Joe and I were very lucky to learn so much Native American history while traveling. It became really strong while we were in South Dakota. As we drove into the Badlands the scenery was really indescribable. You could see these crazy mountain formations that looked like they were made out of many layers of sand, and they went of for miles. An almost never ending vast of these mountains, along with lots of prairie land. We had heard that the Lakota Sioux Indians had named this land “ the Bad Lands” and some French travelers had said “ they were hard lands to cross.” Even the famous artist Frank Lloyd Wright described them as “ an endless supernatural world…” I would have to say when Joe and I were driving through them I got a really weird spiritual feeling by looking across this vast land. It really showed when we got back from driving around the park and I had taken over 200 pictures and it was really hard to tell a lot of them apart but I could not stop taking photos.
Our stay at Badlands National Park was quite interesting. The second day we were there we drove out to the town of Wall. Where after all those signs on the highway, we finally checked out Wall Drug. As the story goes this woman and her husband own this drug store in Wall during the Great Depression. One day the woman was laying down in the hot afternoon trying to take a nap but the buzz of all the traffic on the highway was bugging her. This is when the light bulb came on, she thought if she offered all these drivers free ice water they would come (reminded me of Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come”). Even as her husband was putting up the first sign “Free Ice Water, Wall Drug” they had to hire more help, they were getting tons of traffic. The husband figured the more signs he put up the more people would come, he even had a friend put up signs in Europe stating how far to Wall Drug during WWII. Today there are signs in all kinds of illogical places stating the distance to Wall Drug, but what does make sense is the amount of business they do now. The actual Wall Drug that is there now is about a block long, with many different shops in one. They still have free ice water… among ice cream, fudge, candy, and souvenirs. Joe and I took some hilarious photos among the figurines they have around. They even had a huge Jackelope that you could get on top of! (Joe riding a jackelope, awesome!) We also got our free Wall Drug sign, wherever we end up we can write the mileage to Wall Drug and send them a photo… seriously crazy stuff!
When we got back to our campsite at Badlands NP we met some interesting people. There was a woman who was driving one of those HUGE RV’s that look like a coach bus and trailing a huge SUV, was doing all this by herself! She was a character, said her and her husband were “free spirits” and she had been in Florida or Illinois (she talked really fast) and was bored and decided to go meet her husband who was doing some work with a Native American tribe near Yellowstone… We had heard this weird scream in the middle of the night and it turns out that it was this woman, one of her dogs had bit her in the middle of the night… a dog she had had for 6 years, crazy! Joe ended up helping her get her SUV back onto the trailer she was towing with the HUGE RV, if Joe hadn’t offered I do not know how she was going to do it on her own. I gave her many kudos for doing what she was doing on her own, I mean I had been traveling with Joe for 6 weeks by then and it was still pretty hard!
We also met this guy who had packed up all his stuff (well not all of it…) and packed it onto his motorbike (not a large motorcycle, you will have to ask Joe what it was) and left San Francisco to drive cross country and was planning on ending up in Arizona for grad school. He had some good insight since he had basically just driven the route that we were planning on heading into. What was really interesting about him was not that he was traveling by himself, but that he had some radio production background (Aengus if you are ready this sorry if I get some of my facts wrong!) and in all the places he had stopped, he would ask some people these 2 questions and then record their answers. I think that he is going to make a video or book about it. The two questions (if I can remember correctly) were “what are you most afraid of right now?” and the other was “what are most excited about in your life?” He said that he got some really interesting answers, the only one I can remember is this guy said that he was most afraid of the world ending due to the Aztec calendar… hahaha I am still laughing.
Even the park rangers at the Badlands were interesting. When Joe and I had got back from Wall Drug, Joe had asked me to get out of the truck to put the tail gate down to be able to hook back up to the trailer. Well when I was about to step out of the truck I noticed a huge black thing on the ground (the ground was basically made up of white rock) and what was it… a freaking spider! Well I got out and scaled the truck (staying as close to the truck as I possibly could) and then I ran into the trailer. Joe got out wondering what the heck was wrong with me and I pointed out the spider. I sat there and watched it scurry across the road. Joe had said that he saw one of the same spiders earlier when we were driving through the park. So he stopped and asked a ranger what kind of spider it was. She told us that it was a wolf spider and she proceeds to go into this story about how her friend got bit by one and it turned into a huge crater in the skin and had to go see a doctor… but they are mostly harmless… yea freaking right lady! Let’s just say I was once again super freaked out!
The Badlands were beautiful and the experience interesting time to go check out the Black Hills and Custer State Park.
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