I’ve always dreamed of doing a cross-country camping road trip and last October we had the chance to make it happen. We had our first taste of a long road trip in Oct. 2015 where we explored southern and central California which gave us some confidence that our 2016 plan was doable.
At the time of our trip, I was trying to cope with a year that featured events ranging from a scale of super awesome (getting married!) to hot trash fire (dealing with my father’s passing and the emotional fallout from the aftermath). I felt like I was viewing everything from a third-person perspective and that there was a fog over things that were directly in front of me. I couldn’t process a lot in my surroundings. Strangely, I remember a lot of details clearly looking back even through at the time I couldn’t focus..... so I want to document them here before they slip away.
I’m going to skip over the planning details - there was quite a bit that went into it... purchasing proper gear, meal planning, finding a four wheel drive car that we could sleep in if necessary (we did), and mapping out drive time from place to place - excel spreadsheets are key. I took a pocket watercolor set along but sadly didn’t have time or energy to break it out. I’ll have to resort to reference photos later on.
Sept. 30 / Oct. 1
We planned to do the first stretch of driving as a straight shot to South Dakota. There was a hiccup with getting the correct rental car that put us a few hours behind schedule by including a three hour detour to Pittsburgh. Once we got going we switched off driving overnight which wasn’t as bad as expected. I drove from about 11:30 PM to 2 AM, and Steve took over until about 5 AM. My next shift was 5-8 AM. We stopped at the Corn Palace in SD, which is a strange little place - I expected a corn history museum or something, but instead there’s just a basketball court inside where all the walls inside and out are decorated with corn cobs.
Steve took over driving and I tried to nap a little but couldn’t quite get to sleep since we were getting closer to our first actual destination.
Entertained by Wall Drug signs along the way. At least SD has some good roadside humor and a fast speed limit.
We finally made it around 1 or 2 PM after 21 hours of driving. We immediately popped the tent up, changed clothes, and brushed our teeth. I remember being so excited that we actually made it - sometimes a drive longer than 12 hours makes the destination feel unattainable. Our camp spot had a great view.
Even with lack of sleep, we decided to do a short hike to explore - pretty sure we did Notch Trail.
We ended up at a nice overlook of the valley (including our campsite).
We drove around the rest of the park a bit after we hiked back to the car.
We forgot to stop to buy one of our main ingredients for dinner before we got into the park and thought we were going to have to pull a Chopped kitchen campground edition dinner with some Yakisoba and our pre-packed ingredients. Luckily we found a convenience store in a small town 10 minutes off the west exit side of the park and were able to pick up some chicken and rice to make Thai peanut curry. In the end, dinner was probably too complex for what we had energy for and the recipe was a little off so it mostly tasted like peanut butter covered chicken. The Badlands totally has one of the best cleanup stations for food and shower setups. The weather was perfect and the stars were out with a clear sky. We were so worn out we passed out shortly after sunset.
To the right of the tent there was a cow pasture. I got startled in the middle of the night by one cow being exceptionally noisy. The wind kicked up and skirted the campground around 10 PM and kept rustling the tent. We were still on Eastern time and woke up around 5 AM which was great because we could catch the sunrise.
Oct. 2
Husband got up to cook breakfast while I poked around taking photos and packing up inside the tent.
We hit the road after the sunrise. We saw a few mule deer on the way out and before we came to the park exit we experienced some crazy weather.
First.. a full single rainbow! The little Badlands sign is in the background.
Then... a full double rainbow! So bright... so vivid.....
There was some serious lightning going on so I was trying to hop in and out of the car to take photos as fast as possible. One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
