We made it. The guy
here has a goatee and a badge and his name is Tim Johanson. He was really
laid-back, he was funny. "No huntin' or Shootin' and No Off-Road
Driving". Whoa!! It's beautiful! Dirt road! WOooooo!!! "Prairie Dog
Town 5 Miles". Just big chasms! OH!! Take a whole roll of panoramic!
We're driving through the Badlands listening to Bob Dylan.
We're going to the Prairie Dog Town. We have a sign, "Beware of
Bison". We see some, six of 'em and more on the horizon. Mad Tyson loves
his Bison. Big Herd!! Beware, they will gore you. Sign says, "Many
visitors have been gored by buffalo". This is the Prairie Dog Town - And
the buffalo live here too.
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| Exploring the Badlands. |
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| Bad, bad lands. |
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| Where the buffalo roam. |
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| Mel with sun-dried buffalo shit. |
Those Prairie Dogs are elusive. I got really close to that one. Lucky.
7:21 pm: Man, what a day. Spent it in the Badlands. We got the car fixed, the guy only charged $14. He could've charged us anything he wanted to. We drove around the Badlands forever. Me and Mel took a nap, Todd and Laura figured out that the map is fucked up. We saw antelope running around. We took a walk through the Badlands on our own feet, no one guiding us. The van was a far-off speck. I put mud all over my body and it felt really good.
We're thinking a storm might be coming from one direction or the other because they said the weather's unpredictable in the Badlands. They said it has snowed in May. That's one of the things that's so bad about these lands. Bad-fuckin-lands. Temperatures range from 116 degrees to negative 40; not in one night, but that's the range. So it's just unpredictable.
Mel and Laura are hacky-sacking and Todd and I are having a beer. Laura saw some bone jaws in a creek. She thinks they're bison jaws and Mel's going to get them tomorrow. He can make something really cool from them. Even though there's a clause in this "Prairie Preamble" about collecting fossils. Should I leave that geode here?
Why not take it, it might not even be a geode. Put it in the food box. There's a lot of them around here. There are neat little scrub bushes here, little dwarf trees. You gotta know what I mean.
This car pulled in and it was a couple of old folks and I think they may have been afraid of Mel and they left. Maybe they said, "That's not such a pretty site". It is a pretty site though. It really is.
7:53 pm: We're gonna make a beer run. I've only had 2 so I should drive. Oh! We have schnapps! Lets get some beer. Wall is only 10 miles away, we could do it with our eyes closed. We're gonna go get beer! Close all the doors and haul ass! Get that bag of cow shit in here! Put it where the spare tire used to be. We've got a lot of contraband if a Ranger stops us. We brought that rock from home. We brought that bag of buffalo shit from home too. I lost my zippo.
Empty beer bottles go in the cooler? Is that what we're doing?
Well, that's what we've been doing. I don't know why.
Take that road, 240, to Wall. I hope there's no scars! I hope there's no scars! We're at the same place that fixed our tire. Last time we were here, we were interested in Wall Drug, now we just care about the beer. I'm drinkin' Light Beer! Which I'll probably thank Jon for later because I'll look down and say, 'Hey! I've been drinking a lot of beer and I aint got a gut'!
8:37 pm: We're lookin' at a buffalo chewin' and peeing at the same time. We're drunk and having a good time.
Oh my God! They're afraid of Mel! Bison are afraid of Mel! Mel chased off a herd of bison! He's gonna get gored.
We've got beer bottles all over the floor, they're gonna be rolling out.
Mel charged those buffalo and they ran.
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| Bison Charger Mel. |
Mel's going over to ask some guys if they hack. We've got kind of a Badlands party arranged. We ran into some people, we got some pictures of some buffalo and now Mel's negotiating a liquor store run. Introducing Laura now, they're gonna go get some beer.
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| Badlands party. |
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| Cooking on buffalo chips. |
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| Cooking bananas and pretzels. |
12:09 am: Listen, we're all really drunk in the Badlands.
Storm brewing and we're encouraging it. We hope it does rain. I'm drinking in
the dirt and I'll be sleeping in the dirt and that's the way to be.
We're gonna go find Mel. We're really trashed. We all took
aspirin, but that doesn't mean we won't be mourning. Mel's talking shit to us
all. I'm talking shit right now. I'm so glad that I induced my
own vomiting in the field so I don't even have to risk vomiting in the van. I think we should all be thankful for that.
12:44: I'm up front. I'm Hard Core. If it stops raining, I'm
going outside.
Day 4, 8:20 am: We woke up, well three of us. We don't know
where Jonnie is. No idea where he is. The van is trashed and we're drinking all
the water we've got right now and taking vitamins. "Aids in maintaining a
healthy nervous system". We'll have healthy nerves. It's a good placebo.
Is that our garbage can out there?
I spent the night in the Badlands in my sleeping bag. Mel
and Laura are gonna do some hiking, Todd and I are going to take the van into
town for water and necessities. I lost 3 lighters last night. We'll grab a pack
of six of 'em.
