Rounding Out Our Great Plains Adventure: OLA

a covered bridge from the 'Bridges of Madison County' in Winterset, Iowa

We were fearful for the next day when we had to cross the Midwest (the breadbasket of the US where the land is very fertile, ideal for oats, wheat, and corn. Central Luzon, the rice granary of the Philippines seems like a speck against these vast green and amber waves of grain, the graceful grain terraces, and the wind turbines that power them). There had been so much swelling of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers due to early melts, we didn’t know what to expect, and we had heard about the devastation.

grains terraces on the Great Plains

The Great Plains is that section of the Midwest that is the most flat, covering the states of North and South Dakota (except for the Black Hils), Nebraska, and Kansas. Often described as having the most homogeneous (and monotonous) topography of any part of the US, the region experiences the greatest extremes in temperature and climatic conditions. Winters are cold, with frequent snowy blizzards, while summers bring hot, dry winds. Before we left the eastern part of South Dakota, it was over 100 degrees!

wind turbines at dusk

The Great Plains also experience more tornadoes (remember Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz?) than any other region. Joplin, Missouri, close to the southeastern tip of Kansas was most recently devastated by a killer tornado. When the region was first being settled in the late 1800s, periods of good rainfall attracted a large numbers of settlers. Then several years of drought that turned fields into dry wastelands, discouraged them. The worst dust bowls occurred in the depression years of the 1930s.

the Corn Palace at Mitchell

It is only fitting that a proud testament to the hardworking people stands in Mitchell, South Dakota. The world’s only Corn Palace was started in 1882 and is rebuilt annually from 275,000 ears of corn at a cost of $130,000. Using 12 different colors of corn and trimmed by grass, rye, wheat, etc., an artist’s design is executed on a building shell. This year the design theme is called ‘American Pride.’ In Sioux Falls, the Missouri River is broken by pink granite rocks that create a pretty system of little waterfalls. 

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Sioux Falls in the city of the same name

Boys Town, a national landmark in Omaha

Just southeast of the Badlands are the Sand Hills of central Nebraska but we didn’t know so we missed them and the famous Chimney Rock. But it was a pleasant surprise to know that it was in Omaha, Nebraska where Boys Town was born. In 1917 Father Flannagan bought Overlook Farm and dedicated his ‘home’ to the care, treatment, and education of at-risk children. There are now 14 centers in America saving millions of children. Between Omaha and Council Bluffs is also the longest pedestrian bridge linking 2 states. 

the longest pedestrian bridge connecting Nebraska and Iowa

Bill's first home in Omaha, Nebraska

Bill started his family in Omaha, where, after working for a year at Caterpillar Tractors’ HQ in Illinois (where he met his late wife), he was reassigned. All three of his children were born there at the very first house he ever bought.  He had just graduated from Pittsburg State University in his hometown in Kansas when he joined the earth-moving equipment giant. And it was also in Omaha where he moved on to Burroughs which finally brought him to Seattle, where thirty-five years later we would eventually meet!

sections of I-29 that hugged the Missouri River
 between Nebraska and Iowa, submerged by the river's flood waters

Rosemary, Jack, Bill, Joe and Susan,
with Bill in Kansas City

So we also drove to Kansas City to meet his only sister, Rosemary, her husband Jack, and her children Joe and Bill, and Susan, Joe’s wife. Ordinarily the trip from Omaha to Kansas City would have taken 3 hours at most. It took us four hours and 15 minutes, each way! I could not believe it. Memories of Manila floods that leveled our tiny home beside an overflowing creek welled in my mind as I saw flood waters, being released from dams, submerge big sections of I-29, a huge American freeway!

John Wayne's birthplace in Winterset, Iowa

But before we moved on, we stopped at Council Bluffs, Iowa where we had our RV checked out at Camping World. While they worked on the heating/airconditioning system, we discovered that the famous Bridges in Madison County was just 2 hours away in Winterset. That is where Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep denied each other the love of their life!  And the town is also John Wayne’s birthplace!!! His home is just the right size...if only it were yellow! How is that for rounding out our adventure in the Great Plains?

