Wonder Book of Nature

 It is an incalculable added pleasure to anyone's sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder book of nature. 

President Theodore Roosevelt

Quoted by a park ranger at Mount Rushmore

Evening flag retirement & lighting, September 9, 2020 

 

 

I was picturing a buffalo bull standing majestically on gently rolling hills of South Dakota, with seasonal grasses subtly signaling the transition to fall.

 

Instead, my first glimpse of a buffalo at Custer State Park was next to a picnic area. But it didn't keep me from snapping away with my camera, joining a bunch of other wildlife paparazzi. (I was safely ensconced in my car at the time because I'm a rule follower. Those people over on the bridge must not have seen the signs.)

"Not what I was hoping for," I lamented to my faithful chauffeur as we drove away. 

 

We were nearing the end of the wildlife loop at Custer State Park before we saw any other buffalo or wildlife of any kind.

 

Randy made a new friend.

This young burro seemed to give me the Greta Garbo treatment, "I want to be alone." As you can see, we weren't the only visitors stopped along the roadway. People literally were weaving around them on the road to continue their journey. They reminded me of cattle who sometimes have to be nudged from a feed bunk with the fender of the pickup.

The wild burros (who didn't appear so wild anymore) trace their roots to a herd that once hauled visitors to the top of Harney Peak. At the rate they move these days, it would take awhile.

 

This stretch of road also featured a landscape dotted with buffalo. OK, maybe I have to tell you that's what they are. But I did get the interesting sky and those rolling South Dakota hills I was talking about.

 The buffalo didn't seem too concerned about the traffic jam in their neighborhood.

This coming weekend, September 24-26, Custer State Park will have even more spectators. But they'll get to see the buffalo on the move as cowboys and cowgirls roundup and drive the herd of approximately 1,300 buffalo to corrals for health checks, branding and sorting. It would be a sight to see - as long as you could find a place among some 20,000-plus people expected to gather to watch.

On second thought, I'm just as happy with our more solitary viewing - even if it wasn't particularly dramatic.

Sightseeing wasn't really on the agenda for our trip to South Dakota. However, we did manage to check out some sights during our arrival and departure. And, yes, I was the country bumpkin taking photos of farm things found in downtown Rapid City after supper.

Our trip took us through portions of the Black Hills National Forest ...

One of several one-car tunnels on the twisty road

... and Wind Cave National Park. (Randy was the one who wanted to stand by the signs. Really, I didn't make him!)

We also drove through part of the Badlands on the way to Rapid City. Randy really wanted to use his Senior Pass to the National Parks system.

It's kind of been burning a hole in his pocket, so to speak. (My parents used to say that about birthday money acquired by one of my siblings who shall remain nameless.)

 

It was an overcast morning, but there was still mysterious beauty in the landscape.

Beauty on the landscape, but just a couple of old Kansans in the foreground. 

 And speaking of Kansas things, I had to take a photo of a sunflower, too. The background didn't look much like home though.

 

 

The Badlands is another one of those "you've-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it" places. 

 

 

It's also a place where amateur photos just don't capture how beautiful it truly is (kind of like Grand Canyon photos). 

 

 

But, of course, that didn't keep me from attempt after attempt. This was our third time to drive through portions of the Badlands. But it's different every time because of the lighting and the season.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in 1935: "I've been about the world a lot and pretty much over our own country, but I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Badlands. What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal ... and an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it."

 

It's amazing how much the landscape changes from one overlook to the next - from browns, to reds to yellows and tints in between. The Lakota Indians knew the place as mako sica. Early French trappers called the area les mauvaises terres a traverser. Both mean "bad lands."

They may be "bad lands." But they sure are pretty.

 

We had a pretty stop at the Valentine (Nebraska) National Wildlife Refuge, too. 

It may not have been a long stop. But we still explored "the wonder book of nature" that Franklin Roosevelt was talking about. Thankfully, we're not far from that bestseller here at home either.

Les mauvaises terres a traverser (The Badlands)

The "flowers" bloomed from earth that looked more like gravel than quality soil. The wispy yellow blooms seemed out of place when set against a jagged and unforgiving landscape. It was a little like pinning a boutonniere on a grungy work shirt. It made you look twice to make sure it wasn't a mirage. 

Our unplanned trip to South Dakota wasn't a tourist trek. We had made the 12-hour drive to be with Randy's brother, Lyle, in the hospital. But on our way back to Kansas, we drove through Badlands National Park.
Closeup, the unyielding land seems anything but beautiful or productive. But the sweeping landscapes of peaks, gullies, buttes and prairies help you overlook the unforgiving soil.

It's another one of those "you've-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it" places. It's also a place where amateur photos just don't capture how beautiful it truly is (kind of like Grand Canyon photos).

But, of course, that didn't keep me from attempt after attempt!

In some places, it looks like I imagine the surface of the moon to be - full of craters and crevices.  But instead of the totally "black hole" of space, a blue fall sky provided the backdrop for the stark environment.

In other places, it was almost as if the rocks formed cathedral spires, like architecture from the natural world.

 

In fact, architect Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in 1935: "I've been about the world a lot and pretty much over our own country, but I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Badlands. What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal ... and an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it."

