Unfamiliar Landscapes

August 10 - August 15, 2002

I think in landscapes we are often fascinated by the unfamiliar. When I took geology classes in college, I remember learning about the fjords, the mountains, and the glaciers and thinking yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen all that. However, when I saw a picture of badlands topography, I sat up and started being fascinated. We didn't have anything like that in Alaska! It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Badlands topography is high plains cut away by erosion, leaving canyons and very funky peaks and hanging rocks. They erode into what basically looks like a crumpled up newspaper of land. They got their name from either fur traders or Native Americans describing them as "bad lands to cross." I can't even imagine riding along on my horse across the plains of Minnesota and South Dakota and getting to these things - first of all, they just sort of appear in the plains then you'd have to figure out how to get around or across them. If you tried the old "follow the river bed" trick, you'd be in more trouble, a river bed curves crazily and the landscape is so dry that the "river" will almost certainly end in a hole with steep-sided erosion grades, not get you over a low pass.

I had always been enthralled with badlands, so when we were planning our trip - the South Dakota Badlands National Park was one of first pushpins into our map. They put the capital B in badlands topography (anything else referred to as badlands should be with a little b). Although the park did live up to all of my expectations for being a beautiful, yet bizarre landscape, it wasn't a landscape that called for me to spend a lot of time in it. However, this might have something to do with the heat. I proved today that I melt in heat. When I saw that it was 94 degrees and 10 AM, I immediately went to the freezer and got out what David calls my polar teddy bear. I simply hug an ice pack while we drive. I sit on it, put it behind my neck, on top of my head, on my feet. I just keep moving it until it loses its cold and then I go get another one. Having a freezer 5 feet away is a good thing for me.

David and I have been going to quite a few Ranger Programs at the National Parks we have stayed at. I have enjoyed them more than David has. There is something about learning through a presentation at an outdoor amphitheater at night from someone that is supposedly an expert that brings back summer-camp for me. I just find them very quaint and entertaining, rather like an old time radio show. David is right in that instead of being quaint, at their worst, the programs often just end up being lame - with the ranger not sure whether to direct his/her conversation to the adults or the kids in the audience and often flailing at an in-between audience that satisfies no one. [Note from David: actually, at their very worst they try to be edu-tainment aimed at the lowest common denominator - the 6-year-olds in attendance. Think of Sesame Street with the only actor being a kid from high school who really liked science - and no Muppets.] Anyway, at Badlands they had the typical ranger program (whose topic even sounded lame to me - David is a bad influence) and then they had something called a Night Prowl at 9:30 PM, where you walk with a Ranger to a natural amphitheater and talk about the stars - this appealed to both me and David. Turns out that the Badlands are also great for star gazing because they are so far way from any light pollution from urban areas. This program was awesome - the group walked for just 1/3 of a mile out behind a butte that shielded us from the campground lights, everybody sat / laid on the ground, turned out their flashlights, and the ranger told us Lakota Indian stories about the constellations. The sky was so beautiful, billions of stars, the Milky Way, a fair number of shooting stars (thanks Perseids), and some guy telling sweet bedtime stories in the dark. David and I enjoyed the place so much that we actually hung out there for another 1/2 hour after everyone left just soaking it all in.

When we got back to Tiny and got ready for bed, I kept thinking to myself, "Betsy, you melt in the heat. Your only chance to hike in this area is to get up really early and go on the hike the ranger recommended." Getting up early has not been on the agenda lately, so I needed to really drill this into my own head before going to sleep. The alarm went off, I popped out of bed, walked the pup, and we were off (dragging David behind me). I have attached some of the cooler pictures of the area for your perusal. I'm not sure we captured the red lines in the hills, or the sheer crumpled-up-ness of it all, but I hope you get an idea.

The last few weeks have been great fun, but our travelogues have been a little absent. We will try to put shots up on the web site at ptak.org (which has been resurrected now, just not updated). Recent oddities have included the Mitchell Corn Palace - an entire building with the outside decorated with corn (redone every year), Rushmore, Crazy Horse (wow), Sturgis Motorcycle Rally (loud) and the obligatory trip to Wall Drug and those were just in the past three days! We are headed into Minneapolis tomorrow for an extended Minnesota stay (David's brother's cabin up at the lake, city stuff, and then a wedding picnic for David's extended family and Minneapolis friends).

Hope you are all well!

Betsy, David, and Pluto

[Note from David: I'd like to add as a final note that I really appreciate Betsy sending out the various e-mails to this list so far. I promise to get on the ball and pull my own weight here as well. More from me in time…]

Pictures of the recent oddities:

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was pretty unbelievable. David summed it up when he said, "it's a big state fair for bikers only." Imagine 250,000 Harleys descending upon a town of about 5000 in South Dakota. The town has been "putting on" this rally for 62 years! In its heyday this was gangs, drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. It is now mostly 60 year olds with Rolex watches and long beards trying to look tough or relive their tough years. We ran into bikers wherever we went, but they were almost always pleasant and friendly. Their bikes were just obnoxious, however (sorry Dusty). The Sturgis main street had bikes for as far as the eye could see. These three shots were captured on a Saturday afternoon. They kind of summed it all up for me.

Crazy Horse is a monument near Mount Rushmore that was started by a good Polish guy in 1942. The Lakota Indians asked him to create a monument - somewhat in response to Mount Rushmore - showing that Native Americans had heroes, too. This lone Polish guy decided to create a huge carving of Crazy Horse with no government funding and, in the beginning, no help. It is an inspiration to see one man's determination and passion. No, it’s not done yet and it may never be done (but hey, Mount Rushmore was never finished either - it was supposed to be busts down to the waists). The sculptor died in the 1980s, but his family has continued his dream. The scale is enormous and not capturable on film, but as a small statistic, Mount Rushmore would easily fit on just Crazy Horse's face/hair and the hole under Crazy Horse's arm is tall enough for a 20-story building. In a word: big. The picture below shows a 15 foot, 1/32 scale model of the goal - with the actual mountain in the background. I hope to see it again in 20 years to see the progress.

Yes, we went to Mount Rushmore, but I like this picture from the Mitchell, South Dakota Corn Palace to show that we were there! This is an inside mural at the Corn Palace and all of those lines are ears of corn. Yes, corn.