Malcolm X's birthplace on the same street at Bll's Omaha home

Next Stops: Minnesota and Wisconsin

Loving Nature's Work at the Nation's Center OLA

Devil's Tower, a unique igneous intrusion

prairie grasslands near the badlands

I thought those striking man-made wonders would dwarf whatever work of nature there is in the area! After all, they call it Badlands, conjuring images of vast wastelands! I was dead wrong! Instead, the area engenders praise because of the abundance of painted cliffs, canyons, and mounds, unending prairie grasslands, sink holes from which great archaeological finds were unearthed, the world’s most complex and longest cave systems, and unique igneous intrusion formations!

a section of the Badlands' Wall in South Dakota

Over 65 million years ago, western America was buckling to create the Rockies, spilling large amounts of sediment eastward. Its volcanoes were also erupting, spitting out huge amounts of ash. Over time, they turned into layers of sand, silt, and mud stone. Then about 2 million years ago, huge continental ice sheets advanced southward, blocking the flow of north-flowing rivers, creating new courses eastward and southward. Flowing faster, the rivers sliced through the soft rocks. The Black Hills (black because 90% of the hills are covered with ponderosas) were created from a secondary upsurge after the Rockies, after which the water that covered most of the area drained and the Dakota Badlands were revealed.

 

Yellow Mounds in the Badlands

South Dakota’s Badlands National Park covers over 240,000 acres and preserves the sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires blended with the largest protected mixed grass (over 20 varieties) prairie in the United States. Continuing erosion happens at about an inch a year by wind, rain, and snow. The Park is surrounded by a 50-mile long Wall of cliff shelves, dotted by interesting very old mounds, and embedded by a large number of fossils that are still continuing to be found even today.

Painted Canyon at Theodore Roosevelt National Park 

red hot scoria

North Dakota has its own version of Badlands. They call it the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The renowned conservationist president credits his success experiences here at the Maltese Cross Cabin which still stands at the Visitors’ Center. It is the least visited, though, and the formations are less spectacular. However, the reddish colors give the place vibrancy. Lightning strikes and prairie fires ignite coal beds beneath which bake the overlying sediments into a hard ‘scoria’ that is resistant to erosion.

almost complete bones of a mammoth 'in situ'

petrified bald cypress

Fossils offer the best clues to scientists and the Badlands are a rich source! The Petrified Gardens and Petrified Forest display many examples of tree petrifaction. The Museum of Geology in Rapid City houses the most complete bone framework of a tetracerops, a rhino-like beast the size of an elephant! At Hot Springs, south of Rapid City is Mammoth Site, a sink hole from which bones of 59 mammoths have been unearthed! Near the NE Wyoming Visitors’ Center (a model of net-zero energy use) is the Vore Buffalo Jump, another sinkhole where the bones of approximately 20,000 buffalos are preserved.

Wind Cave's boxwork formation

looking like Teddy at Jewel Cave

Aside from these badlands, grasslands, and treasure troves of fossils, complex cave systems are another world underneath. Jewel Cave is the second longest cave system in the world at 154 miles and still counting. It is named for calcite crystals that produce glowing cave walls. Wind Cave, on the other hand, is the fourth longest at 132 miles (also still counting). It is famous for the delicate boxwork formations inside and the howling wind that either blows in or out depending on barometric pressure differences.

Needles' Eye at Custer State Park

Then there are those igneous intrusions such as the monolithic, ridged Devil’s Tower, rising 5,112 ft. above sea level in the northeastern tip of Wyoming (remember Close Encounters). 5,000 rock climbers are challenged by it every year! Some believe that it is a volcanic neck but legend has it that the tower surged higher and higher to protect 8 kids from a giant bear’s claws. Bear Butte, another intrusion about 60 miles away, is where the giant bear died hungry. On the highest points of the Black Hills, Custer State Park has Cathedral Spires, Needles’ Eye, and other unique granite formations which were the first to be considered for the Presidents’ Sculpture but eventually lost to Mt. Rushmore, the artist’s choice.

