Day 6 – Thursday : Badlands to Crazy Horse (200 km) Despite being quite a closely packed campground with no barriers to noise, we have no problem with noise or smoke which you might worry about in such a place. A load of the people camping went over to the other side of the campground in the evening for some Ranger talks.
Walking around the campground early morning it is nice knowing the days of big miles are pretty much behind us as we have crossed roughly half the country in 3 days.
Having not been camping in the US for a couple of years, this campground reveals a noticeable change in RVs – the demise of the American base vehicles. In the past you could feel you were in America because of the American vans. Now, apart from Chet’s distinctively American 3500 DRW + Lance, the campground seems to be dominated by European-designed vans. Ford Transits, Ford Transit Connect (the little ones), Mercedes Sprinters, Fiat Ducato, Fiat Doblo (the little ones). The last two have Dodge RAM badges, but make no mistake, they are Fiats. These vans all have diesel engines in Europe, but I imagine to reduce costs they are probably offered with gasoline engines in the US. I do notice a Mercedes Sprinter with a 3.0 diesel.
However, this Transit is definitely not a US-sourced one. The plates are German:
This does underline one major difference I noticed between my own little Ford 2.5 TDCi Diesel truck at home and Chet’s 6.6 Duratec GMC – the noise. We had become used to this over the last thousand or so miles, but it is still incredibly noisy when you apply much throttle. Inspecting under the hood shows very little sound insulation on the GMC – it clearly wasn’t a major design concern. But for a vehicle with heated leather seats, cruise control, climate, etc. having such an agriculturally noisy engine just doesn’t seem to match. In fact, during the trip I notice how incredibly noisy US vehicles are in general. When you stand by the side of the road so many are so noisy. At home we live a few hundred yards from a 6-lane highway – I can hear the tire noise from the heavy traffic doing 70 mph on the asphalt, but no engine or exhaust noise. In the US this seems very different. I had also considered this while sat in my little Ford Fiesta on a 12-lane section of the M25 London orbital motorway. Next to me big rigs purred along and were hardly audible through the window glass. Why a 450 HP rig in the US seems to produce twice as much noise as a 450 HP rig in Europe must be purely down to having to comply with noise regulations in one market and not in another.
We leave the campground early to go for a hike in the Badlands. The temperature is rising, so we are keen to get going before it gets too sweaty. We don’t see many people on the hike.
The colours are wonderful driving around the Badlands, and not least the colours of the grass – still being spring it is every shade imaginable. Having the plateau and planes below in ranges of greens and yellows really makes the rock stand out and gives everywhere a fresh look which I suspect will make way to more of a dusty parched look by August.
Ahead I can see a dirt road. I had not expected to take this because I did not know the state of it, but on closer inspection I can see it is wide and flat and both regular family cars and motorbikes are using it. Again, the contrast between the colour of the road, sky and grass is striking.
Most tourists head north from this dirt road, or simply turn around back to the asphalt, but we are heading on to the west, so stick with it, allowing us to experience some of the wildlife in the park.
These (swallows?) have nested under the bridge, and they continuously circle the bridge, performing a vertical loop.
Now, many of you know I like 4-wheeling and am really interested in vehicles (a vehicle-geek I guess), so I was keen to learn what the 4x4 system was on the Duratec / Allison GMC 3500. Chet’s response had been “you won’t need it, there is so much weight over the rear wheels”. Of course, Chet has seen my trip reports from Africa and my 4-wheeling pictures from back home, Australia and the Middle East. I suspect he was slightly worried I would try to emulate Jefe4x4 and Whazoo and do some 4x4 trails. I wouldn’t do that though. But Chet was definitely concerned that he had never used the 4x4 system and something might go wrong if engaged. I guess it is a part-time system, and since it is warm and dry and I am on a gravel road, I decide to test it – it engages and disengages perfectly and I run in it for a couple of miles – it all seems fine.
We can’t do this area without stopping in at Mount Rushmore. It is very developed as a tourist destination with the toll-booth entry stations, multi-storey car park, etc. We are directed to an area for small RVs. Chet’s camper certainly wouldn’t fall into that category in Europe.
It is really just a short stop – take the required photographs, have a quick look around the museum, buy a fridge magnet, consider buying an ice-cream, then see the queue and give up.
From there it is a short hop down to Crazy Horse. Wow, that’s a big project. I am amazed by the size of the whole complex. I wasn’t aware of the plans to develop a large educational institute there.
We take one of their old school buses for a tour around the bottom of the memorial.
When you see the machines working on Crazy Horse’s hand you can better appreciate the scale of the work.
Heading for Crazy Horse we had passed the Oreville campground in the Black Hills National Forest. So I take the easy option and head back there. I thought it would be cheap, but it is $20 (without hook-up and fairly close to a noisy highway). But I guess it is in between two major tourist attractions. We get a great site though.
Back at Oak Ridge Chet had pointed out to me where the floor of the cabover was starting to split away from the side wall. He had taped it with aluminium tape and had thrown a roll of the same into the camper for further repairs. Inspection shows the cracking is spreading, so I do some more taping.
