We are heading to one of our favorite boondocking spots just outside of the Badlands National Park. The diversity of the terrain is part of the reason we like it here.
The badlands are mostly barren, with a lot of clay and not a lot of “dirt” for plants to grow. The beauty lies in the colors and shapes of eroded rock.
Surrounding the badlands is the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, which has lush, green grass that grows to about waist high or more. Think of little Laura from “Little House on the Prairie” running down the hill in the tall grass. Right now the grass and flowers are about mid-calf in height.
Ever since we passed through the Fort Collins, Colorado area we have been infested with army cutworm moths, or miller moths. Thankfully, they are just resting and pollinating flowers at this time of year. The only way to get rid of them is to kill the moths as you find them in your home. We’ve killed a hundred so far, I’m sure. The nice / funny thing is every time we move you can see bunches of them flying off of the RV as we roll down the highway. When we start the Jeep they fly out of it in small swarms.
The cacti are beginning to bloom along with the other grassland and desert flowers. The air is sweet with the scent of yellow sweet clover, a scent similar to a mixture of hay and vanilla. Below is a type of plains prickly pear. I like to make prickly pear jelly in the early fall when the ruby-red fruit appears.
John’s favorite activity to do in the grasslands is shoot prairie dogs. He found a good spot and set up his tools of destruction and mayhem in preparation to do his part in population control. According to locals, the attempt to reintroduce the black-foot ferret, the dogs natural predator, has not gone as well as hoped. Not to worry, there are many hunters willing to step up and help. The whitish spots are the prairie dog holes. Little burrowing owls wait near by to swoop in and feast on the prairie dog carnage and then take over the hole for their den. Circle of life.
Rockhounding around this area is the best but the traffic jams are terrible. Every 5 to 10 miles you have to stop for slow moving cross traffic. We don’t know how the people who live here deal with all of this.
The collecting area for rocks are plentiful to the point of being overwhelming. They stretch for miles in all directions.
There aren’t a lot of hills so the collecting is easy on the legs. We see one large group of rock hunters and an elderly couple but that is it. There are so many places to hunt that you can really social distance.
We make quite a haul in our short time. We found bottle stopper size, pendant size, and plenty of bubblegum agate.
John found the prize rock this time. The pink and brown stripped rock center-bottom of the picture.
We are much pickier this time about what we collect. Our first time here we picked up EVERYTHING and ended up with a lot of “junk rocks.” This time we have been much choosier and have found some really nice rocks and pieces of petrified wood.
I like the colors, the grain, and the different shapes of the wood. Once cleaned they look lovely just sitting on a shelf, desk, or side table.
I thought I had a picture of this abandoned car in this ditch from one of our first trips here but I couldn’t find it. It is almost barely visible now. It hasn’t really rusted and rotted away so much as it has filled with dirt, and grass is growing over top. Maybe it will be completely covered by our next trip here.
John and I noticed a bunch of bee keepers and their hive boxes driving around and setting things up. Oh how cool. Yeah, well, it was cool until one of the queens decided to make our home her home. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone to come and get the small hive so I had to kill the small band of rouge honey bees.
The heat and humidity are rising daily and producing some interesting thunderstorms. Without hills and trees in the way you can watch the different storms as they form and disappear for miles. We are glad this isn’t centered over us. The lightning never seems to stop. Besides, it looks suspiciously like a tornado. No spinning though.
Two days after that thunderstorm passed through another one hit. We knew we were in for a rough ride when we saw this cloud-wall coming at us.
The last time we saw a cloud similar to this was during our first year out. We were sitting in the parking lot of HWH in Moscow, IA waiting to get our leveling system serviced. That storm produced tornadoes in the town about five miles away.
Here it comes. Imagine, the wind is roaring like a freight train; no kidding, that is what it sounds like. The wind is gusting much harder than the 65 mph winds we went through in New Mexico, and hitting us broadside. It is so loud we are almost shouting at each other to be heard! The coach is rocking and pitching side-to-side violently. The slide toppers are whipping and sound like someone shaking a metal can with metal balls inside adding to the noise! We end up pulling the slides in. The rain is coming down completely sideways, battering the coach on one side. Wind is blowing so hard that it is forcing the rain into the coach around the slides! Now we are throwing down towels to sop up the flood. It felt like it lasted for hours but was probably only about 15 minutes. As fast as it appeared, it was gone.
Even John admitted he was worried that we might get blown over. I’m ALWAYS worried. If we were a lighter rig, we are sure we would have gone over.
We hear sirens in the distance. Highway 90 runs close by and we see tractor trailers traversing it all the time. We find out later that three tractor trailers were blown over when the sudden storm appeared. See John? My fears are well supported.
After a good rain storm it is good to go looking for rocks. We are still trying to find another dinosaur fossil but we have no luck.
Before we get any farther away, we make a trip to Wall, SD to visit Wall Drug Store. We buy ice cream and walk through the shops enjoying the cool air-conditioning.
Tomorrow, we are moving to a campground where I can have my own air-conditioning without having to run the generator. A few days after that we are heading for Sioux Falls, SD in preparation for our trip to Alaska.
