Notes on a South Dakota trip

South Dakota is usually a drive-through state on my way to Yellowstone, but this year HabMoo, his parents and I made the state a destination. Here are some of my thoughts about the trip.

I’d like to suggest that the state might be a wee bit overly concerned about death and the afterlife. Billboards provide Christian spiritual guidance even though that is not probably where most of us seek out that type of service. How many of us have a Bible there in the front seat of our car where we can immediately refer to chapter and verse? Great anxiety is expressed about the future of any unborn fetuses I may have brought with me. From what I’ve observed of pregnant women, they don’t need reminding that the bun in their oven has a beating heart, they need to know how far it is to the next clean restroom. And then there are the exhortations to “Think!” with the reverse of the sign asking “Why Die?” The loneliness of much of the landscape is enough to encourage contemplation of heavy issues like life and death.

By the way, asking me to “Inspect our restrooms” is not going to get me to stop at your motel. I don’t want to think about checking for hair in the shower drain. I want to think about getting myself clean and sleeping in a comfortable bed. And I’m pretty sure that I’ll never see a buffalo under a palm tree anywhere in the state. So that image just confuses me. I suggest just going with the cowboy theme everyone else uses.

Typos, misspellings and misplaced apostrophes add some character to billboards and signage, making you feel like South Dakotans are just regular down-home folk, but the state park system could really use a proofreader. HabMoo was trying to determine what type of wares we could be peddling in the Black Hills.

Wireless now rules the marketing world. Every hotel and most campgrounds bragged about having it. No one cares about HBO any longer or free local calls. It’s all about being able to check Facebook while you’re getting away from it all.

It’s great to see something other than corn and beans growing in the fields. I enjoyed driving past the sunflowers and sorghum. The fields full of round hay bales started to make me wonder if hay has a herding instinct.

Birding is great in the state. There just aren’t enough trees for the hawks and other raptors to hide in. There are more water birds than you’d expect. We saw herons and coots and yellow-headed blackbirds. Many mountain bluebirds make their homes in Custer State Park. And the meadow larks seem to understand their duty to sit on fence posts for optimal viewing.

The pronghorn antelope, on the other hand, are rather antisocial. If there was only one in sight it had it’s backside towards us. If there was a group of five, then four of them had their butts pointed in our direction. The tourism board should work on this rude behavior.

It’s much easier to spot big horn sheep at Custer than at Yellowstone.

The drinking water at Chamberlain is overly chlorinated. The water at Custer is very tasty. I think they could sell it. Not at Wall Drug, of course, but maybe a little further east.

Am I the only person who thinks that the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse memorials are USA-sized pieces of graffiti? Where else would someone look at the side of a beautiful cliff and think “I could do better” and then get funding to blast away? I really prefer the more limited and personal hubris of John Freemont’s signature in the stone at Pipestone National Monument or all the names at Independence Rock in Wyoming. Crazy Horse didn’t want his photo taken so do you think he wanted his image carved into a mountain? I find it all to be a gross insult to the beauty of the Black Hills.

If you fall on a trail in the Black Hills you might get mica embedded in your hands. This will make them sparkle. It totally makes up for the pain of the scrapes.

After I die, if you feel that you should try traveling to the underworld to plead for my return, I suggest that you begin your search in the Badlands. If any place has an opening to the underworld, it’s this place.

I hate hot weather, but it’s so appropriate in the Badlands that I relish it there. The heat and the wind seem almost nourishing amidst that dry eerie landscape. HabMoo and I once visited after a rainfall and while the moisture made the earthen colors stand out, it just seemed wrong. If I ever take a mud bath, however, I want to take it in that earth.

There are not enough jackalopes in the world.