THE LIGHT IN FRONT

This.

This was the very first thing I saw when I opened the tent in the morning. Fucking rabbits everywhere! How awesome is that?

I chased a few of em around and ended up at the edge of camp where the grass was a little bit taller. Off in the distance, some decidedly crazy rock formations littered the horizon. I cracked open a wheat ale and cheered to what would surely be my most bizarre birthday ever. That’s right. I turned 29 years old that day. No time to waste, we had breakfast and devised a plan for exploration.

Reading the maps and brochures, we saw there was a much more primitive camping area somewhere far into the Badlands, and we were definitely intrigued. We decided to get in the car and head straight there to scope out the situation, and catch a few sights on the way there.

We quickly realized how fucking nuts this place was a few minutes into the drive. Along each side of the road, the vastest landscapes you could possibly ever imagine unfolded into infinity. Pictures couldn’t capture the sheer enormity of the space around us.

The scenic drive at Shenandoah was pretty phenomenal, but this was on a whole other level. This was like traveling into a Dali landscape on Ambien, totally fucking crazy stuff. We also ran into some recently-introduced herds of bighorn sheep, some of them sporting marker collars:

There were even some getting some grub by the side of the road:

Look at those balls.

Those are sensational!

It took us about an hour to get to the general area of the second campground. The paved street had given way to a dirt-and-pebble road, and vast prairies and meadows had replaced rock formations around us. I started seeing an increase in insects smashing against the windshield of the car, and some of these were quite considerable in heft and size. Eventually it became totally out of control… it was plain to see that I was smashing into piles and piles of these things, so I stopped to see what the hell were these creatures.

Oh nice. Just another good ol’ locust invasion. I cannot possibly describe how many of these were around. They would lift off by the hundreds in front of the car, scattering desperately this way and that, a big number of those not quite making it out of the way before my car barreled through. We actually ended up having to traverse this road often, and each time it was straight unabashed and unavoidable genocide levels of massacre. My grill quickly became a instrument of gore and death:

I estimate, without an ounce of hyperbole, that I murdered somewhere between 2500-3000 specimens during my stay there, maybe even more, and I know for a fact that it didn’t even register on the overall population. There were millions upon millions of these little guys everywhere.

Thankfully these were relatively chill grasshoppers, maybe an inch and a half at the longest, and lacking the crazy destructive swarming tendencies some of their relatives have. They basically stayed hidden in the grass until you walked through, and would occasionally land on your stuff, dispelled with a quick shoo.

As we got closer to the campground area, this awesome sign dutifully warned us of the very real dangers of deranged bison attacks. I can’t get enough of this face:

AAAARARRARRAARARGHHFFLGHH!!!!!!

We eventually found the campground set deep into the prairie, with what else but a giant prairie dog town bordering the entrance. I’m sure I don’t need to sell you on how awesome these little guys are, but here’s a reminder:

The other camp had bunnies, but overall I give the prairie dogs a slight advantage in radness factor. They were also chowing down like crazy on the plentiful grasshoppers so they were kinda fat too. This was one of many reasons why we immediately understood that it was imperative to switch camps over here. Most of the spots were empty, with just a handful of people around, but space was limited… we had to haul ass back across the park to the first camp to strike down the tent and bring it over here.

I reluctantly murdered a few hundred more grasshoppers on the way there and back, and in the meantime found a good spot for the obligatory panorama (click to enlarge):

^ Click it for giganto blowyourmind-o-vision ^

Two hours later, we were back in our new setting, and our tent was up and running.

We sat down for a quick snack, and were often visited by friendly grasshoppers. This one was especially friendly, not so much because he was fond of humans, but because he had no hind legs to hop away with:

Then we took off for a short walk up the nearest hill, to take a good overhead look at our camp. Click on the image to see a bigger version, see if you can find the Superyaris and get a sense of scale:

It was a heavenly grassland paradise. I couldn’t ask for a more idyllic setting for my birthday.

We chilled on that hillside till close to sundown, then headed back down to get going on a knockout megameal: pasta in ginger-carrot sauce, with fresh veggies and thai curry cashew nuts. We gorged ourselves on extreme yummy, then sat back to watch the night sky take over. Hanna had finally revealed a birthday surprise she had been teasing me about, which turned out to be a crazy little book with a collection of legends and unique occurrences in the nearby Black Hills, home of Mt. Rushmore and a place with an incredibly colorful past. We read a couple of entries aloud, and finally made it a plan that we would stay at least one night there during our trip; it sounded pretty damn magical.

Rains seemed to be a complete non-issue that night, so we took the risk of removing the rainfly on the tent and kept the whole thing open for maximum natural exposure (so much for the policeman’s advice about rattlesnakes). We drifted asleep under a giant blanket of stars, wondering what adventures awaited the following day.

