We left Deadwood behind and struck out in a south-easterly direction. Deadwood was a cute little city that perhaps might be a little more fun if I had ever seen the show, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. The Black Hills are also gorgeous, and I enjoyed every bit of our drive through them (when I wasn't getting carsick trying to read a screen shared during a meeting on my phone). We drove back the way we came, past Sturgis and through Rapid City. Past Rapid City, the roads became a lot more straight, long, and boring.
We made a pit stop in Wall, SD for the (in)famous Wall Drug Store. They had lots of old-timey curios and some stuff for the kids like a 6-foot-tall jackalope and an animatronic gorilla who plays the piano. We got some soft-serve ice cream and headed for our next stop, Badlands National Park.
The Badlands are a beautiful area, and I thought the sky made quite the striking backdrop for the unusual formations (
or, erosions I guess?). My picture doesn't really do it justice, but it's so interesting that leading up to Badlands
everything is flat and green, and then there's... this. And some of the coloring in the formations are just absolutely
stunning, gorgeous stripes of red and white and brown. There are lots of hiking trails, but we had a lot of ground to
cover today so we stuck to the car.
We finished the Badlands Loop and it dumped us back out on I-90. We continued easy for what felt like forever, stopping to have lunch in a rest area that warned us to "BEWARE of poisonous snakes". That's one of those silly little things that has always bugged me. The snakes are only poisonous if eating them harms you. They should have been warning us about venomous snakes. Anyway, we made lunch there and there were lots and lots of flies. "C" wasn't a very big fan of them, but "T", "Z", and "A" did a great job chasing them away. "C" eventually worked up the courage to scream at the flies to go away, but when one got too clode to her, she would crawl into my lap for protection. It was silly and endearing. I love these silly kids.
Our next and final stop along the way today was the Dignity: of Earth & Sky statue in Chamberlain, SD. It's a
beautiful, large statue overlooking the Missouri river. The informational sign said the little blue and white diamonds
of her quilt should move in the wind, but I didn't notice that. It was still quite beautiful. We also happened to see
several people that we saw at the previous rest stop. Small world, I guess.
Finally, we hit a Walmart to grab a few groceries and drove the final hour or so to Verdigre, Nebraska. We left Deadwood at about 9am and made it to our AirBNB in Verdigre at about 9pm, although we did lose an hour somewhere along the way. Our AirBNB is certainly interesting. I think it might be owned by a local business here. It's located in essentially the back patio of a bar/grill, and we got a message that the house would be unlocked with a key in the kitchen and we were instructed to leave it in the same condition. It's weird to be gawked at by bar patrons when hauling your stuff into the house for the night, but the price was right at around $100 for the night.
I'm sitting here writing this at 11pm local time and the sound of crickets is almost deafening. We're definitely out in the country. Almost as soon as we crossed the border from South Dakota into Nebraska, the land shifted from flat farmland to green, hilly, curvy roads. I know the whole state isn't going to be like this, but it's nice. Tomorrow is another long day in the car, although hopefully not quite as long as today.