Badlands, Black Hills & Bighorns

Running on fumes. Walking on the moon

I landed in Rapid City on almost no sleep, collected a stick-shift Kia, and drove straight to the Badlands. The plan was to see a little scenery. Naturally, that became the Door and Window area, Saddle Pass, part of the Castle Trail, and a mission to locate prairie dogs.

Somewhere between trying to get the photograph everybody else already had and scrambling around the rocks, the phone became less important. I was walking on another planet. Managed to slow me down. The park ranger I got the rundown from at the visitor center had already tested my patience with his painfully slow and deliberate park map explanation. Not that it wasn’t valuable.

Cedar Pass campground was my home for the night. Same place Frances McDormand stayed at in Nomadland. Go figure.

I wanted to eat my block of cheese dinner and collapse, but sunset. Sunset! I was off again, snapping pics that certainly NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER TAKEN. The stars back at the campground that night justified schlepping an entire checked bag of camping gear across the country.

The tallest peak in South Dakota! Check!

The morning supplied a spectacular Badlands sunrise and a closed Wall Drug. I moved on to the Black Hills and hiked Black Elk Peak from Sylvan Lake.

Rain became heavier rain, then thunder. And it chased me down Black Elk Peak in record time. The idea of a second night camping lost its appeal rather quickly. I traded Sylvan Lake for a hotel in Deadwood and spent the evening investigating the border between a real Western town and a very committed performance of one.

And, oh yeah, obligatory shot of Mount Rushmore. I took it at an angle no one has ever considered before. National Geographic, here I come.

The trout were not impressed

A local briefing sent me to Spearfish Creek between Bridal Veil Falls and the lodge. Access was easy. Persuading the fish was another matter.

I caught two tiny trout on a nymph. The much larger fish, clearly visible and apparently available for consultation, declined everything. One showed more interest in my strike indicator than in the fly. So I threw a big cricket-looking thing at it. It stared at it with what I am sure was disbelief and derision.

The lesson may have been that I was optimizing for catching any fish instead of trying the harder approach that might catch the fish I actually wanted. Or perhaps the fish were simply better at this.

Prairie-dog inequality

I took the northern route through Aladdin to Devils Tower. The prairie dogs there seemed notably more prosperous than their nervous Badlands cousins: comfortable, well-fed, and unconcerned by passing humans.

After exploring around the tower, I drove through Moorcroft toward Buffalo. Lightning flashed over the Bighorns ahead. The landscape was changing, and so was the trip: fewer postcard stops, more open country and traces of the industries that shaped it.

A voluntary night in jail

Snow and rain in the high country made postponing the big hike an easy call. I crossed the Bighorns on US-16 and dropped through Ten Sleep Canyon to a room in the town’s historic jail. Actually, that was the jail. A room. Solitary confinement. Perfectly fit the theme.

Ten Sleep Creek offered another lesson in humility. I went downstream and caught nothing. Another angler went upstream and landed a large rainbow. There were several possible technical explanations. One of them was the fisherman.

That evening was for getting ready: checking weather and sorting water. Cloud Peak itself—the tallest peak in this here area—was not the next day’s objective.

Enough was enough. In a good way

The walk from West Tensleep Trailhead toward Misty Moon Lake became the centerpiece of the trip. Alpine lakes, high country. And fish everywhere—one caught by someone else, all the rest assembling upon my arrival—the obligatory mockery brigade. On the day I had deliberately left the rod behind.

It was also Yom Kippur. I stopped to reflect and filmed what amounted to a sermon to myself at the lake. The moving time and the elapsed time told very different stories, which felt appropriate.

I had considered bigger ambitions. Reaching the lake, spending time there, and returning safely turned out to be enough. Then it was east to Gillette for the final night.

What’s Gillette? A place on the map halfway between here and there.

Back through the working West

The drive back to Rapid City connected the industrial details I’d been noticing all week: coal trains, pumpjacks, and installations scattered through enormous landscapes.

I briefly considered another attempt at Wall Drug. Technically possible. Spiritually unnecessary. Instead, I hit up a store downtown that sold both semi-automatic rifles and, for 5 bones, the vinyl extended single of “I’m Your Pusher,” by Ice-T. Passed on the firearm, gladly sold on the extended and a cappella version of L.G.B.N.A.F.

I returned the Kia, removed the 2 CDs I bought for its CD player that accompanied me through the whole no-cell-service trip, vowed never to listen to Tom Petty or Merle Haggard ever again, and flew home.