On July 31, a Tuesday, our journey to Montana began with a 5:20pm flight from O’Hare to…Seattle. Then we’d continue on to Great Falls. Sean and I both worked from home until it was time to head to the airport. And we both were stressed tying up some final things before the trip. Our stress continued on the way to the airport in a Lyft. Traffic was extremely heavy, and we’d left later than we’d wanted to because of work stuff.
It was the evening of Saturday, September 13, 2014, and Sean and I were back in camp after a great eleven-plus-mile hike through the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
No rest for the weary, though, while Sean started supper, I began to pack up. We still had one more night in camp, but the more we prepped to convert our packs to checked and carry-on bags, the less we’d have to do in the morning. I hoped to hit the road at 6am, so that we’d not be rushed on our nine-hour drive to Sioux Falls for our 6:05pm flight. Neither of us wanted a repeat of the sprint to the airport we’d experienced leaving Big Bend.
We still had a touch of wiper fluid left in the bottle we’d purchased back in South Dakota when it had been so snowy. I figured we’d used enough that I could top off the chamber. I walked around to the front of the Jeep and opened the hood. I was greeted by a small face as surprised as I was. It twitched its whiskers excitedly and then slipped behind the engine.
“Sean,” I cried, “bring a camera!”
The tiny face worked its whiskers and nose and then dove deeper behind the engine into the bowels of the Jeep. By the time Sean got there, seconds later, it was nowhere to be seen. Neither of us had seen it scamper from the Jeep, but we hoped that it would be gone by the morning.
The face belonged to a Bushy-Tailed Woodrat, the original packrat, which was beginning to build a nest on top of the Jeep’s engine. And I swear it was blue. I’m sure it was really blue-gray, but in the light and the surprise, it felt as blue as a mouse from Voltron.
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My feelings about Mount Rushmore are best captured in four objects: a poem, a playlist, a video, and a set of images.
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After we departed Wind Cave National Park, we entered Custer State Park. Founded in 1912 in part by the efforts of Peter Norbeck, who would be so instrumental in the creation of Badlands National Monument, the park now comprises 71,000 acres of the Black Hills. Our destination was the Cathedral Spires formation in the northwest corner of the park, deep in the granite heart of the Black Hills.
Immediately upon entering Custer, we were stopped by road construction and had to wait for a leader car, just as we’d done adjacent to Jewel Cave National Monument.
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Next morning dawned overcast. It was our final morning at Wind Cave National Park, and we intended to get one more short hike in before continuing on our adventures.
We were still trepidatious about the changing weather. It was Tuesday, September 9, and the forecast for the Black Hills the next day was possible snow, while in North Dakota, our ultimate destination, the temperatures were forecasted to drop precipitously.
We broke camp at Elk Mountain Campground and carefully organized the Jeep for a day of in-and-out sightseeing and day hikes. We drove down to the visitor center to see if they were able to recycle our first empty can of backpacking stove fuel. It was Ranger Madison, who had led our tour the previous morning, who was at the desk. She asked if we’d camped in the backcountry. We said no, but that we were on a ten-day trip and hoped to backpack at least once. We chatted about the impending bad weather, and she said that at least that morning, the temperatures weren’t supposed to drop as much as had previously been thought. This did not change our plans of stopping at the Scheel’s in Rapid City later in the day to augment our gear. Ultimately, the park did not have a way to recycle our canister. Ranger Madison mentioned that the VFW hall in Hot Springs did, but it was entirely the wrong direction for us. We decided to hang onto the canister until we got another chance.
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It was Monday afternoon, September 8, and we’d already explored two caves, but the day wasn’t over. We arrived back at our campsite at Elk Mountain Campground just before 4pm, which still gave us plenty of time for an above ground hike at Wind Cave before the sun set at 7:19pm.
The hike we chose was the Lookout Point/Centennial Trail Loop, a four-mile loop that began not too far from the campground up the park road and wound through prairie, forest, and riparian areas.
We stopped briefly at our campsite to refill our water bladders and prepare for our hike. By about twenty after four we were at the trailhead. We locked the jeep, shouldered our packs, and headed out.
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In 1913, ten years after the park was established, American Bison were reintroduced to Wind Cave National Park. In establishing the park in 1903, the intent of Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt was to protect the marvelous boxwork formations of the cave, but as an ancillary benefit, the park protected thousands of acres of mixed grass prairie in the foothills of the Black Hills. This habitat would be ripe for an ambitious bison reintroduction program that would culminate at Wind Cave.
