Roving Cooks

May 31: Custer, SD to Wall, SD. 95 miles, 2 hours.

May 31-June 5, Wall, South Dakota

We spent 5 days in Wall, South Dakota, “Gateway to the Badlands”. If you’ve seen Nomadland (I thought the book was excellent), Badlands National Park is where Frances McDormand goes skipping around and is asked “Find anything interesting?” to which she answers “Rocks!”. She does a stint working in the Wall Drug kitchen.

We did a couple drives through the park, which struck me as a grassier mirror to the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest in Arizona. Showing a burst of enthusiasm for hiking, Grayson led us up a small trail onto a yellow ridge. Returning involved a bit of butt-sliding (me) and Madelyn-carrying (Greg).

I was coming off a stomach bug and battling a migraine on our first day in this area, and it turned out to be a HOT week, so we didn’t hike (or move) much. I wanted to get a better look at either sunrise or sunset before we moved east, so we got up EARLY Saturday morning and caught the sunrise at the closest entrance to our campground. Despite some whining kids, it was the coolest part of the day and we saw herds of big-horned sheep waking up on the high rocks and grazing on the grasses next to the road.

Right outside the national park is a Prairie Homestead, featuring white prairie dogs and an intact sod house from the early 1900s. We’ve been listening to the Laura Ingalls Wilder books in the truck and were on Little House on the Prairie…so timing was perfect. This was surprisingly great; the homestead was fully furnished with pretend food on the kitchen table, quilts on the beds, a working piano, etc., and the kids were allowed to touch things!

Wall Drug, the main business and attraction in town, does have an actual pharmacy, plus a number of cute shops (things like cowboy boots/western wear, western themed art, Black Hills gold/jewelry, candy), a diner, and a “backyard”. The Wall Drug Backyard was the place for us. There were a number of climbable objects – covered wagon, stagecoach, bucking bronco, etc. The best 50 cents I’ve spend in a long time went to the mechanical covered wagon (Madelyn) and mechanical horse (Grayson).

We spent one of our days back in Rapid City (better coffee/internet options). After dropping Greg off at Starbucks, the kids and I checked out the Dinosaur Park (below is the brontosaurus guarding Rapid City), a really nice city park, and played some Pirates Cove mini golf. Me’hearties had a great time plotting how to sneak up on Daddy in their pirate hats and eye patches.

Friday morning, the South Dakota High School Regional Rodeo Championships kicked off in Wall. This city slicker mama loaded the kids up in the electric bike trailer and over we went for the “cutting”. We sat by a kind, retired ranching grandma who explained what we were looking at and how the judging worked, and enjoyed the hour watching high school cowboys and cowgirls from the shaded bleachers.

By Friday afternoon, I was about out of ideas on how to gracefully get through the multi-day 90+ degree heat wave. Tragically, all pools and splash pads in town were awaiting maintenance and not yet open for the summer. We decided that 2 days is probably the right amount of time in Wall to recommend to others; and headed out mid-day Saturday after our sunrise hike, a day earlier than planned. Unfortunately, the virus that I suffered from earlier in the week seemed to hit everyone else in the form of stuffy noses and a fever; a relatively cranky few days for the Roving Cook family.

We made a brief stop at Minuteman Missile, where the Junior Ranger activity of “make and shoot off a rocket” was welcomed.

We drove 3 hours to Mitchell, SD, where Greg had found a campground for the night at Lake Mitchell. The lake was exactly what we needed to cool off for the evening! Sunday we visited the World’s Only Corn Palace – it’s also the site of Greg’s high school wrestling championships – before continuing east.