Arrived in South Dakota & Badlands National Park

Hiking - Notch Trail - Badlands

We made it to Badlands National Park in western South Dakota late Friday (9/8) after a three day drive and a little over 1,200 miles.  It was a good trip, everything went very well.  We were happy with the way the RV traveled towing the car and it felt comfortable.

Badlands National Park is in a remote area and looks like another planet.  It has some desert characteristics; we even saw some prickly pear cactus.  Very interesting landscape and some cool vistas.  We did a little hiking; our favorite was "Notch Trail".

We are heading to the Black Hills, Custer State Park and Mt Rushmore next.  

Yellow Mounds Area-Badlands

Overlook - Badlands National Park

Early in the day on Friday, we stopped at a
visitors center (on a tip from our sister Karen) and saw this beautiful stainless steel sculpture of a Native American woman that was erected last year.  The "Dignity - of Earth and Sky" sculpture honors the Lakota and Dakota culture.  It is a great setting on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River.

A few interesting tidbits from SD:

• Roads - We found SD roads better than IA, IL, or IN.  SD has an 80 MPH speed limit on the interstates (I-29 & I-90).  Most areas are pretty remote, flat and little traffic.  Even with the higher speed limit, we kept the RV between 65-70 MPH.
• Monarch Butterflies - The butterflies migrate through South Dakota from the north on their way to Mexico for the winter. We saw 1000's and unfortunately, some ended up plastered to the windshield and grill of the RV.
• Cellphone & Internet - It has surprised me how good the cellphone and internet service has been.  Mostly using my cellphone hotspot for internet and it has worked great.  Even driving down the highway in the middle of cornfields, we had excellent reception.  The parks we have stayed at have also had pretty good wi-fi.

 In full disclosure, as I promised (to write about good and not so good), I have to tell you one minor issue we had late in the day on Friday trying to locate the RV Park we were staying at.  I plugged the address into my phone and followed it as directed.  Unfortunately, it was not accurate.  We were out in a pretty isolated area on a narrow road with nowhere to turn around.  We ended up going about 15 miles out of our way to get turned around and back where we needed to be.  Lesson learned - we will double check the directions with the web site if possible.  I checked later and found the web site for the park advised NOT following GPS directions.