6/8/07 Morris, MN to Badlands N.P., SD

The drive to visit my extended family in Morris, MN signified a transition for our trip. As my Aunt Alisande said, we were entering “the beginning of nowhere.” Pretty soon, our pictures of city skylines would be replaced by those of mountain ridges. Long and straight roads surrounded by only rolling hills and cows typify this portion of the drive. Interspersed along the way, you can find small pockets of civilization – the next stop on our journey enabled us to experience one firsthand in Morris.

Seeing my family members in Morris was a significant experience for me. Alisande is my father’s younger sister, and along with her husband Gordon, her daughter Hadley, and her son Alex, represents one of my closest relatives. I fondly remember visiting Ithaca every summer as a child, where our families would join to see my grandparents – the highlight of the trip was always walking up the creek to Toughannock Falls. Unfortunately, a great deal of time has passed since I had last seen Alisande and crew. In what I guess may be an entire decade, Hadley has grown into a confident sophomore in college while little “Lexi” has blossomed into a mature middle-schooler. While I spent only an evening with them in their house in a small prairie town, the experience truly made me feel more complete and was personally an essential part of the trip; the image of “my cousins in Morris, Minnesota” is no longer an unknown.

Now, back to the trip. After being sent off by Alisande with a breakfast of waffles, strawberries, and whipped cream and visiting the University of Minnesota – Morris, we set our sights on South Dakota. On this day, we would drive across almost the entire state. If you want to know what the scenery was like, just picture that default Windows background with the green hill and the blue sky and you pretty much have it. In between Morris and the Badlands, we made sure to stop at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. This castle-like convention center features a mosaic of corn on its exterior and is possibly one of the most over-hyped tourist attractions around. Needless to say, we had much more fun at the bar across the street where we met Murph, who is pictured below. We also bought trucker hats that made the stop mildly worthwhile.

As we raced across the state while obeying the 75 mph speed limit, we gradually realized that we were facing a race against time with the setting sun. We had planned to set up camp with plenty of time to casually drive around the park as the sun set. As you can guess, those plans went out the window. As we watched the setting sun with still an hour left until the park, we began asking ourselves questions like, “it’s okay to set up the tent for the first time in the dark, right?” The situation worsened when we switched from Central to Mountain Time zone and the sun shockingly stayed in the same low place in the sky. However, the issue of setting up camp quickly took a back seat when we first set sight on the landscape that defines the park. The remaining light we had would be used for absorbing the beauty that is Badlands National Park.

The dramatic rise of the layered sandy ridges of the park left us saying, “Wow” over and over again. The setting sun highlighted the reds and yellows of these fantastic geological formations. The two of us were downright giddy when we first got out of the car and just let nature hit us. Take a look at the pictures, but I hope that all of you have the chance to personally see this natural wonder at some point. This place is truly like nothing we have ever seen.

We received our first real treat of the trip as we drove through the park to reach or campsite. With almost all light gone, only the outlines of geological features could be seen at this point. The two of us were in fact a little disappointed that we had arrived so late to the park that we were actually missing part of it due to darkness. However, one sighting in particular made the timing of our arrival 100% worthwhile. We were driving through a section of the park where the crags from below extended about 20 feet above and directly next to the road. I was sitting shotgun, and as we turned a corner I was taken aback by the silhouette of a bighorn sheep posing atop the mountain a mere 50 feet in front of us. As Deyle slows down, we see two more of these awesome creatures navigate the mountainside towards us. At one point, we were no more than 20 feet away from them. The fact that we were so surprised by these animals made the experience particularly thrilling – the image of that animal atop the crag will never escape either of us.

The adrenaline we received from seeing the sheep carried us almost until the campsite. There was a stretch while driving along a bumpy dirt road in complete darkness when the two of us were absolutely frightened by a tall man in a flannel shirt standing alongside the road, staring down the car. The campsite couldn’t have come any sooner. Luckily, we found an available space for our tent and were able to set up camp. After a glass of scotch and a glimpse at the magnificent starlit sky, the two of us went to sleep excited to wake up early and explore the land we were suddenly a part of.

-Jonah