Day 5 – Wednesday : Big Lake State Park to Badlands (905 km) I have a copy of Lewis and Clark’s journal at home. I can’t profess to recalling much of it, but I do recall one episode. The flogging of a soldier who had fallen asleep on watch. When we pulled into this state part I saw a sign indicating a historic marker. While Sally gets ready in the morning I go for a little walk around the campground, and find the historic marker. I am amazed to find that this site we were camping in is the very place that the one episode from their journal I remember occurred.
Back to I-29 to follow the Missouri north. Before our trip I did ask you guys on RV.net for interesting things to stop by, and one of those suggestions is about to pay off. We don’t have time to visit the Lauritzen Gardens, but we do have time to cross the river and visit the little ornaments on show outside.
Carrying on up I-29 we swap seats to allow Sally to drive for a while through Iowa. It has been a while since she has driven an automatic transmission car any distance. She used to have a Jeep Cherokee, but that was right at the start of the century. Since then she has driven a mile in an E350 van and a few miles back to Silversand’s house outside Montreal in a small Ford class C camper. But with a few reminders about the column gear change, she is perfect. She also manages all the road construction on I-29 through Sioux City – busy merging traffic, narrow lanes, road cones and varying cambers.
Now in South Dakota we turn west at Sioux Falls onto I-90. People had said that South Dakota was boring, but with its spring flowers and gently undulating plains I find it a lovely drive.
The next little stop of the day is to visit Wayne Porter’s sculpture gallery. Wayne’s tremendous welded steel sculptures are clearly visible from I-90, but not actually sign-posted. Off an exit, down a dirt track, and there is Wayne greeting you and talking through his life history.
Tens of tons of steel; many years of construction and a location better than any art gallery – This collection is well worth a visit.
Rather more biological than Wayne’s scuptures:
Chet’s aerofoil claims another victim:
Back on I-90 we cross the Missouri again and head for our first ‘big ticket’ destination – Badlands National Park.
We pick up an America The Beautiful pass (Didn’t they used to be called Golden Eagle passes?) at the entrance gate - $80, but lasts a year for the whole vehicle and occupants – we will more than make our money back on this. I’m thankful to Bryan Appleby (BKA0721) who reminded me to get this pass. It starts saving us money straight away, since we want to stay at the park campground, and we get a 50% discount.
The Badlands Cedar Pass Campground is in a great location, but it doesn’t have nice level individual sites – at least on the loop we are on – just slight pull-outs from the loop road, and in the case of the one we were allocated it sloped in two directions. I keep having to remember to level the camper since it is something I don’t need to worry about much at home, having a compressor fridge.
However, Chet’s absorption fridge works very well through the whole trip, so I must be getting the level right. The laptop computer table he has built between the front seats of the truck is very useful – it is level if the camper is level, so a level placed on there while manoeuvring is a useful guide.
