Day 7

De Smet, South Dakota to Custer, South Dakota

400 miles

Weather: 65 degrees, sunny and very windy (steady wind 20 mph, gusts to 35+)

Wow! Today was quite the full day! We woke up to a beautiful sky and sunrise over the prairie at the Ingalls Homestead. The air was crisp and cool again-so cool in fact that during the night we had to turn on the heat! We ate breakfast and broke camp about 9:30 am. Bay and Leah were sad to say goodbye to the Homestead as well as the menagerie of farm animals-especially a little black cat that reminded us of our cat Spooky  at home. This little kitten kept following us around, even hopping up into the camper at every chance he could get! We left De Smet and headed for a quick stop in the town of Mitchell. Some friends of ours who are from Mitchell told us about the Corn Palace-so we had to stop. In fact, on the road leading to Mitchell, we passed a sign for the town of Letcher! We wondered if the town and the family happen to be related??? Anyways, in Mitchell, the Corn Palace is a building that has been decorated with ears of corn and other parts of the corn plant. There are corn murals all around the building, and inside is a basketball stadium, where the walls are also decorated with murals. We took some pictures and got on the highway-glad we stopped-thanks guys-otherwise we never would have known about it!

We spent the next several hundred miles crossing more prairie than we ever could have imagined existed. Wheat fields, hay bales by the hundreds, sunflower fields, rolling hills of nothing but prairie grass. It was beautiful and desolate at the same time. And, oh, the winds! Literally, our RV was like a huge sail rolling down the highway! The crosswinds were so severe from the south as we headed west that the steering wheel was turned permanently to the left about 30 degrees while the road and the RV were going straight in order to battle the side force of the wind. It was exhausting driving. Once we crossed the Missouri River (which was surrounded by its own interesting set of landscape-rolling dune like hills) the wind shifted with just as much intensity to blowing from the northwest. Heather drove again today for about 200 miles-battling the wind, but I felt much more comfortable this time after being at the wheel for only a few minutes.

As we approached Badlands National Park, we realized that we were running out of time to get to our campsite in the Black Hills before dark, so we made a quick stop at the first scenic overview and then got back on the highway, with plans to drive back through in the next couple of days when we have more time and the car instead of the RV. The first thing we did when entering the Badlands National Park was to purchase the National Parks 1-year pass. We realized when calculating how many National Parks we would go to on this trip, and then combined entrance fees of all of them, that buying the pass was a good deal for $80.

The scenic overlook at the entrance to Badlands did not disappoint. It was immediately evident why it is called the Badlands! The landscape changes almost immediately from rolling prairie to dropping off into a canyon-like area with spires and ruts. We could only imagine what the homesteaders and wagon riding families said when they approached the area! It certainly was a “bad” land and would have been very difficult to navigate! The layers of rock were beautiful and we took a bunch of pictures-excited to go back soon!

After leaving the Badlands, we got back on the highway to the Black Hills. It is so neat how everything is so aptly named out here! Not until did we see the Black Hills did we understand the name-after so many hundreds of miles of golden grassland, the mountains jutting out of the flat land were suddenly covered with dark evergreen trees. Compared to the empty and light-colored prairie, the hills did look “black”. We drove into Custer State Park, to our campground for the next 3 nights-Big Pine Campground. We pulled in around 6 pm Mountain Time, set up camp with full hook-ups for a great price of $30 a night, and grilled some hot dogs to go with our baked beans and carrot sticks. The temps are supposed to get into the 30’s tonight, so we are prepared with the heat and heavier blankets!

 Eric in his tourist shirt again!

 All of those murals on the side of the building are made with corn or parts of the corn plant-it kind of reminded me of the floats in the Rose Bowl parade-where everything is made out flowers or flower parts. However this stays up for an entire year-I think the first Corn Palace was built in something like 1892 for the local farmers to show off how fertile and productive the soil was in South Dakota!

 The view for so much of the trip-rolling prairie grasslands.

 This was a sunflower field we passed-as you can see, the road and the land stretches on and on. It's just hard to fathom having never seen it before. And it is just a small part of the entire state!

 This was a scenic overlook just before approaching the badlands. I thought it was neat how the road looks like a ribbon stretched over the landscape.

 Our first view of the badlands. As you can see in the picture above-the prairie is just to the right-and suddenly, there you are-the grass drops away and there are these spires everywhere!

 The boys

 The green parts in this picture is the lower prairie-at the bottom of the canyons of the badlands. The settlers had to get their wagons from the lower parts, through openings in the spires up to the higher parts-these were  called gaps.

 The girls 

Our campsite at Big Pines Campground just outside of the town of Custer, South Dakota-free wi-fi at the campground! Yay!

Please check out the slideshow on the right sidebar of the blog. I have uploaded many more pictures to the slideshow. If you click on one of the pictures, it should take you to the photo album "West Trip" and you should be able to see the pictures much larger. If you are looking at our blog on your phone, the side bar does not come up, so you will have to do it in web browser mode to see the whole blog and slideshow!