South Dakota Trip 2013 - Day 6

Breakfast at Tally's again.  Thought about splurging and getting a country fried steak breakfast (something I have never done), but then thought better of it and had a 2 egg breakfast with scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, hash browns.

So happy to have the french toast again

Downtown Rapid City, as seen from the parking garage

As we were getting ready to head out today, Todd spotted this dinosaur on the hill.

Foreshadowing...ooh, fancy!

Today is our last day in the area, so we headed back to Badlands National Park to spend more time there.

This is what the sky looked like on the way there

This is what it would look like later

Our entrance fee was good for seven days, so once we arrived we just had to stop at the entrance booth and flash our tag from earlier in the week.  We decided to skip the first observation area and drove on the next one.

At the second scenic stop there's a planked walkway that takes you around some large formations by the road.  Once you're on the other side you can step off the platform and explore, which we did.  There were warning signs to watch out for snakes, particularly rattlesnakes, take out the litter you carry in, and that it was illegal to remove from the park anything natural you may find like rocks, bones, arrow heads, etc.

I found a really cool complete T-Rex skull with several arrow wounds and a chunk of meteorite embedded in it, but since there was a sign...*sigh*

Like being on another planet

A closer look at the ground

Surface texture detail

2:00pm

2:25pm

Look behind you

The next viewing area we drove to had a long series of steps that led up to a viewing platform, then a path looped back down to the starting point.  We walked up to have a look around, then went back to the car and on to the visitor's center.

Let's climb closer to that sky

Better like this...

...or better like this?

We stopped in the visitor center for a little bit, and I bought a souvenir pencil from a machine for a quarter.  Think of a big restaurant toothpick dispenser with a laundromat washing machine-type coin slot attached to the front.  The pencil would later go on to be given to my niece as part of her high-school graduation presents, but I digress.

Ben Reifel Visitor Center (sign)

After we snacked on some Pringles and bottled water, we headed on to the next stop.

The next stop

This doesn't mean pedestrian crossing - it's a sign to potential hikers to just turn and walk away

Out of frame on the left of the road in the picture above is a parking lot and some more of those raised walkways in an area called the Fossil Exhibit trail.  It's called this because along the walkway are fossil examples on display on the ground that are locked in little boxes under little plexiglass domes.  It takes all of 5-10 minutes to walk around and look at the fossils.  It was neat.

The area actually in the picture above is one end of the Castle Trail; a 10-mile round trip trail that has two other trails that split off of it about halfway through.  The small structure in the picture is a covered map and a little box with a registration pad and pencils (not nice ones like my souvenir pencil, though).  We decided to walk the trail, but only to the split and back which was about a 4-5 mile total hike.

I chuckled as we walked past the map thinking what a weird place it was for a guest book, but hey, whatever.

The path is indicated by navigating between these red markers

And we walked

And we walked some more

And we stopped to take pictures of the flowers

The walk was pretty interesting.  It lead through barren, rocky areas, mixed-grass prairie, marshy areas, crevasses, hills, etc.  But as we walked on and on, and on...and on I wondered if we would ever get to the trail split where we would turn back.  We seemed to have walked forever without reaching it, and the wind was getting stronger, the temperature dropping, and the clouds moving back in.

I was starting to wonder if we had over-extended ourselves and gone too far into the middle of nowhere with bad weather approaching.  Was the split marked somehow?  What if it wasn't?  Had we already passed it and didn't know it?  That's when I understood what the registration book was for - not to say "Hi, we were here and what a lovely park and trails you have.  Thanks bunches!  Todd and Brett from Texas.", but to say "Hi, we were here and we haven't signed back in yet - please don't go home tonight without searching for our bodies and notifying our next of kin.  One of us is wearing a blue shirt with a stripe and the other is wearing a blue paid shirt with a light blue hoodie.  We were both pretty fat when we left, but by the time you find our remains they may have been picked over pretty well by your fascinating wildlife, especially if we were cooked first by lightning.  Thanks bunches!  Formerly Todd and Brett from Texas."

Amazing how I think of the smart things later, when it's too late to do me any good.

Finally, the split

It took an hour of walking to get to our chosen turning point.  It seemed like it was much longer.  We walked up a small rise to take in the view then turned around and headed back.

