We passed from Central Time into Mountain Time, which gave us the hour we needed to do a preliminary spin around the badlands. SD route 240 does a loop through this national park, which is especially interesting because it's surrounded by green prairie. The area used to be the bottom of a large shallow sea, which was eventually pushed and shoved by geological maneuvering until it gave way to these strange formations, which have beautiful banded color tones. It's stunning, and the windy roads break out into multiple sweeping vistas, which scared the heck out of Lizzie, who is afraid of heights, as you may remember from previous trips. We're going to go back tomorrow when we're less exhausted from our corn palace visit. For dinner, we went to this tiny little bar in Interior, SD, called the Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill, and had delicious pizza and conversation with the locals, who were all about the bad storms that'd been coming through. This one lady detailed her plans to hide in the closet (rather than the bathtub) with a mattress. I worry about her chances of survival...anyway, it was interesting because I noted that some of the formations we passed through looked like they were out of Indiana Jones, and then Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade was playing in the bar. Awww yeah.
We passed from Central Time into Mountain Time, which gave us the hour we needed to do a preliminary spin around the badlands. SD route 240 does a loop through this national park, which is especially interesting because it's surrounded by green prairie. The area used to be the bottom of a large shallow sea, which was eventually pushed and shoved by geological maneuvering until it gave way to these strange formations, which have beautiful banded color tones. It's stunning, and the windy roads break out into multiple sweeping vistas, which scared the heck out of Lizzie, who is afraid of heights, as you may remember from previous trips. We're going to go back tomorrow when we're less exhausted from our corn palace visit. For dinner, we went to this tiny little bar in Interior, SD, called the Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill, and had delicious pizza and conversation with the locals, who were all about the bad storms that'd been coming through. This one lady detailed her plans to hide in the closet (rather than the bathtub) with a mattress. I worry about her chances of survival...anyway, it was interesting because I noted that some of the formations we passed through looked like they were out of Indiana Jones, and then Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade was playing in the bar. Awww yeah.
The prairie is so green! SD was in a drought the entire time I've lived there, so I've only seen it look like that for about 5 seconds in May. I think they had a lot of rain in June. Oh my god! All you have to do is go to SD and I can only talk about the weather.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry--I can't stop saying "IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL." I think Lizzie is going to punch me. But it's so pretty!! (Mixing it up...)
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