1993/07 Rockies trip - South Dakota Badlands |
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Wednesday June 23rd
The Minnesota-South Dakota border area is not too scenic, with a hundred miles of flat farmland.
The towns out there have each developed an attraction to lure bored tourists in to spend their money, so there are museums, ghost towns, pioneer farms, etc. We stopped at Mitchell, world famous for its Corn Palace, which is faced with "paintings", all done with differently coloured ears of corn. The walls inside the theatre were covered with corn murals.
Note the four presidents of Mount Rushmore in the background behind the deer.
We had the usual confused discussion about the name of "corn". 
We Brits use "corn" to mean a whole range of grains, including wheat, barley, and oats. but not the corn of the Corn Palace. That's what the Brits call maize if it's grown to feed animals, or sweet corn if grown to feed humans.
At one time two or three dozen towns in the area had corn palaces, but the only one left is in Mitchell. The town provides a free tour and history lesson, which somehow leaves you standing in the gift shop.
Then, we were off towards the South Dakota Badlands. On the way in we stopped to look at an ancient
(well previous century anyway) prairie sod home that's been renovated. Cool in the summer and snug in the winter as it's mainly underground, but a little bit dusty and muddy at times. 
Note the back of the interior picture, folded strips of sod (turf to the Brits) stacked to make a wall.
No humans ;lived there anymore, but there were plenty of prairie dogs around, much to Edna's delight. She does like her "furries".
We were keeping a close eye on the clouds that were swirling around us. It was already blowing hard when we left there, and 
even harder when we set up camp in the Badlands, with tents flying all around us. John and I spent some time helping the tenters get their tents back and up, but a lot of them gave up and retreated to their cars.
We'd had extremely windy nights camping there in the past. We'd seen massive cottonwood trees bent over to the ground, an Airstream trailer impaled by a picnic table, and a tent trailer flipped upside down. However this time the wind eased up at nightfall and we were able to enjoy the sunset and do a little exploring.
Thursday June 24th
So, we had a quiet night and it was nice enough the next day to hike some of the trails, and visit some of the overlooks on the loop road. None of the peaks are very high but it is spectacular and very rugged country.
The landscape of clay erodes and slumps quite quickly during rains and parts of the trail system are just notches in the cliffs. It's not a friendly landscape for those who don't like heights. 
Some rescuing was required.
A very strange sight was a dozen or more uniformed young men marching behind a flag we didn't recognize. We decided we didn't need to find out who they were.