The truly vital importance of the Wind Cave herd was recognized and reinforced only in recent decades as increasingly sophisticated genetic tests have confirmed that the herd is one of the last remaining genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. Most other herds have a certain percentage of genetic material from interbreeding with cattle. Even the herd at Custer State Park, adjacent to Wind Cave along its northern border, is not free of genetic material from cattle. The other pure herds are found at Yellowstone National Park, the Henry Mountains in Utah (reintroduced from the Yellowstone herd), and Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada.
The saga of the Wind Cave herd began in 1894, as bison reached a point of near extinction in the American West.
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Jewel Cave National Monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt on February 7, 1908 as the nation’s thirteenth National Monument. It was intended to protect what at the time was assumed to be a small, but distinctly beautiful cave. Jewel Cave now stands as the second longest on Earth at over 166 miles of explored passageways.
After our morning tour of Wind Cave, we had planned to do a couple short hikes and then visit Jewel Cave for the 2pm Scenic Tour. The unexpectedly busy tours at Wind Cave (particularly for a Monday after Labor Day) made us a little anxious about getting the tour we wanted that afternoon. (The ultimate plan was to come back to Wind Cave to do some hiking in the late afternoon.) So we started out on the 35-mile drive to Jewel Cave
As our route took us through the town of Custer and into the heart of the Black Hills, we began to see granite outcrops indicative of the center of the Hills.
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After we’d breakfasted on Monday morning, September 8, we drove the short distance from Elk Mountain Campground to the Wind Cave National Park visitor center. We were hoping to take the 9am Natural Entrance Tour, but we were too close to its starting time. Ranger Andrew sold us the final two tickets for the 9:45am tour. He informed us that there would be a group of middle schoolers on the tour with us, but it should be fine, since there had been others from the same large group on tours the day before without any problems.
As we waited the forty-five minutes for our tour, we watched the twenty-minute park introductory film and explored the exhibitions in the CCC-era visitor center. We also stopped by the bookstore.
Wind Cave National Park is possibly the most important little-known park in the entire system. It became the seventh National Park in 1903 when Congress passed legislation, subsequently signed by President Theodore Roosevelt, to protect a small, but beautiful cave in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota. (Starting here with Wind Cave, all five park units we’d visit would have some connection or indebtedness to Roosevelt.) It was the first National Park to protect a cave, and it also happened to protect an important transition zone between the mixed grass prairie of the South Dakota plains and the Ponderosa Pine forests of the Black Hills.
The quiet importance of the park would grow. What had been assumed to be a small cave is now known to be the fourth longest and among the oldest in the world. On the surface, a reintroduction program for the American Bison, begun in 1913, has yielded one of the most important, purest herds in the United States. It is a herd vital to reintroduction programs across the prairie.
Yet even many of those who have visited the Badlands or Mount Rushmore haven’t necessarily heard of this unassuming, intensely beautiful park. Perhaps that’s for the best.
Before heading from Badlands National Park to the Black Hills, however, we needed to stop for lunch. And, really, there was only one choice:
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It was Sunday morning, September 7, and although we had already broken camp at Sage Creek Campground, we weren’t quite finished exploring Badlands National Park. Instead of immediately exiting the park via the west entrance, we drove east on the Loop Road one more time to see a few more sightsnear the eastern entrance of the park that we’d skipped the previous day.
While we’d finished striking camp, we’d noticed some cloud cover moving in. Now on the road it added some drama. Although a few raindrops fell on the windshield, we could see that it wouldn’t last. (Note the Black Hills in the far right along the horizon in the image below.)
After visiting the Notch, we were ready for more hiking. We drove to the Saddle Pass Trailhead west of the visitor center area on the Loop Road. Saddle Pass Trail was only 0.2 miles, but it climbed directly up the Badlands Wall. Saddle Pass then connected to a relatively flat loop combining a portion of Castle Trail with Medicine Root Loop Trail. Ultimately it would be a 4.5-mile loop hike.
After lunch, it was time to finally get out of the car and begin exploring some of the Badlands landscapes close-up. We began with the Notch Trail, a 1.5-mile out and back near the eastern entrance to the park. It begins at a major trailhead parking area for trails both short and long. It is also one of the first stops on the Loop Road for those entering the park from the east. On this Saturday afternoon, September 6, it was busy with retirees, families, and couples of various ages.
The Notch Trail is the most demanding of the three short trails starting at this parking lot. The trail began by winding its way into a wall of Badlands formations to the east.
Slowly, prairie grasses and some small stands of juniper gave way to more barren formations.
