I had the rental car for a week and I did 1800 miles in total. Slept in the car three nights out of seven. Why not, after all? The weather is plenty warm enough and it's more secure than a tent. Saves a bit of money too.
Here's a Google Street View of one place where I bedded down in splendid isolation. It was a cloudless night and, once the moon dipped below the horizon, the stars came out in very great numbers indeed. Somehow the sky just seems bigger here. At one point I contemplated putting my blanket on top of the car roof and sleeping in the open air; but the coyotes were howling in the distance, and some of the insects were as big as pigeons. I stayed in the car.
My time in South Dakota coincided with the 2022 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the world's largest event of its kind. Harleys thronged the highways. In this state, as in quite a few others, there's no compulsory requirement to wear crash helmets. You see people riding half-ton motorbikes at 80mph, wearing nothing but T-shirts and shorts and sandals, and maybe a bandana, while 18-wheeler trucks thunder by at close range in both directions. It boggles the mind even before you consider that these people won't get free healthcare if they crash.
I saw thousands of solo male riders, and hundreds of male riders carrying their ladyfriends on the back, and a few dozen solo female riders; but the one thing I've never seen in all my days, the Black Swan and Abominable Snowman and Loch Ness Monster of motorcycling, is a female rider carrying her manfriend on the back. Something to ponder there.
On a vaguely similar note, when I went to Mount Rushmore, it was perhaps predictable that the crowd there would be almost exclusively white. I saw only one African American and that was a lady with a white partner. I suppose you can't expect black Americans to be too enthusiastic about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom, y'know, owned slaves.
Personally I preferred the scenery in the surrounding Black Hills (irony unintended) with their lush forests. The Mount Rushmore carvings themselves are rather like the Statue of Liberty: you've known all your life what it looks like, and then when you finally get to see the thing, it looks like you expected it to look, and it's a case of 'well, there it is'. So you take a photo or two and then you leave. Box ticked. I try not to invest too much time in this kind of thing.
For me the highlight of the week was Badlands National Park, one of the most spectacular places I've ever seen, which is - if you'll excuse the immodesty - really saying something. See pictures below.
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| View from outside my cabin at dusk. At the South Dakota / Wyoming border, near a town called - irony of ironies - Newcastle. |
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| Mount Rushmore, obviously |
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| Wind Cave National Park. This is the roof of one of the caves. I did a 90-minute underground walking tour and banged my head several times. |
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| Pleasant little hike in Badlands National Park. However, one has to keep one's eyes open. (Zoom in on the middle of the picture...) |
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| Badlands National Park Every layer of rock represents ten million years or so. |
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| Badlands again |
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| Badlands panorama |
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| In Mount Vernon, SD (pop: 461) The greatest AirBnB of my life to date. My hosts were out for the night so I had this house to myself, plus this dog for company. Forty quid! |
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| Edd vs Food #105 Chicken & bacon ranch mac'n'cheese with spring onions and garlic toast Shenanigans, 1903 S Ellis Road, Sioux Falls, SD |