Note: I wrote about 4 hours worth of blog stuff the other day and when I hit “save draft” the whole shit got erased. Shortly after that, I punched things.

So up we get in Wisconsin for a quick coffee and 10 hours of ass haulin’. The drive was about as long as it sounds, but was nevertheless punctuated by several moments of interest.

The first was my first (and only) stoppage by a police officer for speeding, a few hours into Minnesota. To some extent I wasn’t too stressed when I got caught cause it often happens to people on these roadtrips. Somewhere on this drive you cross a threshold where cars on the road around you completely disappear and you have no proper frame of reference for average traffic speed. It’s very easy to keep accelerating without really feeling it, and before I know it a cop Mustang is flashing his lights behind me. I figured what the hell, get a ticket and take it easy from now on.

Officer pulls up, wearing an impressive Wilford Brimley moustache, and says “Wow, Puerto Rico, that’s a long way from here!”. Once again, my license plate sparks debate, in this case a very positive one. He was immediately interested on how the hell a PR car ended up in Minnesota, and when I told him the tale of the trip, as well as our plans to get to the Badlands, he lit up with smiles. Turns out he camps there often, and the traffic stop ended up with him sharing stories and tips for our stay there (”Tons of rattlesnakes!”). He let us go with a warning and a good luck. Big ups to the garita for saving the day.

A few hours after that we hit up Sioux Falls for a quick stop at a co-op and a late lunch. We committed the cardinal sin of getting groceries while hungry, so we logically bought more food than we could possibly consume for the entire stay. Thai curry cashew nuts? Are you kidding me? Gimme a pound of that shit. Armfuls of fresh fruit and delicious organic stuff, it ended up being a great thing for me, since afterwards I inherited the hefty leftover bounty and enjoyed it for days afterwards. Thanks for the hookup, Hanna.

We also came across an absolutely majestic wind farm with gigantic windmills as far as the eye could see:

The day crept along and sundown was imminent while we were about an hour and a half away from the Badlands. Not only that, but a terrific shitkicker of a storm was brewing from the south, and was quickly taking over the sky:

We had only one last stop to make, to fill up on gas and get a few last minute items. We stopped at a station about 10 miles away from the entrance to the Badlands. The wind picked up considerably while I was pumping gas, and as sharp raindrops started pelting my head, I became extremely concerned about the conditions in which we would have to set up a tent later on. I was about to hop in the car and tear ass down the road when Hanna comes back from a building next to the gas station, telling me I HAVE to go see something real quick. I explain we have to get out of there NOW, but she convinces me it’ll be worth the extra 2 galons of water I would have dumped on me by the sky later.

So I follow her into this building, which was some sort of western art gallery/wild west museum, full of stuffed buffalo heads and shit with feathers on it. We go all the way to the back, avoiding some protruding antlers along the way, and reach an unassuming doorway on the back wall, which Hanna prompts me to open and look inside.

I twist the handle and step into another fucking dimension.

In front of me was an entire ancient wild west town, with horse stables, bales of hay, a sheriff’s office, bars with swinging doors and windows for drunkard defenestration, you name it. All there in perfect pristine condition, the main street laid out in front of me with rows of buildings on each side, rolling hills on the far end, and an ominous sky beginning to thunder above it all. Apparently some rich dude way back wanted to preserve this town, which originally resided in another land, and thus transported every single original still-standing building to this new location, hidden behind a gas station. Super fucking awesome and totally worth the delay, but due to the urgency of leaving I was not able to grab my camera for a few pics.

We peel out of the gas station/taxidermist art gallery/wormhole into the past and cover the last short leg to the park entrance. By then, darkness had fallen in, and the storm had begun to rage… the outlook was pretty dismal. Even though the rain wasn’t too terrible, the winds would make it impossible to set up a tent. Unsurprisingly, there was no one at the entrance present to charge us the $10 we were supposed to pay for a 7-day pass, so we just passed through and headed to the main camp, which was supposed to be about 6 miles in from the park entrance.

That short trip was about as intense an introduction to the Badlands as you can get. We were in total darkness and completely unable to see anything beyond the reach of the headlights. The only indication of what lay around us came with the frequent flashes of lightning that would outline eerie rock formations in the distance, giving the distinct impression of walking straight into Mordor.

We reach the camp, and to our surprise, quite a few people had settled in, weather be damned. We nabbed what appeared to be a good spot, at least from what we could tell in the darkness. Miraculously enough, no sooner do we get out of the vehicle that the weather clears up, the winds die down, and rain barely registers (the darkness stays though), and so we got the tent up in no time, followed by a quick delicious meal. We fell asleep knowing we were deep into the Badlands, but we were clueless as to what actually lay around us.

I had no idea what to expect the next morning when the sun woke me up and I opened that tent zipper.