Cathedral Spires at Custer State Park

The Center of the Nation

Before the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, the centermost point in America was in Lebanon, Kansas. Now, The Center of the Nation is actually 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, South Dakota. The compass rose marker surrounded by fifty state flags proudly marks it! It is about 150 miles south of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, 100 miles west of the Badlands and 60 miles north of the Black Hills, and 60 miles east of Devil’s Tower. What a fascinating place this Center makes one is bound to fall in love with these outstanding works of nature! Actually, I believe they helped inspire those striking works of man! 

the legend at the Devil's Tower Visitor Center

Next Stop: Rounding Out Our Great Plains Adventure!

Saluting Man-Made Wonders of South Dakota OLA

an ordinary American couple among America's greatest men
in one of America's finest memorials to democracy 

South Dakota is a true revelation. We thought that the only thing to see there is Mt. Rushmore and the unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial! Little did I know that tourism, aside from cattle, is its life blood. So, instead of a single post, it will probably take me 2 to tell all our stories and show our best photos! In this first part I will include the wonders made by man while the second will deal with those made by nature.  

the profile of America's father

Seeing Mt. Rushmore for the first time gave me goose bumps. 60-ft faces of 465-ft tall Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln were carved by Gutzon Borglum, under commission from the federal government, and 360 men on the solid granite walls of the mountain. Dedicated in 1927 and completed 2 years after the death of Borglum in 1941, it stands as a solid memorial of American democracy. Film greats such as National Treasure: Book of Secrets and North by Northwest were filmed there.

the Crazy Horse Memorial after 60 years
of dedicated work by the Korczak family...
to be completed in perhaps in another 60 years?

The other solid memorial will be the world’s largest sculpture, 641 feet long and 563 feet wide. Crazy Horse was the leader of the Indians who won at the Little Bighorn Battlefield and massacred the 263 men (please see my post last week), including Custer.  A private project started by the Lakota (Dakota came from this name) elders who in 1948 contacted Korczak, a Polish immigrant and former assistant to Borglum, it is now being continued as the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation of Korczak’s family.

the missile in its underground silo
ready for its asignment...no more!

Aside from these inspiring works, there is also a menacing testament to war and destruction. At the East Entrance to the Badlands is the Minuteman II Missile Historic Site, the first memorial to the Cold War after which thousands of such sites were deactivated. It consists of 2 sites: Delta 01, the Launch Control Facility and Delta-09, the Underground Silo. I shivered at the thought that 500 of these missiles that can be deployed remotely by the flick of a finger and render human tragedy are still active in the country.

the Traveler's Chapel at the Wall Drug Store

well, what can I do? Bill found another!

 At the West Entrance is the inspiring story of a hardworking prairie family. Ted Hustead graduated from pharmacy school in 1929. After 2 years of working with other pharmacists, he, wife Dorothy and son Bill set out to look for a small town with a Catholic church and found Wall. Five years later they stumbled upon the secret that made their store famous: free ice water for thirsty travelers! They continue to serve 5,000 glasses of ice water a day and Wall Drug Store has become a tourist destination with many ice water wells, a Traveler’s Chapel, 26 western retail outlets, 300 Western paintings, a 560-seat restaurant of western cooking, singing raccoons, a Jackalope, a roaring T-Rex, and other fun stuff!

the view of Rapid City from the Dinosaur Park

Washington and 43 other presidents
grace downtown Rapid City 

Rapid City has complemented all these attractions by building a Dinosaur Park with towering life-size prehistoric dinosaur replicas on its highest point. 43 presidents also grace downtown Rapid City! Kids will also have loads of fun at Teddy Bear Town (with the largest collection of teddy bears in the world), and Storybook Island, a 4-acre park of the best-loved fairy tale characters!

the absolutely lovely Chapel on the Hills

Another unique structure is Chapel on the Hills, an exact replica of the famous intricately carved wooden Stavkirk Chapel in Borgund, Norway (which we plan to see when we go to Europe). And Sturgis, the city that draws hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists for a mammoth rally every August, is just nearby!

the unique town of Sturgis

Colossal, menacing, inspiring, child-like, and quaint works of legends like Boglum, Korczak, the Husteads, etc. are all around the Black Hills of South Dakota. I am glad we allotted 3 weeks to stay here. We have not even told you about the works of nature. The Badlands, Custer State Park, Devil’s Tower, Mammoth Site, the cave systems, etc.  Stop by again next week!