South Dakota

Our journey since leaving Vancouver has been one through big States, mountain ranges, Indian Territory, and across and along rivers. What we haven’t seen much of are the cities that dot the eastern interstates. I don’t miss the cities at all!

Today’s State of the Day was South Dakota, the Mountains of the Day were the Black Hills, the Indians of the Day were the Sioux, and the River of the Day was the Missouri. I’ve enjoyed the three days of one-state-a-day travel, but this comes to an end after today as we will travel through eight states in our final two days on the road.

We had intended to spend last night in eastern Wyoming, but we found “no room at the Inn” and had to drive into South Dakota to find lodging. We ended up at the Best Western (our hotel of choice) in the small town of Sturgis. The boys knew about Sturgis as soon as they saw the name, having seen a National Geographic TV Special about the yearly motorcycle rally held there. The signs of this were everywhere! The hotel itself had a display of over 30 t-shirt designs for this years rally. There were also bikers everywhere, as the Black Hills and Sturgis have become a sort of Mecca to them. In the first week of August the town of Sturgis, population 8,000, will host the 67th annual rally and is anticipating 500,000 to 750,000 bikers, almost doubling the population of the state! (We’re staying tonight in Sioux Falls, SD, which with a population of 120,000 is listed as “South Dakota’s largest city except for one week in August.”)

Leaving Sturgis this morning we took a short drive to Rapid City, where we turned south and went through a 20 mile gauntlet of tourist traps on our way to the Mount Rushmore National Monument. The monument area itself was fortunately free of these distractions, and the “giant heads in the rock” were quite impressive to see. We took dozens of photos, along with almost everyone else who was there, despite the fact that we have all seen many professional photos of this monument. I guess we just wanted to document the fact that we, too, had been to this place.

After slightly more than an hour at Mount Rushmore we headed back to Rapid City for lunch and then continued our journey east on I-90, with 450 miles of South Dakota still ahead of us. Leaving the Black Hills we passed through the Badlands region of the state and then rolled into the flatter plains of central and eastern SD. Along the way we learned that many of the places here were named by the Sioux and Dakota Indians and adopted by the French trappers in the early 1800’s and the settlers from the east who followed later.

In the center of the state we passed over the scenic Missouri River, and then traveled through very rich farmland in the eastern part of the state, ending in Sioux City. The boys did all of the driving again today, and spent hours together in the front seats engaged in lengthy discussions about all the modifications they want to make to their cars. I later told them that I was planning on washing my car and having the oil changed, but that didn’t impress them!

We got take-out pizza tonight and are now enjoying Myth Busters on the Discovery Channel. We hope to get an earlier start tomorrow morning and to be only 600 miles from home by the end of the day.