside. At that point, when I was walking back from where we pulled off, there happened to be a spate of traffic, more than we had seen all day.

A short ways before the visitor center, there was an overlook where you could see particularly far. While I didn't take a picture of the scenery here, there was a small exhibit concerning the effects of air pollution on the views here in the park and on the hills themselves. We reached and passed the visitor center, staying on the Badlands Loop Road (South Dakota 240) but traveling north now towards the Northeast Entrance. We decided not to stop at the visitor center because we wanted the time for some hikes.

Hiking in Badlands National Park

The only hikes we did here in the Badlands were the Notch Trail, the Window Trail and the Door Trail, all at the final stop within the park. We'd been traveling in the direction of the light blue arrows, and the trailhead for all three trails is marked by the yellow star. When we got to the parking area, we could see a number of people on the Window Trail right in front of us. Of the three trails, the Window and Door Trails were very short, and only steps from the parking area. In almost all the hiking we've done, it seems that most people shy away from anything at all long or strenuous, as evidenced by the fact that while there were lots of cars here at the parking area, we only saw six other people on the hour-long Notch Trail hike. Or maybe the reason that people didn't seem to go far from their cars was this advisory that might have scared them off.

It didn't scare us off, though, so from the Notch Trail trailhead we headed off across the open area to the south, following the (for the moment) clearly-marked Notch Trail.

For a ways, as long as we were walking across the open area before the peaks ahead of us, the going was pretty easy, but not without its surprises. I made a movie of us starting out on the Notch Trail, and you can watch that movie with the player at right.

One of the first interesting things we came across, and this as we got up to the cliff face, were these bird's nests that had been meticulously built by the birds that we saw flying around nearby. In this closeup of the bird's nests you can see the way the walls of the nest were constructed out of pebbles and such (although how they were held together, in the absence of much water, seems to be a mystery) and how the openings face downward to keep out whatever rain there is. Quite amazing.

A short ways into the hike, we came upon The Ladder, constructed by the Park Service as a way of getting you up onto the ledges along the peaks. On the way back, before coming down the ladder, I tried to find a way down without it, but kept running into sheer dead ends, so I guess it was necessary. I climbed the ladder, and here is the view back down the ladder to where Fred was waiting to climb up.

Here is Fred starting up the ladder and, for your amusement, a movie of Fred climbing the Notch Trail ladder. You can watch his progress using the movie player at left.

Here is a picture of me at the top of the ladder, looking back along the ledges towards the parking area. It is the area behind me that I explored to try to find a way down without using the ladder.

From the top of the ladder, there is a pathway marked by steel poles that led off along the cliff ledges. Hiking a ways along this trail brought us to a point where we could look back along the trail to see the ladder and trail back to the parking area. Here is another picture of the trail leading up to the ladder base. From the same spot, here is the trail ahead following the ledges along the cliff face. You can see the steel poles that mark the trail; they were pretty easy to follow, although at one point it was easy to go wrong (and I did, temporarily). As you can see here, some of the signs were very confusing and it would have been very easy for me to head right and miss the sheer cliff that I had to edge along carefully before I met back up with Fred.

A ways further along the trail, we noticed that across the ravine there was what seemed to be a notch "doorway" into what appeared to be an enclosed area behind the rock wall. I walked over through the doorway into this enclosed room, and found a number of connecting "rooms," about three or four of them, almost like rooms in a house with the ceiling missing. I climbed up the outer wall of the first room to where I could see Fred waiting for me on the main trail. To get back to him, I decided not to use the doorway, but to climb up and over the rock wall in a direct line to where he was waiting. He took this picture of me climbing down the rock wall.

The Notch Trail continued for quite some ways, up and down over the powdery white crumbly ledges, up to what looked to be a cul‑de‑sac but really wasn't. This was our destination- the Notch. I made a movie of our progress up to the Notch itself, and you can watch that movie using the player below:

The Notch is like a parapet, or the opening at the top of a castle wall through which the defenders can see what's coming. This wall actually had a couple of these windows. The first one offered a view of the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail, which, as you can see here, was actually quite far below us. At first we thought that the Notch Trail might intersect with the nature trail, but had we looked carefully at the map before leaving the car, as you can do here, we would have known it wouldn't. Off to the left of our vantage point here, you could make your own trail up to another window that offered a different view of the eastern part of The Badlands. There was even another vantage point that looked off to the southeast out of the Badlands to the South Dakota prairie beyond.

