Badlands and motor-cowboys

Interstate 90 took us the 350 miles from Pipestone, Minnesota across southern South Dakota to the Badlands National Park. Our only noteworthy stop was at one of those impressive, yet mystifying, all-American temples to the bizarre.

This particular temple is known as "The Corn Palace", located in the small agricultural town of Mitchell. It is simply a building that contains an auditorium (an apparently rarely used auditorium, being crammed full of Corn Palace souvenir tourist tat). The real "draw" of the place is that the exterior and interior walls are decorated annually with murals entirely made of corn. 100 varieties of corn are alledgedly used. The cost of the murals? $125,000 annually. The result? Pointless.

Having given the Corn Palace the full 20 minutes of our time that it deserved, it was on to the Badlands. They call it "the wall" - one hundred miles of tortuous peaks and bone-dry canyons extending across the South Dakota prairie. The Badlands wall forms a natural barrier between the upper and lower prairies, its name deriving from the first French explorers' description of the place: "les mauvaises terres a traverser" - bad lands to cross.

The elaborate patterns of erosion that form the landscape are caused by occasional torrential showers in an otherwise very dry climate (the Badlands are in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains). The sudden gushing waters carry vast quantities of sediment away to the White River (it's white due to the sediment), leaving deep gullies carved through the soft sedimentary rock.

We spent two nights in the Badlands, but with temperatures around 100F (and no showers!), we soon moved on to the relative coolth of the nearby Black Hills. The geek (and tightwad) in Jen had deeply enjoyed the (free) ranger-led activities, which focussed on the geology, ecology and astronomy of the Badlands, but we couldn't stand the heat, so we had to get out of the kitchen!

Our visit to the Black Hills of western South Dakota held more in store for us than just the usual hiking and swimming. We had (semi-intentionally) timed our visit to coincide with the world famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Week! It certainly did not disappoint. Around 400,000 bikes cram into the hills annually for bands, beer and scenery (oh, and this being the USA, a hell of a lot of merchandise). During this week, anywhere within 200 miles of Sturgis swarms with throngs of hairy biker males with their scantily clad (though frequently lardy) biker laydeez, on the back of their roaring Harley-Davidsons.

Of course, without our bikes, we were not exactly at one with the crowd but we nonetheless enjoyed the atmosphere, meeting biker-dudes and checking out the machinery. The photo shows our friendly campsite neighbours, Hal and Mike with their Victory motorbikes, in Custer State Park (near Mount Rushmore).

The Sturgis circus extended to all the other small towns in the vicinity. Historic wild-west towns like Deadwood (home of calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok) took on a fresh wildness as the choppers and cruisers choked the town centre and the bikers spilled out of the saloons onto the streets.

After a few days in the Black Hills, we decided to leave the bison, the oh-so-cute pairie dawgs, and of coures the bikers to move west again, crossing into Wyoming. We stopped yesterday for a hike around Devil's Tower, an immense rod of igneous rock protruding startlingly out of the rolling prairie. Oh, and course the bikers were there too!

Grayham is currently getting an oil change, following his 3000th mile with us on the road (the photo shows him admiring Mount Rushmore - top left). For the information of the Grayo-sceptics, he has not yet missed a beat thus far!

Next stop - Yellowstone - watch out Yogi!