Road Trip - South Dakota

We passed into South Dakota on a little road near the Enchanted Highway. My first impressions were: lots of bugs hitting the windshield and funny street names; Little Nasty Creek, Tickle Hill, Dead Broke Road and Renegade Pass. We saw weird salt patches in the fields and hay or sun flower fields as far as the eye could see. The hay was gathered into large round bales and then left in random places throughout the fields. It was absolutely beautiful.

We were miles from being out of gas and luckily happened upon a ‘town’ named Reva…which is apparently the home of the turtle races. This town, which was included on the map, only had 4 buildings, and only one of them looked like it was open. We stopped at the two pump gas station to fill up the tank. When I went inside to pay there was a gentleman on the phone (one of those old off-white phones that are mounted on the wall with a cord and everything.) When I showed the lady behind the desk my card she said, “Bill…we have a credit card”.  The gentleman said to the person on the line, “I’ll call you back in a few minute, we need the line”. I had forgotten about how this used to be the norm, I almost laughed out loud.

The first city we came to was Sturgis.  The city was completely asleep. The yearly biker bash had just ended a few days earlier, so it seems everyone was hibernating after their 3 weeks of crazy busy-ness. I’ve heard a rumor that many of the 3 level, hotel sized bars, make enough money during the gathering that they can close the rest of the year.  That’s just crazy.

Next up was Custer, SD where we would be staying for the night.  We had reservation for the Historic Lantern Tour at the Jewel Cave National Monument. The current discovered length of Jewel cave is 162 miles (they count every little inlet as length) and they estimate that they’ve only discovered 3%. It’s currently the 2^nd longest cave in the world!!

I’ve been fascinated with caves since I was 10 years old and we so extremely excited to be able to finally go in one.  The tour started with the park ranger handing out our oil lanterns, which turned out being really nice to have because it warmed your hands in the 40 degree cave. The portion of Jewel cave we toured was full of crystals, some parts were covered with a layer of 1 inch crystal….soooo awesome. There were so many ups, downs, twists and turns.  I’m totally hooked and will be looking for a caving club in Boston (hopefully they have one).

After the cave, we headed to Mount Rushmore and looked at the big heads in the side of the mountain.  It was pretty cool too, but not the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen J

The next morning, after camping, we made our way to Nebraska.  On our way, we stopped in Hot Springs, SD to go see the Mammoth dig site. This was really interesting.  Back during prehistoric times, this area was a sink hole that animals got caught in all the time.  So far, they have found over 120 mammoth skeletons and dozens of other types of prehistoric skeletons.  This was definitely one of the coolest things that I’ve seen in a long time.

South Dakota was extremely interesting and entertaining.  I have no idea I would love it so much there, but could probably spend about 2 weeks there and be completely entertained the whole time.  There were so many things that I wanted to do but didn’t have time!!   What a welcome surprise J