Just entering the park was a WOW! experience. After driving two days through flat or rolling grasslands, still green because they've had so much more rain than usual this year, suddenly I am seeing these huge brown hills, something like I imagine the moon would be. The only thing I've ever seen like it are parts of the Negev in Israel. I reached the Badlands Park campground around noon and it was almost empty. I was greeted at my campsite by a bluebird. I couldn't tell if it was the Bluebird of Happiness or not, but it may have been.
The road to the park and the park itself was full of motorcyclists, coming both singly and in large groups. Finally, I went over to one of them and asked what was going on. He explained to me that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was going on this week in nearby Sturgis. Motorcyclists came from all over the world to attend - Canada, Mexico, even Europe. Two cyclists told me that the attendance for the week was about 800,000 people! I was told that this is the largest gathering of it's kind - of any kind - in the US, on planet earth, maybe in the whole universe, altho my informant wasn't sure about the latter.
About half a dozen cyclists and their female partners were sitting with me on the small circle of benches in the lounge where there is the hookup for WIFI, and one of them began telling a story about how he had been working with his family in Tanzania and one night his vehicle turned over on what appeared to be a deserted road. Suddenly from out of nowhere came a whole group of Tanzanians who took hold of the car and turned it back right side up. One of the men rushed up to the woman and said, "Madam, they are stealing your bumper."
"Let them take it," she said. "I just want to get out of here."
The story had a happy ending.Except for the man, who wasn't wearing his seatbelt and needed some stitches in his head, no one else was hurt, and the vehicle was able to continue on its way.
I couldn't resist the temptation to jump in then and tell them the story of my family's car misadventure in Arusha (Tanzania) where my then son-in-law took our nonfunctioning car to what he was told would be a gas station but turned out to be just an empty lot with a bunch of guys who had some tools. It was getting dark and we didn't like leaving him there with all of these Tanzanians by himself, so we took a taxi and joined him for moral support. The Tanzanians couldn't seem to get the car started so finally my son-in-law just told them to put it back together and give us a push and he would jumpstart it. They did this and we took the car back to our hotel in the town center. I don't know what my son-in-law planned to do about the car next day, but when he went to try to start it up in the morning, the car worked fine and we had no more trouble with it the rest of the trip (except for one flat tire).
Incidentally, in spite of the bad reputation of motorcycle gangs, all of the motorcyclists I have had any contact with here at the Badlands were unfailingly polite and friendly.
At 3:30 I went to the meeting place for the fossil walk, but noone else showed up including the park ranger. I was disappointed but I went by myself on the short walk along the boardwalk where several fossils were displayed under glass, so the hour wasn't a total loss.
That night I went to a ranger talk on astronomy. I got there a little before the scheduled starting time of 8:30, and again no one showed up. I was getting ready to leave in disgust around 8:45 when another couple arrived and two park rangers arrived shortly after that. In the end there were about 60 people in the amphitheater, and the park rangers actually started the program around 9:30.
The talk was light on information and heavy on child-oriented entertainment. It included a group sing of the Roy Rogers theme song "Happy Trails" and a brief film showing very short clips of other national parks. After about an hour they took a break. After the break, the ranger got serious and started pointing out (with a laser pointer) the various constellations, almost none of which have ever made much sense to me except for the big and little dippers. Then he began allowing people to look thru 3 telescopes at the various stars, but I didn't have the patience to wait my turn so I called it a night. The best thing about the evening was just seeing all those thousands of stars in the sky. There is almost no artificial light in the area so one can see stars that are not visible anywhere near a city.
Signs for the day:
On the road to Pierre, South Dakota as I was crossing a bridge over a river: "Bad River." This raises all sorts of questions. Was it bad because it flooded? because it dried up? because it attracted mosquitoes? Is there also a "Good River" somewhere in the vicinity?
2nd sign in the lodge in the park: "Free key chain with $100 purchase." I remarked to the sales girl that a free key chain didn't seem like much of an inducement for a $100.00 purchase, but she said it was a very nice key chain and normally sold for $3.95. I asked to see it. I'd say it looked like a $1.95 key chain - not much of an inducement for a $100.00 purchase.
Miscellaneous fact for the day: The "Badlands" got their name from French fur traders who found the area difficult to pass thru because it was so hot and dry. The full French name translates as "Bad land to travel through."
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