May 26, 2011
At Keystone, S. D.

A view of the rugged Badlands topography in western South Dakota. Click to enlarge.
Driving west on Interstate 90 from eastern South Dakota the terrain is mostly agricultural, mostly flat. It has been a cool spring, and the trees – sparse – are just leafing out. Cool notwithstanding, rain has been abundant recently, the rivers are high and the grass is green. It is a pleasing agricultural landscape, if marred by literally hundreds of signs – you might see a half dozen in a single mile of highway – for Wall Drug, a tourist haven in Wall, a dusty small town notable perhaps only because it happens to be the closest town to Badlands National Park. In fact, Wall is named for the wall of rock that is central to the Badlands. The signs for Wall Drug, which is a connected series of wood frame buildings selling souvenirs, western clothing and furniture, and food, continue on the westbound side of the highway for easily 150 miles, maybe more. It did not take long for me to find them annoying. Fortunately, Badlands-bound visitors can exit the highway and drive a few miles south to take a 30-mile long scenic drive through Badlands National Park, free of commercial sign pollution. The Badlands are a sudden and dramatic change in the scenery, truly a first taste of the mountain west for travelers arriving from the east. Spires of rock rise from the landscape, deep ravines below, rounded peaks in other areas, some with unusual knobs and protrusions on top. Woven in are gullies and expansive stretches of prairie, all of it enriched with more life than a visitor might expect. A bighorn sheep stood in the road at one point as we drove the loop. As I hiked one of the many trails during the visit, a western meadowlark sang from the very top of one of the stiletto rock formations. As if to emphasize that this is the real west, black-billed magpies, among the better known birds of the west, hopped and fluttered near picnic areas along the scenic drive. Wall Drug, indeed.

Another view of the formations within Badlands National Park, South Dakota. Click to enlarge
The Badlands topography is all about erosion of soft rock, and as I hiked over some wet terrain among the peaks it truly seemed as if the standing pools of water were thick with eroded sediment. The books say the Badlands rock erodes at the rate of an inch or more a year – incredibly quick by geological standards. The evidence was at my feet.
Black Hills National Forest is less than an hour away, and Mount Rushmore, within the Black Hills, is less than 90 minutes away. It was quite cool in the Black Hills this morning with strong breezes, gusts at times. But the sky was a deep blue, and the National Park Service gate at Mount Rushmore National Monument was unlocked at 6:30 – before the park actually opens.

Mount Rushmore, Keystone, S. D., shortly after sunrise. Click to enlarge.
I was able to slip in, have the place to myself, and get some nice photos. The park service did a terrific job creating an elegant, tasteful and ever-so-useful platform for the public to view the decades-long work of Gutzon Borglum, who, with help, transformed a craggy mass of granite into the remarkably recognizable portraits of four presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. In the pantheon of American presidents, these four are surely among the greatest; a case can be made that they are the four greatest so far.
I ran into a park service ranger immediately, and told him I came through the untended gate. He said that was no problem. I was fortunate also in that there is railing at the end of the main entryway, just above the viewing amphitheater. The railing became my tripod – I placed the camera atop the railing and held it steady as I shot, which surely helped in getting crisp images of the mountaintop sculpture.
At 9:30 I arrived at the Big Pond Trailhead on the 111-mile-long Centennial Trail, a long, through-trail cut to commemorate South Dakota’s centennial in 1989. No sooner had I entered the woods from the parking lot than I spooked four young mule deer, yet another western species. This section of the trail is within the Black Hills National Forest, a forest dominated by the ponderosa pine, one of the signature pines of the west. Ponderosa pine has distinctive orange-ish bark, and clusters of long deep green needles. It is a handsome tree found in much of the mountain west, and always nice company on a hike.