Badlands, Devils Tower, and giant heads.

Desolate section of Badlands National Park

Our trip was intended to experience the USA annd Americans focused on smaller cities, but we’ve not really targeted the classic roadtrip tourism sites, unless they were directly on our route. This week, our route sort of took us right through a few roadtrip classics … The Badlands, Mt Rushmore, and Devil’s Tower.

The Badlands was yet another remarkable location. Bizarre in its jagged, naked cragginess, it feels as though some angry, giant god scraped out an area of South Dakota with their fingernails. We were also hoping to see a Buffalo, and when I opened my car door on a roadside stop and almost stepped in a pile of Buffalo poop, we were hopeful they were nearby. Sure enough, five minutes later we spotted an honest to goodness wild Buffalo who enthralled us for the next few minutes by loping along close to our car.

Mt Rushmore with its four sixty foot heads.

Mt Rushmore, with its four giant heads carved out of rock, is also bizarre. In this case the remarkable feature was not made by a god but rather by the son of an LDS polygamist who was a KKK supporter. But they do look cool. Does Theodore really belong next to Abe, George, and Thomas? That’s a nice debate .. Dinah was very comfortable with our first Progressive president being part of the crew, and I couldn’t, offhand, think of a more consequential president before the modern era.

Spotting of the mysterious Dinah Coops! Oh, and Devils Tower, 900 foot ancient lava extrusion.

Devils Tower is one crazy block of ancient magma. I like that the geologist debate over why it exists has raged for decades around three different theories. I also liked the story about a guy who parachuted onto the Tower in 1941, but then his 1,000 foot rope which was intended as his way down dropped off the edge, leaving him stranded. This caused a week long rescue, attended by thousands of onlookers. Also, thank you, Steven Spielberg, for bringing this place to all of our attention in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which Dinah and I rewatched after our Tower Day.