Day 7: All hail breaks loose

We awoke in our hotel in Mitchell, South Dakota around 8, and looked out the window to find pitch black skies. Given that the sun rises here around 6:30, this seemed strange. Then it started to rain, and we realized we were looking into the face of one huge mother of a nasty thunderstorm storm cell. We tuned into the Weather Channel, and instead of seeing the local weather, they were doing live reports of their tornado chasers, who had been tracking some storm overnight out of Oklahoma or somewhere. We paid little attention, and got dressed, ready to have breakfast.


Then the hail started. We looked out the window and watched a lady run to her car and drive it under the only shelter around: the drive through of the check in window.

An out of focus shot at 8:41 of the start

A minute later, the hail started pounding on the roof of the hotel, then banging and crashing. The hail was now the size of golf balls, and they were hitting everything and bouncing.

8:43. Other cars start to move

Then the hail grew to the size of baseballs.

8:44

Parts started coming off the roof of the hotel. Someone outside trying to move their car was hit and knocked down. Someone threw a mattress out of their room onto the roof of their car. And then the hail stopped.


I went out into the pouring rain and this is what I found:

My windshield destroyed

My car was full of dents. The roof bullet was undamaged. Another car (a VW Passat convertible from Ontario) had the rear window broken into a million pieces. We went back to look at the Weather Channel again and it turns out the supercell the tornado dudes were tracking all night was the one hitting us. By now, the National Weather Service was issuing severe hail warnings (about 15 min too late).


I got on the phone and called my insurance company and registered the claim. While I was on the phone, another supercell showed up on the radar. The NWS updated their warning and said another hail storm was going to hit within 10 min. I leapt into my car and drove into Mitchell, hoping to find some kind of parkade for protections. No such luck. But the place was a mess of downed branches, leaves and building parts. Lots of vehicles had been hit. By the time the next storm cell arrived, all I could find was a church parking lot partially protected with trees. I was lucky that the hail was small and inconsequential.


Back to the hotel, I started to try and find a way to get my windshield replaced in Mitchell. No can do, at least not on a Saturday AM. So I started going further afield, and found both a windshield and guy to replace it about an hour down the road at Sioux Falls.


Around then, the NWS stormtracker dudes noted that Chamberlain, SD had been hit with grapefruit sized hail overnight. We stopped in Chamberlain yesterday for a break. They also mentioned the storms were moving east at 45 mph. Sioux Falls is east. The radar said we would drive back into the edges of them.


So we headed slowly to Sioux Falls, driving with this view:

Good job it wasn't sunny

The nice guy (Craig at Novus Glass) whipped my windshield out and put the new one in in under 45 min.

Out with the shattered one

And I pushed back in the knocked out trim, found other broken bits, and tried to assess the damage.

Dents in the hood

We had to wait for 30 min or so for the windshield glue to set before getting back on the highway, so picnicked in a very wet and cold (13°) park before heading off. About an hour south, just before the South Dakota/Iowa border on I-29, it was 18°. Within 5 miles it rose to 32°, and got to 34° just north of Kansas City.


We tuned into the Weather Channel again last night. The stormtracker dudes were sitting just behind a supercell that had blown over a semi-trailer, had funnel clouds forming under it, and were dumping golfball sized hail on things. The storms location? Salem, SD, halfway between Mitchell and Sioux Falls. We watched for an hour as they compared that storm with the "storm of the century" that pounded Mitchell the previous day -- the one that hit us. They were surprised that ours didn't have a tornado in it.


My car now hates me, I think. It has been a great vehicle for the last 8 years, and now it got beat up for no reason. Sorry, poor thing.

