Minnesota to Badlands

After a tough weather night where I did not get much sleep and my tent betrayed me, broken bows, I have been the upmost of cranky, thank god I am alone. I have made the tent work but it is sagging a little and might have to get a new one, more convential, or, like I am doing tomorrow sleeping in Koa's little cabins, for only 13 dollars more!

So when I left Minnesota I was in a fowl mood, dirty, wet, tired, frustrated from fixing a 250 dollar tent with 4 days of use, but I hit the road to get to Badlands SD. The lushness of Minnesota and Wisconsin gave way to a tanner dryer landscape. I think the Missouri River is the dividing line with topography. Everything west looks like hay growing on the moon. The isolation of the farms is a little scary. At first it was comical, but when I turned off the music and just looked 40 miles in each direction of the high plain of South Dakota, spotting oasis after oasis of feed silos, and farm equipment, I really wondered what the people do around here? Gone were the mega exits with Taco bells and walmarts, now it is just a gas station and a feed store. Where do they go? What did they think of "the Hangover" did they think it wasnt as funny as everyone said? Did they know we elected a black president?! The outcroppings of habitation looked like the desolate tribes of the Amazon, with no human contact for years.

And then bam!! badlands, a totally foreign look that came out of a true moon landscape. It looks like a cave with no roof. Spires and rock formations that are so cool, colorful and strange compared to the 1500 miles before it. Truely amazing. enjoy the pics, tomorrow is Mt Rushmore, Deadwood, and a well deserved 10x8 log cabin roof over my head.