We spent a fair amount of time just admiring the view, particularly since it had taken us a while to get here, but, eventually, we had to turn around and head back. Going the other way, we saw some things we hadn't seen before. For example, we knew that The Badlands, while volcanic in origin, were basically sedimentary now. As with many sedimentary formations, the once horizonal layers have eventually been twisted and upthrust, and the result is a vertical sedimentary layer like this one, that ran almost as far as we could see, and which was composed of a greenish type of rock that fragmented easily.

I made a movie during our return trek along the Notch Trail, and you can watch that movie with the player at right.

For posterity, is yet another picture of me going where I'm not supposed to. We both made it back, so I guess that things could be said to have worked out.

Back at the parking area, we decided to also take a walk along the very short Window Trail, which starts at the parking area and leads across some raised walkways (presumably there to keep the area near the parking lot from being all torn up by people walking whichever way across it) to another window that offered a pretty spectacular view of The Badlands.

And, finally, we returned to the parking area. We took a short way along the Door Trail, but it was more of a nature trail that led to one more view of The Badlands, but maybe you've seen enough already. We knew that it was time to head home, hence this one last picture from The Badlands.

Today's Flora

Just one picture today:

Leaving The Badlands

We were impressed with Badlands National Park, and enjoyed our time there. The hikes were much, much different from all the others we'd taken on our trip- mostly because these lacked any hint of a water feature. But our time was at an end so, late in the afternoon, we exited the park by heading on northeast to I-90.

A spectacular trip. We hated for it to be over. But it's always good to get home, whether you've been gone a day or a week. The route home was easy, and began this day with a drive up to I-90 and then a run east towards Sioux Falls, SD.

The Drive Home

The next morning, we continued down I-29 towards Sioux City, then continued on the same highway to Omaha, St. Joseph and Kansas City. There was some rain along the way, and some views of the Missouri River. I found myself wondering how long it would take some of the water we saw going over waterfalls and along rivers to make it this far, since almost all the water features we saw eventually flow into the Missouri (as we hadn't crossed the Continental Divide at all).

At Kansas City, we left I-29 for I-435, the belt road around the city. In many places, the road is cut through native limestone and is quite pretty. From the belt road, we took the I-35 exit and headed off southwest towards Wichita. It was here that we would rejoin the route we traveled 9 days earlier.

You might also notice on the map the towns of Atchison, MO and Topeka, KS. These two towns were the origination points for one of the most famous railroads in history- immortalized in writings and song- the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.

I-35 becomes a toll road in Kansas, and took us through and around Wichita.

I-35 took us right on southward to the Oklahoma border, where we left about $5 in Kansas for the driving privilege. Then it was a straight shot through Oklahoma City (where we encountered the worst traffic of the whole trip) and south towards Texas.

And then it was the last stretch home- past Pauls Valley and Ardmore and on across the Red River into Texas. A left turn at Gainesville onto US82 and a right turn at Sherman on US75 and then the short hop down to Van Alstyne. We'd hoped to get home before it was too late, and we did. Counting our stop for dinner in Sherman, we were home by ten.

This is probably not the place for a valedictory on this particular trip, but as far as the trip itself goes, as far as doing what we intended is concerned, we achieved all our objectives- and a good deal more. We replaced one or two things we'd planned to do with three or four we hadn't. All in all, and particularly considering the fine weather, the trip was an unqualified success.

How did this trip compare with others of the same length we've taken? We can't say for sure just yet, but we suspect it'll be in the top five or six:

     Bryce Canyon/Zion/Cedar Breaks/Grand Canyon
     Yosemite and Northern California
     Yellowstone and Grand Teton
     Mt. Rainier and the Canadian National Parks
     Rocky Mountain National Park
     Glacier National Park- MT/WY/SD

It was good to be home. We are constantly amazed that, no sooner do we tell ourselves that we've experienced the most beautiful natural wonders there are, that another trip comes along with something entirely different but exactly the same. How much beauty is out there? More, we suspect, than we will have time to see.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	July 8, 2006: Devil's Tower, WY and Mt. Rushmore, SD
	Return to Glacier National Park Trip Index