Days 5 & 6: Caves & Badlands

Sadly, it was time to leave wonderful Custer State Park. On our way out, we stopped in at adjoining Wind Cave National Park for a wander underground in the world's 5th longest cave. The Black Hills have a rim of limestone that's studded with caves due to all the fracturing that occurred when the centre granite section of the Black Hills was uplifted. Some, like Jewel Cave (the 2nd longest cave complex in the world, only about 40 miles away), are "wet" caves, with traditional stalactite & stalagmite stuff. Wind is a "dry" cave, made up of a lot of cracks that have had water affect them, but look a little different.


Some caves have a big entrance. Other's don't.

That little hole is it

Fortunately, they built a door to get in. And an elevator to get out. Primary unique feature of this cave? Boxwork, of which 98% of the world's supply is found here.

The boxwork is the lattice like structure dangling from the roof

The cave guide NPS Ranger didn't know much about caves, and a lot of her script was wrong (she was an American History major specializing in Indian studies. Perhaps some geology might have been useful). And though we were underground for over an hour, she barely stopped walking. Still, we liked it, and Wind Cave is also a nice National Park.


From there, we crossed the bald flat prairie to get to the Badlands.

The southern section

The American badlands warrant National Park status; the Canadian ones only get Provincial protection. Ours are nicer, with more colour, and more cool fossils (though they have found sabre toothed cat and alligator and turtles and early deer and early dogs and other stuff here).

The car and KC

Not nearly as colourful as ours

Big deep canyons

The park does have Swift Fox and Black Footed Ferrets, both very rare (no, we didn't see them), rattlesnakes (which everyone we met had seen, but not us), rabbits...

Non-feral

...and meadowlarks. Loud meadowlarks. Lots of loud meadowlarks.

Yelling melodiously, as usual

In contrast to Custer State Park, where we camped under budding oak trees next to a pleasant babbling brook, in Badlands we got to camp under one of the 5 trees in the park -- perhaps because we were one of only 6 occupied sites in the 80+ site campground (2 of which belonged to the campground hosts).

Little campsite on the prairie

The wind was howling in the evening, so I got to practice for flying my kites on Cape Hattaras.

Note the dark foreboding skies

It socked in overnight and at 4 AM we were awoken by continuous lighting flashes that made the sky a constant white (and continuous thunder sounding like a train going by). At 4:30 AM, it started to rain, and it poured for an hour. Our tent only leaked a tiny bit. But this was a taste of things to come.


On our way out of the badlands to our planned overnight stop in Mitchell, SD, we wanted to stop in at one of the newest National Parks, Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, which shows off the missile silo of a Minuteman II missile, plus an occasional tour of the underground launch control facility. Unfortunately, the silo was 15 miles west (we were heading east) and the tour was to start so late we would not get into Mitchell at any reasonable hour for dinner. That was a disappointment.

Days 3 & 4: The Black Hills, & Custer State Park

We camped for 3 nights and spent two days exploring the southeast corner of the Black Hills. Despite having spent 2 days driving, we spent our first day hitting the main tourist traps sights, Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument, plus driving the roads in the park.

Now, the latter doesn't sound interesting, but the designer of the various roads (former SD Governor and all around excellent guy Peter Norbeck) was a road design artist and poet. His main routes (the Iron Hills Road, the Needles Parkway and the Wildlife Loop) are downright beautiful feats of engineering. Tunnels feature head on views of Mt. Rushmore.

Those faces

The road has spiral bridges called pigtials. It glides through slots in the rocks...

A tunnel in a slot

...past cool rock formations...

The Eye of the Needle for which the Needles are named

...with exceptional overlooks.

Those faces, dead on 

The Cathedrals. Little Devil's Tower on the left

Extraordinary road building. Still, glad not to encounter stuck RVs.

However, the goal of the day was to catch Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Fellow non-Americans, do yourself a favour: save the $11 parking charge (in the gigantic 6 level parking garage, which I'm betting is full in the summer) and admire the artwork of the carving of Rushmore by Mr. Borglum from a distance. It is so over the top "love America" patriotic that it might make you nauseous. If the walk of the state flags doesn't do it...

