View Older Posts

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Day 10

Day 10: 5/27/15 (Medora, ND to Cody, WY via Keystone, Rapid City, and Wall, SD)
835 miles

Sorry about the delay everyone.  There isn’t really any service in Yellowstone (weird) so we’re playing catch up for the last few days! 

This morning we were up, bright and early, at 6am to start packing up the tent and getting on the road.  We were off by 7am towards Mount Rushmore for a quick pit stop.  It was about a 4 hour drive consisting of open land and cows.  When we crossed over into South Dakota the scenery included rolling hills and rocky/clay mountains which was much more interesting than North Dakota which just seemed perpetually flat.  The one thing both states lacked though was trees.  You don’t really notice it at first, but after hundreds and hundreds of miles you realize what’s missing.  South Dakota was also exciting because we were introduced to a new animal and 80 mph speed limits! We believe the animal was the pronghorn which is kind of like a deer-antelope-looking thing.


While on the road to Rushmore, our lives flashed before our eyes.  We watched a deer come sprinting out from the side of the road, across our highway, into the next, and directly into an SUV.  We couldn’t have been more thankful that we were far enough back on the highway to see him jump out so we could slow down.  It was a really open highway so we figured cars on the other side could see the deer as well, but maybe we should have honked.  The rest of the day we just kept thinking how lucky we were.  After shaking off all our jitters, we finally reached Mount Rushmore around 11:30am to take a few quick photos.  We actually didn’t even get into the park because we had to make it back to the city for our car appointment.  Jillian’s maintenance warranty requires service appointments every 5,000 miles so we had to take it in.  It had just started down pouring when we got there anyways, so we don’t think we were missing much.  At the dealership we were excited to have wifi so we could catch up on emails and post on our blog – Facebook doesn’t reveal anything too new or exciting that we’ve been missing! 

From Rapid City, it was a relatively short drive to the Badlands National Park.  It was neat to have the opportunity to compare North Dakota to South Dakota National Parks.  The two were fairly similar – ND’s driving route seemed to loop around while in SD you could drive through some of the parts.  We saw buffalo only while in ND and we saw bighorn sheep only while in SD.  Overall we think there are some better views driving through the Badlands, but the Theodore Roosevelt Park is also worth a visit.  Upon entering the Badlands we caught a view of several of the sheep.  The animals were fairly docile so we were able to get pretty close to them which contrasts with the way we had to act around the buffalo – whispering and rolling along slowly in the car.  





We stopped at nearly every view point / look out along the route to take in everything the Badlands had to offer.  At one of the look outs over the prairie dog lands we watched as a couple became fast friends with one certain prairie dog.  He kept inching closer and closer to them, but finally got spooked.  Then when the couple got in their car, the prairie dog ran back out of his hole and came to the side of the road watching sadly as his new friends left.  One of the other stops we made, we became heroes!  We were leaving as a guy was getting out of his car to check out the view, and all of a sudden Jillian yelped “Oh my God” and ran out of the car.  Rico was soon to follow as he realized Jillian was chasing around dollar bills.  We were pretty sure we snagged everything (which was like 50 bucks!) and returned it to the guy.  Dude is in serious need of a wallet.  On our way out of the park we stopped at a gift shop and picked up a small ceramic piece as a memento.  We also found a penny crunching machine (for Jillian’s mom), but it was out of order – so disappointing.  Jillian was about to shove a penny in there to see what would happen, but Rico stopped her.



From the Badlands we headed back on I-90W for a few hundred miles to try and get ourselves closer to Yellowstone National Park, our next destination.  We were looking at about 550 miles and 8 ½ hours of driving while lasting on double Emergen-C drinks and peanut butter and fluff sandwiches.  Rico was a champ and drove for about 5 hours even through off and on storms.  Jillian took over right before we exited off I-90 and headed down a back road towards Yellowstone.  The route went through Big Horn National Forest which was a winding road up and over a mountain that was chalk full of deer.  We had to have seen over 30 deer while driving – now that will keep you awake!  A whole heard actually crossed the road right in front of us at one point, and not too much later there was a huge buck temporarily blocking our way.  Other than that, the deer were just taunting us from the sides of the road, but after our experience earlier in the day we kept one eye on the road and one eye on the deer at all times.  Between the deer and the curves, that drive was exhausting.  Rico had to take over again and he got us all the way to a Walmart in Cody, WY where we rested for the night (so cold!)
Fact:
 Witnessing a suicidal deer run across the highway is extremely traumatic

Lesson:
A 5 ½ hour drive late at night through the mountains is not fun and requires a great deal of attention


Eat Well; Travel Often
Rico & Jillian

No comments:

Post a Comment