2/28-3/6/17
Current Location: West Yellowstone, MT
A big post to catch up on the last week or so of adventures. Leaving, Wyoming with the winds still whipping we crossed over into South Dakota in some very open and rural roads. We pointed towards the Black Hills and our first foray into this new state.
The Black Hills are a very cool area, with forest service roads into remote terrain, rolling hills, some jagged crags and generally a great place to go run, bike, hike or, this season, snowmobile. Our first destination was Wind Cave National Park. We somehow found another cave national park with malfunctioning elevators so we partook in an abbreviated hike in tour. This cave could not be more different than Carlsbad. The entrance to the 3rd largest cave in the world is 8” x 24” and because of the small size, the pressures between the outside and inside cause significant winds either in or out, hence the name. For tours their is a air lock entrance and the cave is much narrower and smaller than Carlsbad. Plus the visitation is a tiny fraction. We were two of only three people to take the tours that day. What is most astounding is that the cave, at just over 145 miles long, still has over 3,000 “leads”, meaning there are 3,000 points in the cave that have yet to be explored.
Crap...
Next was Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately, we picked a day in late February that had the monument fogged in, with only a 20 second glimpse at the famous American heads of state. We continued along the clearly tourist trap roads which were empty given the season and stopped at a local brewery before finding a great campsite just a few hundred yards off the main road on a snowy forest service road. Night was cold in the upper single digits and intermittent snow showers kept things frosty in the morning. Feeling bad for starting the van in very cold temps a few too many times we finally busted out our generator and, in the morning, gave Hobbes a proper warm up before pointed back towards Mount Rushmore.
This morning thankfully was clear and the quick stop to see the carvings was worth it. We dropped out of the Black Hills and towards the Badlands. Along the way, we stopped at the famous Wall Drug and, we learned, the only National Grassland Ranger Station in the country. The latter was hugely informative and provided us with a map and a few recommendations to camp for the evening
We headed into Badlands National Park and took the scenic drive and made a quick jaunt up a hike through the rock and plateau formations that make the park famous. We had been watching the sky, clouds and sun much of the afternoon and we timed a snack, sunset, gaze perfectly.
We drove a short ways out of the park and up a double track dirt road as the skies turned dark and a healthy snow squall went through. Now, we have driven many a forest service road before, however, this was quite different. First, “forest” is not the right word. This is National Grassland. For as far as the eye can see there is 2 foot high grass, occasionally interrupted by the famous South Dakota Badlands. In this case, our recommendation had both. We perched ourselves in the dark, with 20 mile per hour wind blown snow, atop a plateau overlooking what I can only imagine was the rest of the state of South Dakota. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time because of the snow and darkness. Only in the morning, after sleeping with the sound of winds buffeting the side of the van, did we realize our view. That empty void 10 feet to our passenger side was the perfect place for sunrise overlooking miles of eroded earth and prairie.
We got an official run in with windy, cold weather in the morning along the plateau and did a little off roading, grassland-style. The rest of the day was spent heading west back into Wyoming, eventually ending at Devils Tower. We arrived at a “campground” overlooking the tower late afternoon and did a quick walk around the tower. Turns out we were the only people all day to do the easy 1.3 mile hike around the base of the tower, as evidenced by the lack of any footprints in the paved, snow covered walkway (other than the squirrels and rabbits of course). We had to partake in the local bison burger speciality at our campground, being that we were the only people staying there and the convenience store/restaurant/trinket shop was open until late.
We headed back to the tower the next morning for a quick visit and then headed into some more remote roads towards North Dakota and Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
I can’t say that this national park is the most impressive I’ve seen but the North Dakota Badlands (apparently, they distinguish between North and South in this respect) were still beautiful scenery. We visited Teddy’s original cabin, learned us some history and did the short scenic drive in the park. Similar to South Dakota was wanted to get a run in so we ran the winter-closed loop road in 50 degree sunshine and dry pavement. That dry pavement is frequently interrupted by various versions of animal excrement, namely buffalo. No far up the road we ran into a herd of said buffalo and promptly returned the way we came, given those huge land mammals are nothing we or Rooney wanted to mess with.
See our large brown mammal friends in the background??
We stayed in another empty campground and made our way back west in the morning into Montana.
We didn’t want to do the drive across Montana in one full push so we found a place in Billings that had RV sites, electricity, showers and laundry. Accomplishing all of the above we also partook in their local brewery scene for much of the evening. Having checked out the largest city in Montana we continued on towards the mountains of Montana and Big Sky. We got up early to make the extra 3 hour drive to Big Sky and got in a nice afternoon of exploring the largest ski area in the United States. It definitely feels much larger than anything we had skied before. It is also seemingly empty. We found good snow on the far side of the resort and marveled at the terrain and map as we decided where to go next. After a few hours of zero lift lines and seeing fewer people than there were runs in one small section of the mountain we called it an afternoon, once again finding a local brew to sample before settling in for the night in an obscure parking lot on the Moonlight Basin side we had heard was okay to stay in from internet researching.
That research turned out to be accurate and we had a quiet night with snow falling on the van. We awoke to new snow and a lot that was 100% empty until after the lifts opened. We didn’t take the chance though and got first chair to sample the goods on an 8” powder day that skied much, much deeper than that. It’s easy to get fresh turns a few hours into the day when the lift lines are nonexistent and your find some great terrain. We lapped the Moonlight Basin side, did some hike-to terrain and giggled our way through knee deep freshies.
We called it a day after lunch and geared up to make the drive through the mountains (much different than Colorado which is OVER the mountains) down towards and, apparently, through the corner of Yellowstone.
We are now posted up in West Yellowstone where the motel room was only $20 more than the snowed in RV site with no bathroom so we made the easy choice to take a shower, have heat and charge every electrical device we have.
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