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:
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
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