Swung down into Badlands National Park, the main road through which parallels I-90 8 or 10 miles to the south. I had no idea what to expect, and almost skipped it, but this made it all the more pleasant to sojourn about.
The hills and other formations in Badlands are eroding by about an inch of height per year. Below, see buttresses which once supported a safety rail. The park was impressively free of safety rails...people are quite welcome to fall off any cliff or down any gully they'd like, and even the main park road went really close to cliff edges in several spots.
Much of the park is like this: a flat, grassy tableland bounded by eroded, fluted, spiney cliffs, which end in another flat grassland. The dust is being kicked up by cars driving on the dirt road out there on the tableland.
Big hills, little hills.
I bet that hurt.I hope it didn't bruise the meat and make it excessively tough.
A little winding creek.
An area called the Yellow Mounds.
Little mini canyons in the low flatlands.
Grassy flatland at left, then cliffs, then grassy flatlands at right.
Some goats.
Horizontal bands of geology.
Badlands Photosynth:
Big chunks, medium chunks, tiny chunks of earth. Polydispersity.
Another Badlands Photosynth:
The campground. I was thinking of pushing on but camping in this nice place was too tempting.
Before shoving off and putting the pedal down, I stopped at the Minuteman Missile National Historical Site, conveniently located to pull in some of Badlands' through traffic. This site is a monument to the thousands of nuclear missile launch sites located all over the northern midwest. I could have gone to see a launch control facility and missile silo in person, but I would have had to wait around for a while, so I just watched the homemade documentary they showed and checked out some little exhibits. Still really interesting.
The next three days were pure driving. You know it's a road trip when a three hour stretch of sitting in the car feels like trivial period of time.
In other news, the crosswinds in SD were so strong that it actually slid my bike, in its rooftop rack, laterally, so it was whacking Rosie's bike, carving a decent chunk out of my seatstay.
Against all odds, however, Rosie and I did make it to DJ's wedding that Saturday in Maine.
No comments:
Post a Comment