Still don't understand how Roosevelt made it

...the fact that it's carved in the middle of land deeded to the Indians in the Treaty of Fort Laramie (which the US seized back in 1877 because that doofus Custer found gold in the Black Hills and told the world about it) might. But I digress.

On to Crazy Horse, the pissed off Indian's answer to Mt. Rushmore. It's an itty-bitty sculpture; the faces of Mt. Rushmore could fit on the side of Crazy Horse's face (the only part finished). It's been 60 years in the making, and as of this week, it looks like this:

60 years of work. One guy for the first 30. His family for the rest.

What it will look like when finished. In another 100 years, I bet.

This is a commercial operation, paid for entirely by admission fees and sales of junk in the visitor's centre and (not very good at all) Museum of the Indians of North America. Supposedly, when they're done (in like 2100 or so at the rate they're going), there will be a university & city for the Sioux, Oglala and Lakota people at it's base. Never let it be said the Indians have a short sighted view on things. I'm surprised his finger is pointing out, not up.

With the crass commercial stuff out of the way, we got to enjoy Custer State Park. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, this place is great. Wildlife abounds.

Overly friendly feral burros block the road 

Prairie dogs and meadowlarks 

Pronghorn 

A baby bison nurses

Bighorn sheep invade the campground

The campgrounds are lovely. The washrooms are nice, the showers free. The birds throughout the park were extraordinary. The only downside was no gray water disposal location for the tents. And the hiking... oh, the hiking. We climbed to Harney Peak ("the highest peak between the Rockies and the Pyrenees in France" -- higher than all those pesky mountains in the middle of the Atlantic, I guess...).

Harney Peak Lookout Tower

Aside from a WHOLE lot of pine beetle infected trees and the detritus thereof, the views were spectacular.

On the trail 

The tower on the top as we approach

Access to the tower 

The Cathedrals 

Little Devil's Tower 

From inside the tower

You can even see the backside of Mt. Rushmore, too.

Old joke, but I had to

No, actually. It looks like this:

It's the lump on the left. 1 of 2 parking garages visible

In the Cathedrals on the way down

Now, we wanted to get to the top of Little Devil's Tower, too, but just as we made it to the saddle between the Cathedrals and the Tower, thunder started. Top of Tower = not a good place to be in a lightning storm. So we headed down, getting rained on. The thunder rattled for hours, and a little more rain fell as I cooked dinner. This was a portent of things to come.

And the trip starts: Days 1 & 2

Though we left last Sunday, today is the first day we have been thoroughly internet connected. I will attempt to summarize, and come back and post later some details of our trip. In the interests of my sanity and breaking this into bite sized chunks, I offer it a few days at a time.


Day 1: Home to Billings, Montana


An 11 hour drive (the longest of the vacation) with limited interest, save for a train on a really big bridge (at Lethbridge)...

Very long & very tall

...dramatic wind turbines in northeast Montana...

Oooh, the white against the storm clouds...

...and a really crappy hotel in Billings, where the wireless internet worked (but not in our room), the room was switched from smoking to non-smoking the night before (based on the stench in the room), and the only "closet" was three screws hanging out of a bracket on the wall (that presumably actually held a clothes rail at one time).

Note the coat hanger. Actually supplied in the room. 

Day 2: Billings to the Black Hills

Our first stop of the day was at the Little Big Horn, where it became really obvious what an idiot bad general and poor strategist Custer was.

The cemetery

Fallen soldier's headstones... 

...placed where they probably fell

More on Custer in a later post.

Thence past a lot of pronghorn to Devil's Tower, a place we really liked and were very sorry we weren't able to spend more time.

Trust vehicle at the overlook

Very cool.

It smelled nice here, and the forest was wonderful. Sigh. Off, then, to our target campground in Custer State Park in the Black Hills. Where we were greeted by deer in the campground on arrival...

Four or so...

...and 8 buffalo just outside the campground fence in the morning.

Big. Really big.