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The Badlands Loop Road, which is not actually a loop, twists for over twenty-five miles above and below the Badlands Wall, offering an almost overwhelming density of scenic views, both from the windshield and at a series of interpretive overlooks and pullouts. It is a classic example of making the wonders of a park easily accessible to motorists, a philosophy that dominated the Park Service’s thinking in its first half century. On my previous visit, Lisa and I had motored along the road from east to west. This time, Sean and I would take the drive from west to east.
After our encounter with the Bighorn Sheep and an additional encounter with a grazing herd of them on the side of the road, which had stopped traffic, we turned right onto the paved Loop Road and stopped at the first overlook.
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After my bison encounter and after a breakfast of Mountain House Breakfast Skillet (more on this later), we set off for a morning drive on the Badlands Loop Road east to the visitor center and Cedar Pass.
The first twelve miles of the road were unpaved and were a retread of the route we’d driven in on the previous afternoon to get to Sage Creek Campground. These miles were also thick with wildlife, being both less traveled and adjacent to the largest expanse of wilderness. In addition to the plentiful bison, we spotted another pronghorn.
And then we stopped at Roberts Prairie Dog Town.
I awoke on Saturday, September 6, before sunrise, to the sound of birdsong echoing from either side of the shallow valley of Sage Creek Campground. Brilliant, hearty, melodic birdsong, which I would later realize came from Western Meadowlarks.
Sean was still sleeping, so I carefully rolled out of the tent, put on my boots, and zipped on my hoodie. The temperature had dropped quite a bit overnight.
Sage Creek Campground is situated as a large oval with pit toilets at the north and south ends and most of the tent sites within the middle of the oval. It is almost completely surrounded by the federally-designated Sage Creek Wilderness.
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Although legislation to establish a National Park in the White River Badlands of South Dakota was introduced into Congress by Senator Peter Norbeck in 1909, the measure stalled and was almost destroyed completely by a Park Service in its infancy after 1916. The Badlands would not be declared a National Monument until 1939 and would not become a National Park until November 10, 1978 (two days before I was born).
Badlands National Park would be the first that I would visit for a second time. I’d already spent a cold, exhilarating January afternoon there with my friend Lisa over ten years earlier. That earlier trip anticipated my move from Ann Arbor to Chicago and this one felt that it helped mark my tenth anniversary in the city.
Sean and I took a mid-morning flight on American Eagle to Sioux Falls on Friday, September 5. (The previous evening we’d taken in a fantastic concert by Owen Pallet at the Metro.) The 9:30 – 11:05am timeframe was ultimately civilized, allowing us to wake up at our normal times and to grab breakfast at Frontera Tortas, our O’Hare tradition.
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With the exception of a lovely long weekend in Florida in March with my parents, by Labor Day 2014 Sean and I had not taken a real vacation in 2014. This was due both to the whims and vagaries of his firm and that the summer months are busy at Openlands. (For comparison, by Labor Day 2013, we’d already visited the Virgin Islands, California, and Florida and had driven around the whole of Lake Michigan.) It was past time for a vacation. It was time to sleep in a tent.
We decided upon a trip to the Dakotas (and Wyoming). We’d hit three parks: Badlands, Wind Cave, and Theodore Roosevelt, plus three monuments.
I’d been itching to go to Theodore Roosevelt since reading Edmund Morris’ biography of him two years ago. I’d even thought of visiting the park between my time at Marwen and my time at Openlands.
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Eight years ago this week I visited Badlands National Park in the middle of January with my friend, Lisa. It was an impromptu Martin Luther King weekend road trip inspired in part by an article in that week’s New York Times about Marta Becket and her Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction, California. Lisa, who was also my supervisor, and I had been intrigued by the story of the aging dancer and the performances she gave at her inn in the Mohave Desert.
For an afternoon, we fantasized about the possibility of adding a few vacation days to the long weekend and making the 66-hour round trip drive.
After that idea was justifiably set aside, we still had the road trip bug. Both of us were going through hard break-ups at the time and we needed some space from an Ann Arbor winter with its North Sea skies. Also, we’d each be able to talk through our emotions with the only other person who was in a similar place at the moment. As the weekend approached, we decided to leave the destination unplanned, but to head south. If it came to it, we figured, we could always find a Holidome near Louisville and spend the weekend bathing our sorrows in a hot tub and alcohol.
We set off on Saturday morning in the Pam Dawber, Lisa’s Ford Taurus station wagon, heading west on I-94 and then south on I-69. As we drove, we monitored the weather. A snowstorm was moving through the lower Midwest, across our path to Kentucky. We began to second guess our southerly route, and as the junction with I-80 loomed ever closer after we crossed into Indiana, we knew we had to make a decision whether to avoid the storm.
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