West Trip Day 2 - Iowa City, IA to Rapid City, SD

    We awoke in Iowa City, IA at 6:45 am and had a small continental breakfast. Taking our places in the vehicle, we began driving for the day. Made it to Interstate 29 from Interstate 80 and headed north to intersect with route 90, ultimately bringing us into South Dakota. Along the way, we noticed an abundance of farm-land. Particularily, there were wind farms and numerous gigantic wind-mills filling the sky. So right on cue, we started experiencing high wind gusts. There was a speed limit of 75 on route 90, which was quite nice, however, due to the winds, we could not go much faster than that. Prior to leaving for the trip we decided to invest in a Thule cargo carrier. It fit perfectly on the Xterra, without any modifications. The only disadvantage was that the vehicle lost some of its aerodynamic properties.
     Continuing on, we were quite ahead of our schedule and the time allotted for each section of the trip . We decided we had plenty of time to visit Badlands National Park. Since this was sort of an off the cuff decision, we really had no clue what Badlands was, or what we should see and experience there. Heather was able to search out and find basic park information using the online capabilities of the Droid-X. Purchasing a new smartphone prior to the trip was really working out to be a great descision.
    We made it to the Badlands Park loop road around 5:30 pm. On the way, we saw various signs for a Prairie Dog ranch store. We decided to go and see what it was all about. Pulling into the parking lot there was a large effigy of a Prairie Dog. We went into the store, and each bought a bag of peanuts for 50 cents each. We then went into an open field near the store and fed them, throwing peanuts into their holes in the ground. They were funny little buggers. Standing and staring curiously at us, playing with each other, and just doing what prairie dogs do.
    After being entertained by the prairie dogs we continued onto the park entrance and used our America the Beautiful pass for the first time. I had purchased this pass a few months prior and for $80, this would allow us entry into all the parks. I would highly recommend anyone visiting a couple of parks to purchase one of these passes. It is good for a year, and could end up saving you quite a bit of money.

    We pulled into the first parking lot, and went to the first overlook, and were blown away by the rock pinnacles and spires before us. George Armstrong Custer called this area “Hell without the fire”. The area boasts a large number of fossils and they were on display in a few areas of the park. The heat was something that we would have to get used to. This was not like the heat you feel out East, when the air is soupy and heavy. This was more like what I think an oven would feel like. Dry and uncomfortable, but somehow, tolerable. While we were viewing the area there was a teenage kid that was climbing all over the rock structures, waiting for his parents to take pictures. He was climbing on the edge of 200 to 300 foot drop-offs. They said nothing to him, almost encouraging him to go closer to the eroding edge. I had the camera all ready to get my 15 minutes of fame, had the kid inevitably slipped and fell into the canyon. Some people are entertaining, and stupid.
      We moved to a couple of spots where they had overlooks of the rock structures, specifically called, the door and window overlooks. We did a bit of scrambling around, and some of it was a bit precarious. Not having the proper footwear on to walk on the loose sandstone we decided to lace up our boots and really get a feel for the terrain.

    After hiking off-trail, we were hot and tired and decided to see the rest of the park from the vehicle. We continued the beautiful drive along the park loop road until it connected back to interstate 90.  Badlands is just a surreal place, probably as close to being on the moon as you can get.
    Earlier in the day during the drive along I90 we saw billboards for "Wall Drug" for at least 400 miles. The loop road for Badlands actually ended right in the small town of Wall. We had to check this place out. It was a huge mix of stores all built into a giant building with fake streets inside. Heather bought a really cute cowgirl hat. There was an obvious western feel to the whole place. The whole area felt like we were in an old western movie.
     It was late in the day, around 8:30, and we had around 55 miles left to Rapid City South Dakota. We felt this would leave us in a great position to head to Mt. Rushmore in the morning and continue onto Cody Wyoming. We made it to Rapid City, quite exhausted from a long, productive day, found a Howard Johnson,  and crashed for the night.