Last I left you I was in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I did an eight mile hike that day, walking through a herd of cattle which included a bull. Kept a friendly chatter as the cows skittishly moved away and the bull watched. All good. Had a slightly more dramatic encounter with a large herd of buffalo the next day. I tried to bike the 34 mile loop of the South Unit, but the buffalo were in the road at mile 24. They were in no hurry and in fact were coming toward me. They seemed amiable enough and I briefly had the thought to ride through them, but immediately began hearing the song, “Dumb Ways to Die” in my head. I kept backing up, hoping they’d move off into the hills. An older couple came by in their vintage 1987 VW bus and I begged a ride back to the campground. It was a little nerve-wracking as the buffalo were coming ever closer while I was trying to remove the front wheel to be able to fit into the van. On the way back I told them I was headed to South Dakota next, and one just said, “Sturgis”. I was like, “What? Fish?” and I learned it was a big motorcycle rally and thought no more about it.
The next day I was going down an extremely remote road, so much so I was worried I might not see a gas station in 50 miles, when I fell right into Sturgis. All of a sudden there were thousands of bikers; beards, bandannas, bellies, beer, tattoos, leather, I’ll stop there. They were all just arriving. None had been coming from North Dakota, though… The next two days motorcycles have been ubiquitous everywhere.
I stopped by Devil’s Tower for the night. The next day I saw the Tower, Jewel Cave, Wind Cave (but couldn’t go inside either because the tours were too long of a wait), Crazy Horse Monument and Mt Rushmore. (I’d like to retract my retraction; as I originally said, the Native American viewpoint of Mt Rushmore is primarily that of a desecration of the mountain known as The Six Grandmothers. After Trump spoke there in 2020 and said how great colonization was, things have been especially bad.)
Lincoln I got nothing, but the other three, from left: Woody Harelson, John Lennon and Harrison Ford. Thoughts?
The following day I did a long loop to drive through Badlands National Park, down through the Pine Ridge Reservation to Wounded Knee and back.
The Badlands are like the Grand Canyon, but soft. The “rock” is really just compressed sand, and the fact that they’re still there millions of years later shows how little rain it gets. It was harshly beautiful.
It was a long drive through the reservation, and it was apparent how economically depressed it is. There are signs of empowerment, however. Lakota language is being taught in the schools, and the White River Visitors Center had lots of good info.
Wounded Knee was just strange for me. I really wanted to go, to “pay my respects”, to learn. It’s not a National monument, there’s no typical historical marker issued by the state, there’s a neglected cemetery on the hill where the bodies were buried in a mass grave, and a little stone marker in the middle with names of some of the victims. The whole place had the feel of being forgotten. It didn’t feel right to photograph the cemetery but here is the marker that was there. You can see something else had been written, then covered and replaced.
The next day I had another long drive to Colorado. I’ll be here till the wedding on the 23rd, then driving to Seattle to take a plane to Juneau to take a little cruise boat September 3rd-15th down the Inside Passage of Alaska back to Seattle.
Here are some random historical markers from the last several days.
