A Friend I’ve Never Met Before and the Rainy Badlands

Learning the Ropes

This morning, I woke-up in a chilly room. Yes, the air conditioner was running, but it was only in fan mode to create some white noise and help mask the neighboring cabin. The reason the room was cold was due to the fact that I hadn’t noticed a window in the back had been open the entire time I was there. Mental note taken: Check that windows are closed when it’s cold outside.

Packing was a challenge for a couple of reasons, primarily because I had no experience unloading/loading my car at this point and there was a lot to deal with. My belongs included:

• Three small bins in the trunk (one for camping gear, one for toiletries and one for creative/tech gear)
• Two large bins in the back seat (one for camping gear and one for regular clothing)
• A tent, sleeping bag and thermal mat behind the passenger seat
• A cooler on top of various footwear behind the driver seat
• My GoPro and DSLR cases on the floor of the passenger side
• My backpack containing laptop gear on the passenger seat, topped-off with a satchel holding hiking gear, wallet and other goto items
• Miscellaneous other things tucked here and there, wherever I could find space

Before you shake your damned head, consider giving me a break. My traveling experience is limited and this was a three week journey that was taking me over 3000 miles away from my home. I wanted to make sure I had anything I thought I could possibly want (within reason).

The other reason packing was a challenge this morning was that my plan was to pitch a tent in the campground at Badlands National Park that evening. The weather forecast was unfavorable, to put it mildly: 37-degrees with rain and wind. Staying in campgrounds along the way felt like an inexpensive and exciting way to travel across the country, despite my lack of experience and (to be honest) my lack of enjoyment doing it. Thus, the primary goal for packing was doing it in a fashion that would minimize my having to search for things while I was attempting to pitch a tent in the rain and the wind and the cold (and quite possibly the dark).

Taking My Time

Eventually, the car was packed and the cabin was empty. That was when I decided to do something which was unusual for me, at the time, but soon became routine. Rather than immediately jumping into my car and heading-off to the next stop on my itinerary, so I would be sure to stay on schedule, I decided to spend some time checking-out the local area.

Hall Lake Cabins was on the shore of (you guessed it) Hall Lake. It couldn’t be seen from the parking lot or even the back windows in the cabin, so I headed down to the docks behind the cabins and spent the better part of an hour capturing panning shots of the lack, recording audio of the waves quietly lapping against the shore and taking pictures of the pelicans that apparently loved the area. It was a calming exercise that allowed this place (along with each one along the way) to be more than a dot on a map in my memory.

Off To Meet a Friend

The time came to actually get on my way and I headed north to Bird Island, Minnesota, to meet an old friend in-person for the first time. The drive through southern Minnesota was astounding to me in its utter flatness and precise, never-ending roads that stood at right angles with one another. It felt like an epic checker board and I had to find the most efficient way from F1 to F4, over to D4, up to D8 and finally making my way to A8.

Meeting my friend, Alvin, in-person for the first time, after having “met” him online some fifteen years earlier, was a surreal experience. Despite feeling like I knew him fairly well–we had similar tastes in art and shared a love of roasting coffee beans, among other things–I still felt a bit apprehensive as I walked from my car to his front door. What if he’s a complete psycho? What if he thinks I’m a complete psycho?!? Anyway, it didn’t take but a few minutes before that was all gone and we fell deep into conversations about our artwork, politics, music and the weather.

While I would have liked to have stuck around for much longer, after a couple of hours, I had a schedule to keep in order to avoid pitching a tent in the dark that night. Alvin sent me off with a few gifts and a suggestion to visit a local historical park dedicated to The Battle of Birch Coulee from the Dakota War of 1862. The park was only about 15 minutes away and on my path back down to Route 90, so I decided to check it out. It was a sombre visit in a tranquil field full of snakes.

A Turn in the Weather and a Change in Plans

While the weather in Bird Island was absolutely perfect, the weather just outside of the South Dakota border turned for the worst. This was expected as I’d been paying close attention to the weather forecast for the previous week. The weather earlier in the day had gotten my hopes up, but the reality of the situation has made itself apparent. It looked like I was going to be spending the night in a cold, wet and windy tent.

Or would I? As I the rain got heavier and the temperature dipped below 40 degrees, I asked myself whether or not I had to sleep in a tent that night. Yes, I had already paid for a reservation at the campground and I felt like getting a motel room would be chickening-out, but which situation would make me happier? That was all it took and after a 5 minute stop on the side of the road I had a motel room reserved in a motel in Interior, South Dakota, right down the road from the campground.

At this point, I talked to my friend and my aunt on the phone for a little bit. My friend mentioned the concept of a “zero mile day” when you would spend a day in a tent while out camping rather than deal with horrible weather. This came up after mentioning the fact that the forecast for the next day was much the same, but after that things were supposed to improve immensely. After discussing it with my aunt and hearing that it wouldn’t be a problem if my arrival was delayed by a day, it was more or less decided that I’d be staying in the motel for an additional day, if it was available.

The majority of the drive from Minnesota to Badlands National Park was uneventful. The rainy weather didn’t make the unremarkable terrain any easier to tolerate. To be honest, the terrain is mostly flat and I’d say it’s “unremarkable” but there was a feeling of majesty to it all. The ground was relatively flat, but it was rolling along, and it made me imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years earlier before trains and roads broke it all apart.

Badlands National Park

Finally, I arrived at the entrance to the park around 8 o’clock as the light was beginning to fade. Almost immediately upon driving past the front gate, the land around the road quite literally appears to melt away. After two days of relatively boring nothingness going on around me, I was suddenly surrounded by was appeared like a landscape from hell, bordered by the sharp remnants of crumbling towers. The clouds and haze obscured the tops of many of the taller peaks, giving them an even more foreboding appearance.

Despite the weather, I parked at the first stop to take a walk to the Big Badlands Overlook. The wind was wicked and the rain was coming down at a 45-degree angle, but it didn’t dampen my spirits at all. This was what I’d come all the way out here to see and I was ecstatic. Once I got up close to the terrain, I realized my thoughts weren’t far off at all: the ground appeared to literally be melting away. It was a landscape of mud.

A little further on, I passed the visitor center and the campground I was supposed to stay in, and then arrived in Interior, South Dakota. My first piece of business involved buying some beer and filling-up the car. In an embarrassing moment, I couldn’t get the front door of the station open and the owner had to come from behind the desk to open it for me. She was nice about it, but I imagined she was a bit annoyed.

Then I made my way to the Badlands Motel & Campground. As I entered the office, I noticed the owner exit an RV parked in front and follow me in. He was an interesting guy, sunburned and quiet. He said it wouldn’t be a problem getting the room for an additional day because they weren’t going to be busy for another couple of weeks. After noticing a menu on the wall for food they’d be offering over the next week, I noticed the next day they were having “Indian Tacos”. Being that I work part-time in a restaurant that featured tacos, I felt it was my duty to investigate. “So, what’s in the ‘Indian Tacos’ there?” I asked. His response of, “Well, um… all sorts of things” was a bit of a let down.

That basically wraps-up the second day of the trip. After unloading everything into my room and arranging my bins on the bed I wouldn’t be sleeping on, I got down to what would become my nightly ritual: opening a beer, downloading and organizing the video and photos shot that day, eating something for dinner and finally passing-out from exhaustion.