We were about halfway back when I stopped Todd because of this:

Not a rattlesnake

We would not have seen the snake if it had been in the grass when we first came across it

Almost back to the start

We made it!  The wind was really blowing hard by now, and as we walked across the road back to the car, it started to rain hard.  We rested in the car for a few minutes then continued on the drive through the park.

The Yellow Mounds formations

Technicolor

Will wonders never cease?

All told, we really only explored or drove through the northeastern 1/4 of the Badlands park.  We drove out of the park on highway 240 heading north toward the town of Wall.  

As we neared Wall, the weather worsened.

Cold, wind and pouring rain

Now we have to talk about Wall Drug, the major attraction in Wall, South Dakota.  There are signs for it all over the place, and according to them it is a "world-famous" roadside destination.  I had heard about it several years ago as one of those summer fluff pieces on some travel show - something to do with about how they first started attracting travelers by offering free ice water back in the days when ice water was hard to come by on the road.  Or something.  The big draw now apparently is five cent cups of coffee and all the tacky kitsch you could ever want.

Wall is just a little hole in the wall town off I-90.  Once you exit the highway you drive down the main road through town and follow the signs that eventually point you off the main road and into what looks like a small warehouse district.  After a couple of turns you end up on a street lined with wooden-facade buildings like in an old west town which are occupied by souvenir shop (t-shirts, 3 for $10!), "casinos", and other must-see attractions.  We did not must-see any of them.

The rain was pouring down, so we found a parking spot near the entrance to Wall Drug and ran in.  It was what I expected it to be, and not what I expected at all.  I expected it to be full of crap, and it was.  I did not expect it look like an indoor town made of a maze of narrow cobbled streets with different themed storefronts opening up on each side:  the candy store, the toy store, the Native American pottery store, the velvet painting store, the stuffed animal store - not like toys, like creepy stuffed animals, the western art store, the everything 'Footprints in the Sand" store, etc.  (Ok, so I made a couple of those up - there was not an entire store dedicated to creepy stuffed animals.  They were equally spread around all over the place.)

NOTE:  Foreshadowing loop closing ahead.

Then at the end of a hallway in the back there was this:

ROAR *cough, ack, wheeze*
The world famous Wall Drug animatronic dinosaur was Out of Order and didn't do anything.
Which was ok, because the animatronic mining gophers at the other end of the hallway were continuously yacking it up and causing a TNT explosion every couple of minutes that would fill the whole area repeatedly with smoke.

Giving Macy's windows a run for their money, these were the displays that we passed when going back to the car:

The most frightening thing I've seen on this trip, but I do like the much more casual look from the knees down.
Funny, for some reason when I see this picture I always hear Tequila by The Champs playing and picture Pee Wee Herman dancing.*  Nope, wait, I was wrong...

...this is the most frightening thing I've seen on this trip

After the random, crazy letdown of Wall Drug, we drove back to Rapid City for dinner.  We wanted to stick with something familiar, so we decided to go to Texas Roadhouse which was located next to the Red Lobster we ate at when we first arrived.

I have never seen a Texas Roadhouse as packed and rockin' as the one in Rapid City!  Every table was full and the place was hopping.  It was unbelievable.  I told Todd it was like that scene in Aliens; that we had found all the colonists.

We split an appetizer of cheese fries - huge steak fries covered in melted cheddar and bacon.  It's ok, we had worked up an appetite.  Then I had the New York Strip steak cooked medium-well, a house salad with blue cheese dressing, and a baked potato with butter only.  It was all very, very good on a cold, wet night after the long day.

We stopped at the nearby Books-A-Million bookstore after dinner.  I was looking for the new Penny Arcade collection, but no luck.  Guess I'll just have to get it online.  Instead, they had a pretty good little selection of designer vinyl and art toys, so I picked up a foldable wooden Cubebot as a souvenir.

"Wonder Twin powers activate!  Form of a...cube!"

I realized once we were back at the hotel that I hadn't taken any pictures of our room at the Alex Johnson, so I took some (duh).

*Other possible captions - what's your favorite?:

...when I see this picture I hear Patti Page singing (How much is) That Monster in the Window?
Dear Todd...  (get it?  deer/Todd...)
What the Boy Scouts will be allowing into their troops next
Apparently hunting season is open in Narnia