Things Get Good Leaving The Badlands

For the record we should note that buffalo and bison, are the same animal.

We packed up camp early Wednesday and began making our back through the Badlands en route to Mt. Rushmore. Our new campsite is a few miles outside of the Rushmore area in Custer. The trip through the Badlands was a bit different this time, as we went further in and had some really amazing experiences with some of the wild life there.

The trip began with a stop at one of the scenic viewpoints over looking a mountain area. We were standing there, admiring the view when we heard a distinct, "Baa" coming from the side of the mountainn across from us. On the mountain was a Long Horned Sheep, I believe was the name of the animal. You could hear the hooves clacking against the mountain as the sheep navigated its way over ledges, cliffs and narrow walk ways to make its way. To the people watching it seemed like every step it took, it looked like it was going to fall. Yet, the animal still moved with a grace and agility that showed it was more than comfortable walking on the steep terrain.

If this was the only animal interaction we had durring the day it would have been pretty cool. But as usual, business picked up later.

We drove on, and instead of taking the road that would take us to route 90, we stayed on the scenic gravel road through the back end of the Badlands. The scenic gravel road was just that, scenic and gravel and it went on for about 20miles. We passed the ocassional car about once every 10minutes or so, but other than that it was mostly open plains and prairie dogs. Christine finally got her view of a herd of buffalo, off in a distant plain and for me that was good enough. I wanted no part of seeing any buffalo up close after the story Janice had told us last night.
Needless to say, we saw some more buffalo about 10minutes down the road.

When we came upon the herd in the middle of the road, I was scared and ready to turn around. If a buffalo can ruin an RV, imagine what it can do to an Aveo and the people inside. Christine grabbed the camera and said we should trudge forward. There were people on top the hill in cars and they were more or less just driving slowly through the herd, waiting for the buffalo to move around them. Seeing those people go, gave me the courage to go on through as well.

We took video of the herd, but it looks like a cross between a bad animal planet video and the Blair Witch Project. We unfortunately took the video with the regular video camera, so in order to put it up here, we re-taped it off of the video camera screen using the internet camera. It's quite blurry, and may cause you severe dizziness and possibly even nausia.



Now, here are a few pictures that we managed to grab with the cellphone camera, but it really doesn't give justice to how close we were to them, or the sheer size and sounds of these animals.

Needless to say we made it through all of them alive. They actually wound up going toward our car, and up the hill behind us, so we got through them faster than the people at the top of the hill who wound almost traveling with the herd down the road. The disturbing part happened when the buffalo had all but crossed the road and one of cars decided to be cute and honk at the buffalo. The buffalo didn't do anything, but still is there any reason to even risk having one of them charge you?

We eventually got out of the Badlands and continued along another dirt road when we left. Apparently South Dakota isn't big on paving back area roads, and even worse the Garmin is even better at finding them. As we left I saw a sign that said, Route 44, 11miles -->. I glanced at the map and knew that 44 would get us to Mt. Rushmore, but instead I listened to the Garmin.

Remember how in an earlier blog, we showed a picture of the Garmin bringing us into a corn field. Well same thing this time. Only the corn fields do actually have small dirt roads to travel on, so rather than going with what I knew to be true, I listen to the GPS system. After all it's the direction professional.

Disaster. We literaly drove through single lane cornfields for about a half hour. Some of them ended with a sign that read, "Private Property: No Tresspassing", others just ended with no road to follow at all. I think driving through all this dirt, gravel and single lane fields, literlaly took about 2,000miles off the life of the Aveo, who I have a growing respect for on a near hourly basis now. I finally got sick of listening to the Garmin, who gave great directions if I was plowing a field, turned it off and went back the way we came.

We wound up getting to the road that led to Route 44, that we had seen almost 45 minutes ago, as we left the Badlands. Keep in mind this entire road is a dirt road. So even though it has a name and leads to a major road way, we still kicked up dust, dirt and gravel for the entire time we were on it.

This got us to Keystone and where Mt. Rushmore lies. Where we begin the next part of our story.