Murdo to Gillette, WY
Day 3 of Two Dads One Land Yacht
-4:30am Wakeup Call, out the door by 5am
-6:15am Badlands
South Dakota is super boring and flat for hours and hours, and then out of nowhere the Badlands appear. The park consists of these huge mounds that are seemingly made of this clay-mud combo that have been formed by rivers and rain for millions of years. We got to the park right after it had rained, so everything was very slippery and muddy, but still looked really cool.
The spires on the tops of the mounds made it look like we were in mars, and with such a huge park it really did feel like a different planet. At one pull of spot I decided to hike out to the top of one of the spires and check out how it looked. There was about a 200 foot drop on either side of this path that I found, and I somehow convinced Slick Rick to walk out there, despite him being terrified his pic turned out pretty well.
Further along our drive in the park, we came across a decent amount of Mountain Sheep climbing on some of the steeper terrain along the road. These things were not at all intimidated by us, and had no problem with us getting close to take picture. Slick Rick bought some super nerdy weird dad contraption that lets him attach his iPhone to a pair of binoculars to make it a zoom lens. The thing absolutely sucks but he is determined to make it work. Below check out him and his nerd device, and then a pic of a sheep I took with a non-ghetto camera.
-8:15am Leaving The Badlands
As we left the park, we headed out for Mount Rushmore, and Slick Rick assured me that taking the scenic route into the backside of the mountain would be well worth it. He was so right. The road is called the Peter Norbeck Scenic Highway, and it consists of incredibly steep declines, tight turns, U-Turns, tunnels carved into cliffs, cork-screw passes (called pig-tails), and hills approaching 5,700 feet. If you are afraid of heights, or get carsick easily, you would probably pass out from fear on this road. Fitting the Land Yacht through some of these tunnels was a little nerve racking, but totally awesome.
-10:00am Mount Rushmore
Arrived at Mount Rushmore just after a brief rain shower, and made our way up to the observation deck just in time for the sun to peak through and snap a couple of pictures. The detail placed into making these things is pretty incredible, but to be honest I thought they would be a little bit bigger, they don’t seem that big from the ground. After taking some pics we were on our way.
-11:00am Lunch in Keystone SD
This town was a mega tourist trap. Super shady helicopter rides for $49, more t-shirt shops than the Ocean City Boardwalk, and a ton of weird people…
-12:10pm Headed to Crazy Horse Memorial
Slick Rick would like me to take a minute to describe his frustration with the door handle to the passenger side of Land Yacht. The handle is definitely broken, and if you don’t open it from the outside to initially get in the car the right way, you get trapped. This happens all the time to my friends at school when they get in the car, but Slick Rick has trapped himself in the car at least 35 times to this point. I’m basically his butler at this point as I have to walk around the car to open his door to let him out. I claim this is a user error, Land Yacht is perfect.
-12:30pm Rolled up to Crazy Horse Memorial
Basically some dumb old dude decided to build a mega statue of an Indian in the middle of nowhere and refuses to take government funding in order to help him build the thing. The head of the statue is bigger than all 4 heads of Mount Rushmore combined, so hopefully that gives you perspective of how big it is. Slick Rick direct quote: “People need to Wikipedia that Jawn in order to understand what is going on”. So Imma leave it at that.
-1:45pm Sylvan Lake
Super cool lake in the middle of Custer State Park, has a bunch of huge cliffs that surround the lake. Slick claims its the prettiest lake he’s ever seen.
-2:15pm Needles Highway
Took the Needles Highway toward the Custer State Park Wildlife loop. This road is just as crazy as the road to Mount Rushmore, except it’s about 3x as long. Once again if you’re a car sick person you’d probably have a stroke here. Being in South Dakota, the state places signs everywhere people have died on the road, there were a lot on this road. Here’s what the signs look like:
-3:00pm Wildlife Loop
This is a scenic loop inside of Custer State Park designed for people like me and Slick to be super-tourists and drive around and look at cool animals. There were a solid amount of Buffalo, Deer, Prairie Dogs, and even some Elk mixed in there. We saw a couple of herds of Buffalo with some babies, and even got to get super close to one Buffalo that did not give a crap about anything. That dude reminded me of my dog for some reason…
Throughout the park there was a plethora of Prairie dogs, and at one point we found a group of babies, and the mom was standing up chirping at us pissed off that we were close to her kids.
Buffalos and Cows do not smell good. Neither do the farts me and Slick produced after eating way too many Buffalo burgers. At one point I shoved an air freshener into my nose because I thought I was gonna pass out from the smell.
-4:00pm Out Coolidge Lookout
We found some dirt road on the side of the main road leaving Custer State Park and decided to take it. We climbed about 1500 vertical feet, and made it to the top of the mountain stuck in a cloud. Couldn’t see a single thing most of the way up the dirt road with 4,000 foot drop offs on the sides of the road. Got to the top and couldn’t see crap, but peaked at an elevation of 6,020 feet. Land Yacht had no problem going up and down this.
-5:00pm Black Hills Burger
This is the best meal we have eaten so far on the trip. I got a double buffalo burger with bacon and a fried egg on it. Basically a heart attack on a bun, but so worth it. 12/10 would do again.
-5:30pm Headed to Devil’s Tower Wyoming.
There is literally nothing in eastern Wyoming. 80mph on farm roads with nothing but sky and rolling hills. More animals than people.
-7:30pm Devil’s Tower
This tower is basically a 1500 foot tower of hardened magma in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. Apparently it was America’s first National Monument. I thought we were in Africa or something with how big this thing was, and how randomly it appeared out of nowhere. Here are some pics of Slick Rick trying to do tourist poses with it, and one of me up close to it so you can get a gauge of just how massive this thing really is.
-9:30pm Arrived in Gillette Wyoming
This day was long as hell. Slick Rick’s nerd itinerary did not disappoint. We did a good amount of stuff that I didn’t even mention in this blog because we are currently driving into the Rocky Mountains and I’d much rather pay attention to the cool stuff than write more of this blog. So for now that’s all I got. We’re running on RedBull, Coffee, and some trail mix Slick just bought, so wish us luck.
