Well, OK, here, by popular demand, is a photo of the melodious midnight tenor at Lake Ogallala, Bear. Early in the morning after the concert, Bear and his owner set off in their pick-up truck to go fishing, and Peachy and I headed North, to Hot Springs, South Dakota.
These springs are more luke than hot, but they bubble up through a gravel layer in the bottom of a large swimming pool built decades ago. They did, however, include a really nifty water slide, so the visit was worthwhile. On the way out of town I noticed small pools in the river, steaming in the cool air, and labeled "Cowboy Soakin' Hole". Less costly, but no slide.
Our next stop was Wind Cave National Park, so named for the noise made by the air moving through the small original entrance to the cave. When atmospheric pressure is high, the air moves into the cave. When it is low, the wind whistles out, equalizing pressure, as it did the day I was there. I am not a fan of caves, but this one had interesting formations called "box work", honeycomb-like arrangement of calcite sheets.
The Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monuments are probably familiar to just about everyone, and the camera battery gave out, so no photos, but I was properly awed, although I must admit to a fleeting wish that someone would clear away the mountain of rock debris at the feet of the presidents (this from someone who admits to being "...not dependably domestic").
We camped in the beautiful Black Hills, in Custer State Park, did the laundry, and enjoyed a buffalo burger to add to the regional food log, but passed up the local beer named "Moose Drool". In the morning we were off to investigate The Badlands.
Badlands National Park was established in 1939. It holds the largest expanse of protected prairie ecosystem is considered one of the world's richest fossil beds, and is one of the most successful reintroduction sites for the black-footed ferret. In addition, it is an awesome place! Some of the rock formations look like dripped sand castles, others are rounded lumps, looking much like giant scoops of slowly melting sherbet. Elaborate wedding cakes and rajah's palaces are other images that come to mind, layers of pink, cream, peach, and grey-lilac rock. Then there are others, dark grey that could be elephants' feet.
Cottonwood Campground welcomed us with shelters against the prevailing wind, swooping bluebirds, and a delightful couple from northern Iowa, two prairie dogs, and one rabbit. In the evening, spectacular stars and the calls of an owl were the entertainment. In the interpretive center I found another term to add to our list: armored mud balls. These occur in the park, and are formed when pebbles are swept along in a cloudburst, rolling downstream, and collecting mud and more pebbles as they go. Many are the size of baseballs.
I passed by the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, and the famous (in--) Wall Drug Store. We did look in at the Prairie Homestead, however, to see the sod house built by Ed Brown in 1909. It was dug into the side of a hill, and finished with cottonwood logs, windows, and a roof of buffalo grass. It was cool in summer and warm in winter, in an area where temperatures range from minus 30 to plus 110 degrees.
Thence into North Dakota and more prairie, the very western (read; flat) Platte River, and several impressive Tribal Headquarters. In Fort Yates, the street signs are both in English and a phonetic version of the Standing Rock Sioux spoken language.
In Bismarck I was blessed with yet another extravagant welcome at the U.C.C. church, met friends of friends in Maryland, and was treated to lunch - and the first salad in three weeks. Moving out into the countryside after being in the city, we found more sunflowers, pastures, fields of wheat stubble, and bee hives, and antelope, sometimes grazing alongside the cattle.
There are national parks familiar to everyone, even if we have not actually seen them ourselves. Others are a complete blank, and I had never even heard of Theodore Roosevelt National Park before deciding it would be a convenient place to stop. It turned out to be one of my all-time favorites.
Roosevelt arrived here by train in 1883, when he was 24 years old, to hunt buffalo. He liked the area, bought a share in the Maltese Cross Cattle Ranch, and returned as often as he could for the peace of the out of doors. He witnessed the degradation of the rangeland and the decimating of the buffalo and other species, and in a speech in 1886 he declared, "It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it." “.... so it is peculiarly incumbent on us here to-day so to act throughout our lives as to leave our children a heritage for which we will receive their blessing and not their curse."
As President he signed into law five national parks and eighteen national monuments, and formalized the U.S. Forest Service and 151 million acres of national forests. After reading the book "Collapse", by Jared Diamond, I am happy that we got a head start on preserving our ecology in the nineteenth century. That is a battle still raging, however, and we - and our children - will have to keep working to protect this beautiful land. Meanwhile, I am going to check out some books from the library and find out more about TR.
There were bison (buffalo, I still haven't figured out which is preferred), pronghorn, deer, wild turkeys, and "feral" horses along the park road. The turkeys played on a picnic table in our campground, and one evening on a late night trip to the restroom I shone my flashlight into the bushes to check out a rustling noise, and there were five wild horses browsing not ten feet from me. At least they weren't bears!
The only drawback to this visit was the rain, so in the morning I breakfasted at the Cowboy Cafe in Medora, Stetsons, and all, and then we were on our way to Wyoming.
A couple of church signs that caught my eye:
"FIGHT TRUTH DECAY, READ YOUR BIBLE DAILY'
"IT WASN'T THE APPLE ON THE TREE, IT WAS THE PAIR BENEATH"
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