10:14 am:We're in Wall. It's starting to feel sort of homey
now. We made a beer run, saw the same guy working two different times, we know
our way around. Getting kind of comfortable with it. We dropped off our trash
in a motel dumpster. I shaved and washed my hair in the bathroom of an Exxon
station, we're gonna get some breakfast at Elkton House.
We went to Wall Drug and asked for a cork. The lady said to
go to the Camping Dept. and if they don't have one, go to the Hardware Store
two doors down. So we went to the Camping Dept. and asked, "Do you have a
cork"? The guy, and like everybody else was all in on it, he goes,
"No! You wanna go out of here and go two doors down to the left to the
Hardware store". So, we went into the Hardware store and I said, "We need
a cork" and the lady said, "OK". She walks over to the shelves
and in the metal box, way on top, it wasn't on display; she reaches up, brings
down the box and it's full of various corks. Assorted sizes in different
compartments.
Our eyes were bigger than our jug and we picked a really big
one. It was way too big, so we took it back and she traded it. It's way tall
and that gives it space to wear out a bit. Gives me a lift. It looks like a
real jug now. We've got a jug of water. Now we're gonna go fill it.
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| Gill Bros. in the Badlands. |
We're back where we had our tire fixed yesterday and where
we came back to on our beer run and we're back here now. It's no wonder that
Wall's starting to feel a little bit like home. We're becoming regulars here.
It's gonna be kind of sad to leave that, but leave it we will.
We're going in through the back of the Badlands because, in
our revelry last night, we threw out our pass, which wouldn't be good anyway
today because it was only good for one day. The guy who was into Geology said
there's a secret way to get in from the back for free.
Good news, we found a hose at the Exxon station and Todd's filling
the jug. We are driving up and down the hills on a crazy dirt road, surrounded
by cows. Root Beer, the Beer of the Root.
12:44 pm: Mel and Laura returned and they're gonna tell about
their day: We hiked what we estimated to be 2 or 3 miles into the heart of the
Badlands. We found this really neat bluff and we just sat on it. It was really
beautiful and we added to the natural erosion and then coming back is when the
excitement happened.
Laura said, "oh!", and jumped up and right at her
feet was a rattlesnake sunning itself. We were about 3 feet from it, just
watching it then it got tired of looking at us and just slithered away.
When we were about 3 quarters of the way back, we were
exhausted and wanted to find some shade so we go through the valley and then,
like 20 feet from us, a deer jumps out of the thicket. And antelope, we saw it
all".
Did you see a coyote?
We saw coyote footprints. I wish I hadn't been so
trashed". There was this one bird that was just so fat, it would hop then
fly then hop then fly then hop.
We saw a lot of bones, a bison shoulder blade. Off in the
distance we saw seven or eight buffalo stampeding, running full speed".
We ate at the "Cactus Cafe". Jonnie and I had
burritos, Laura had the salad bar and Todd had garlic bread and coffee. We
noticed that there's a pretty big radiator leak dripping puddles on the ground,
so we stopped and Jonnie ran over to the Hardware Store and got some
"Stop-A-Leak" shit and we hope the problem's solved.
We called Indiana and talked to Betty - Ian broke his
collarbone, wrecked his scooter.
We're getting the Hell out of Wall. We're gonna go on 90 and
cover some miles. Time to move on and we're gonna try to see Custer's
Battlefield and the Crazy Horse project. My necklace broke, so I threw it out
the window. No remorse. South Dakota's big and beautiful. We left Wall and
we're coasting at 70mph. Green rolling hills.
4:21 pm: We're entering the Crazy Horse Memorial. We just pulled in and we're on the "Avenue of the
Chiefs".
6:07 pm:We're leaving the Crazy Horse place, $15 to get in,
which wasn't bad. They have free coffee and it was pretty good, but you felt
bad drinking it knowing how much money need to finish this thing.
There are cows here by the road, not penned-in. Laura's at
the wheel and we're gonna go see Custer's Battlefield. Maybe we should just
leave the state. How Now Brown Cow? I've got antifreeze all over my leg and
arm.
The original sculptor of Crazy Horse looks a lot like Mel's
Godfather. He's got a great beard. There's a photograph of the sculptor with
Johnny Cash and he had a personal invitation from the Pope and it's the best
picture of the Pope that I've ever seen. He's just standing there with a sly
grin and he's pointing his finger like, "Hey! I'm the Pope and I invite
you". I'd love to get a poster of the Pope looking like that.
7:00 pm: We're on 16 going West. We're gonna enter Wyoming
from here. Right now we're on a 12 mile strip of unpaved road. It's a
"Road Construction". It looks like road deconstruction to me, but
here we go. Very unluckily, there's a storm brewing in exactly the same
direction where we're going and we see lightning.
Or, go anywhere:
Leaving Indiana South Dakota, pt. 2 British Columbia
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