There was a tornado warning for this area last night, ending at 11 PM. We saw lots of lightning off to the west, but no storm action where we are, Badlands Ranch and Resort. The name BRR sounds considerably more grandiose than it actually is - which is a bit tacky and haphazardly managed. On the plus side, it has grass, trees, full hookups, wifi and a very good price so we're not complaining.
Lot's of readers have stopped at the famous Wall Drug I'm sure. It advertises with hundreds of signs along the roads as you approach Wall, SD. And we are no exception; we stopped there for a while, took some pix. Dave & Verna stopped there also. We saw their motorhome in the parking lot and then found them in the store. See pix of gang with various Wall Drug residents. Verna was taking pix with her Droid, so avoided being in a picture herself - a temporary situation I assure you.
D&V are now parked beside us at the BBR. They served up a great dinner of buffalo burgers, beans and salad last night; our turn tonight and it's going to be salmon.
Dave and I met in the summer of '64 when we were working in the Forest Service in the Clearwater NF in northern Idaho. Lots of college guys from all over the country worked for the FS in those days, trying to slow the spread of blister rust, fighting forest fires, and so on.
The Badlands entry road is under construction, has 5 miles of bumps and washboard dirt to cover, one way traffic and many delays. Murphy's Law: we'd done a thorough cleaning of both rigs not 2 hours before we hit the cruddy road.
Today, we're doing the Badlands Loop Road, stopping at the many overlooks to view the Baddest of the Bad. I'm hoping to see Rocky Raccoon along the way, assuming he survived his wounds.
Other pix above include CO mountains approaching Denver and typical southeastern WY landscape.
I had to Google maps to see exactly the locales of Wall and Badlands. Badlands is apparently anything else in SD outside of Rapid City. Most of SD appears to be nat'l parks.
ReplyDeleteI never made it east of Rapid City on my excursion to hug my daughter at "summer science camp". I drove straight thru from Portland, got some hugs, and drove straight back round trip 4 days. Crazy. (Daughter-in-law Lisa went with me.) And in that time we managed to drive to Rushmore and go thru the 'Eye of the Needle" where my car got stuck with vapor lock.
A guy in Hill City wanted to replace the transmission for me but we chanced driving it home--turns out it was a small split in a hose. Tape worked fine!!
So, I never made it to Wall. Glad to see the pix, but do you have any of the insides of the store? That's what gets a girl's heart beating, you know.
I did notice Patti's eyes are keeping a close look on the bunny to see that there's no funny stuff...