It's amazing how much the landscape changes from one overlook to the next - from browns, to reds to yellows and tints in between. The Lakota Indians knew the place as mako sica. Early French trappers called the area les mauvaises terres a traverser. Both mean "bad lands."

By mid-September, children are back in school and families aren't on a summer road trip. But there were still plenty of people exploring the terrain - from those on motorcycles to private cars to buses to campers - all of us in awe of God's creation. 

“The Bad Lands grade all the way from those that are almost rolling in character

 to those that are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color

 as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.”
— President Theodore Roosevelt

Authorized as Badlands National Monument on March 4, 1929, President Franklin Roosevelt issued a proclamation on January 25, 1939, that established Badlands National Monument. In the late 1960s, Congress passed legislation adding more than 130,000 acres of Oglala Sioux tribal land (used since World War II as a U.S. Air Force bombing and gunnery range) to the Badlands to be managed by the National Park Service. 

 

An agreement between the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the National Park Service governing the management of these lands was signed in 1976. The new Stronghold and Palmer Creek units added lands having significant scenic, scientific and cultural resources, according to the National Park Service. The park consists of nearly 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires blended with the largest, protected mixed grass prairie in the United States.

More than 11,000 years of human history pales to the eons old paleontological resources. Badlands National Park contains the world’s richest Oligocene epoch fossil beds, dating 23 to 35 million years old. The evolution of mammal species such as the horse, sheep, rhinoceros and pig are studied in the Badlands formations by scientists.

The only animals we saw were big horn sheep, some of which grazed near the roadways. Well, I take that back. We also saw prairie dog towns, and several photographers flocked to those areas to play hide-and-seek with the rodents. However, I can see prairie dogs as I drive toward WalMart in Hutchinson, so we skipped that stop.

I also imagined a bird perched on top of the rock when I saw this formation.

And I thought an animal could have been crouched inside this "cave."(On the lefthand side of the shot.)

 

 The Badlands wasn't all massive rock formations. There were also some areas of plains.

But it was time to return to our own home on the Kansas plains. So we left the Badlands behind and hit the road.

Our only tourist stop in Nebraska was a quick gaze from the overlook of the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. And then we headed the car south to our home near the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge.

Ghostwriter

Kathy's post to Facebook: The little sister has to ride in the back seat, just like old times!

Miles: 1,725.
Days: 4.
Siblings: 3.
Nieces: 2
Years since the last family vacation: 42
Time together: Priceless (or so I hear)

This week, Randy went on an adventure with his sister, Kathy, to visit their brother, Lyle, in South Dakota. Kathy's girls - Amanda and Emily - went along for the ride. They wanted to know how long it had been since Randy and Kathy had been on a family vacation. After some difficult math calculations, the siblings figured out it would have been 1973. The summer before Randy's senior year in high school, their family went to Ohio to visit family.

This was a last-minute trip. With rain in the forecast for another week, Randy called Kathy on the way home from Topeka on Saturday (May 23) and they left Monday morning (May 25) for Deadwood, South Dakota. He got home at 11:30 last night (May 28).

For the uninitiated, that's a farmer-style vacation. It's a last-minute excursion based totally on the weather. (The last time Randy and I visited Lyle, we left in a drought-stricken August.) Jill says that's how nearly all our family vacations happened, with the exception of some spring break trips. Since I had meetings every day this week and KFRM reports to do, I couldn't go at the last minute.

So, I will be the ghostwriter for this adventure. There is a marked difference when I actually go on the trip. In October 2010, we went to South Dakota (and Nebraska and Wyoming). I took 437 photos, and it took me seven blog posts to tell the tale.

Randy says he often commented to his traveling companions that "Kim would want to stop to take a picture." He did send me 11 photos from his phone - after he figured out how to do it. (I told him that he had three knowledgeable technology consultants in the car with him and just to ask!)

He sent me this photo of the Platte River at Grand Island, Nebraska. He literally took it standing in the parking lot at Arby's. He was well aware that I would have probably searched for a more scenic angle. 

Kathy was a good travel agent and booked a nice hotel, the Grand Mountain Resort Holiday Inn in Deadwood. Randy called and said that it was where Iowa farmer Chris Soules and his entourage from ABC's "The Bachelor" stayed and filmed an episode.

They got a good price since it was the off-season. One guy told Randy that October and May were the "times for newlyweds and nearly deads." I guess the Fritzemeier travel party didn't fit the parameters.

They toured the Broken Boot Gold Mine in Deadwood. Randy says it was probably more tourist trap than gold mine, but they still had fun. He got a stock certificate "which has no voting power and has a par value of plenty of blue sky when traded on the Deadwood Stock Exchange."

 

They also went to the 76 Museum in Deadwood. (FYI; The shirt and the hat were photo props - thank goodness!)

The museum had a basement full of buggies.

One of their favorite side trips was to Mount Rushmore. It was a must-see for Kathy and the girls.

Randy texted us to say that when he turns 62, he can buy a pass to all the national parks for a mere $10. Jill told him that it wasn't all that long.

Amanda, Kathy & Emily

Thankfully, they were able to get a few snapshots in and explore the monument before it started pouring rain, along with some hail.

 

They went through the Badlands on the way back to Kansas yesterday. This is the one photo I got via text. I took dozens from the same area.

Another difference: I probably would have suggested we not make the drive in one day. How can you get 437 photos otherwise?