Badlands to Bighorn

Badlands to Big Horn from Barry Hovland on Vimeo.

Wind Cave National Park is a small dot on a big map. We were just going to drive through, stay one night and be on our merry way. Well sometime in the early afternoon we decided to stop and get gas and beer about 30 min outside of the park. The store attendant was going on and on about how he had to work nights now & how he would rather be spending a night at a campsite and a fire. We indicated that we were “sorry dude” and “we’ll have one for you”. This happened almost exactly 2 minutes before we tried and tried to start the truck but with no avail. So we were stuck in Hot Springs, South Dakota at a gas station on a crossroad to nowhere with a non-sympathetic guy behind the counter.
Approximately two hours after calling AAA, the tow truck driver said that the mechanic was off until Monday but he knew a nice, cheap motel that would take us in for the night (See attached pic of the lovely Skyline motel) and he would try and call another guy that he knew. Luckily, the other mechanic came in on Saturday to replace our starter and charge us a cool up charge for the OT hours. By 11 am though, we were on to the Wind Cave, which we realized just a tad over walking distance away from the motel. C’est la Vie!
On to Wyoming…
We woke up this morning at Devils Tower with high hopes of driving to the Roosevelt country of Yellowstone. Barry is very excited to get to Yellowstone. Even as we cross into new forests and parks he still looks at the Yellowstone pamphlet. I even found a “99 things to do in Yellowstone” magazine that I didn’t know he had. Our GPS told us to take I-90 all the way to Billings, MO and then back down to Wyoming and based on what the truck was telling me I thought that we should take the pass with the lesser mountains. Neither our atlas nor our GPS had any indication of topography so we had to decide our future without the proper information. We originally decided to go through Montana so we could stop at the Hot Springs and maybe stay a night but then a highway sign said Route 16 to Yellowstone scenic by-way & lesser grade. Well that did it for me anything that would lessen the load on the truck for it has 400 lbs of human in it, the bed is filled to the brim and it has a steel body. That 2.2L engine doesn’t stand a chance against a steep grade.
We exited in Buffalo, WY. We were hoping to find a lunch place that had wifi so I could post the MN video. We found a cute little ice cream shop that also served up lunch and some technology, it did both well. Barry was getting anxious after lunch because the video I was uploading was not processing fast enough and he wanted to get going. I pretended that I needed his help with something that I couldn’t do all by my little self. It worked, and we left late. We entered the mountains almost directly after leaving town. The truck pushed and pushed and after going 40 miles per hour in an upward direction for about 2 hours we decided that we should find a campsite and stay the night. It was late September and at least 4 of the campsites we tried were closed. We finally came across a lovely, little spot along Leigh Creek. You will see it in the video. I gave myself a pedicure there and Barry got some great shots. No set schedule has its advantages.