Extremes

Route 90 West was hot and redundant through Minnesota and eastern South Dakota. We continued to see patches of windmills in Minn., 5 or 6 at a time, and felt the energy they were capturing shoving the Jetta around, but it was mostly an endless parade of corn and soybean fields.

The wind was even stronger and hotter in SD, with lots of fire hazard warning signs. We got a demonstration of just why - someone towing a large travel trailer was blown off to the road in a construction area down to one lane, and apparently made some sparks as the trailer went over and slid on its side. We saw the smoke first, then burning grass moving quickly away from the wreck. It was pretty far out of anywhere, and we saw fire trucks finally responding several minutes down the road.

Mitchell, SD, is suprisingly big in comparison the the groups of houses along the road we'd seen before, but they had the Corn Palace. The building sheds its old grasses and corn murals every year to get a new supply. Each year's murals are a different theme (rodeos were still up from last year) although from what we saw, it's usually western or cornbelt-oriented. There's a good sized basketball court inside and stage, and more corn murals. And, of course, a gift shop with every possible "corny" thing imaginable, including the ugliest Christmas ornaments made of husks ever seen.

By our midday visit, it was certainly in the 100's, with a nasty, hot wind. The closest description I can give is "convection oven." If the Palace had been decorated with popcorn, we'd have eaten for free. We couldn't stand the heat for long and were back in the car and airco after a quick tour and photos.

Shortly after crossing the wide Missouri, the weather changed dramatically. Some dark clouds blew over and only slight rain, but by the next time we stopped at a rest stop, the temps had to have dropped 30-40 degrees. I was suddenly underdressed and got the mother-of-all Raynaud's attacks taking a walk around the buildings to stretch out. If I hear another "expert" say that Raynaud's only happens in the fingers or toes, I'll drag them into a walk-in cooler with me so they can see purple all the way to the wrist.

Back on the road, we started to see lots of Harleys headed to Rapid City and eventually their bike drive-in at Sturgis, just north. We've been told that many of them ship their bikes out ahead and fly in, but there were plenty of people roughing it along 90 with the rest of us. It was wild to watch them driving tilted into the wind. They took it pretty slow.

Drew wanted to get a better look at the Badlands than he'd had as a kid, so we detoured south to the national park. I had looked up their Golden Access card months ago and asked to apply for that at the gate. I'm not sure how much I'll use it since we don't frequent national parks (none in our area) but what a nice gesture by the Park Service for disabled Americans.

In fact, as we wandered through the formations, we came to an accessible roadside area that was a 1/4 mile "walk" with small enclosed cases along the way. Through the clear tops, you could see examples of some of the artifacts found in the fossil-rich area. I was very interested to see a large skull piece from eohippus, a memory from the days when everything "horse" facinated me.

At the same stop, we saw a sign warning us to beware of rattlesnakes, but only a few paces away a large rabbit was non-chalantly nosing around. We concluded that the rattler danger was probably low or he wouldn't have been so calm.

We took our time wandering through the park, and opted for another detour in our route, onto a gravel road that would eventually connect with 44, right into south Rapid. We hadn't read the fine print on the park map, but we were rewarded with driving through a large prairie dog town, and seeing several buffalo. One was taking a dust bath right by the side of the road, and as we pulled up to take a photo, seemed to settle in for the night. He was quite large and we contented ourselves with a few photos, a moment of awe, then pressed on.

The rest of the road out of the park took us through more grass and cattle, but with continuing lovely views of the Badlands. When we hit 44 we knew we were getting closer, especially when we spotted the tower at Rapid's regional airport. 44 came into the SSE side of town, and Drew found our way to Dan's house on the SW side. After a slight mixup of driving right past his house, we called and got Karen to guide us back to the door. It was late by then and the long drive had wiped us out, so after some salad and sandwiches, and a quick tour, we hit the hay.