Day 6 – Bad Roads and Badlands

We are in Badlands National Park for the night. Didn’t get much sleep last night as the thunder and lightning made sleeping on the ground in a cloth bag somewhat unsettling. Heavy rains washed out the camp driveway making our departure from Horsethief a bit sketchy, especially for Don and the Battlestar Galactica as he refers to his 700 pound Honda. Don’t worry, he still has the VStrom, just chose the ST for this trip. We ran into road construction a few miles from the Badlands National Park too. The asphalt was gone and it was mostly dirt with a little gravel for a mile or so. Rained all night and was still raining today so it was kind of muddy. Don and the big Honda soldiered through. We are camped at Cedar Pass in the park and the weather is starting to clear a bit.

So, back to Iron Mountain Road and the pigtail bridges. If you remember from our previous trip, this road was constructed with the goal of disturbing this incredible landscape as little as possible. There’s several tunnels, lanes that separate to go through rock features before rejoining, and also many views of the Mount Rushmore monument in the distance. The purpose of the pigtail is to drop the road down the mountain with the smallest footprint needed. Thus they built a few of these wooden spirals to quickly drop elevation. I couldn’t get any pictures last time as there is no where to pull over. Got pics this trip!

And about yesterday, Don and I did not ride together that morning. Don’s Aunt Marilyn is in assisted living in Rapid City, about 30 miles from our campground. Don’s mother passed away suddenly many years ago at age 43. Her sister Marilyn composed herself and gave a moving eulogy at the service when the rest of the family couldn’t. Don hadn’t seen his aunt in maybe 30 years and, as he put it, it had been weighing heavily on his heart and mind in recent months to visit her. And then we found ourselves in South Dakota. He reached out to her family and set up a visit. It has been an emotional couple of days for Don. I’ve learned a lot about Don the past few days that I didn’t know. Perhaps this is exactly where we were supposed to be this week.

We are going to spend Friday morning in the Badlands. As I mentioned in the previous trip, you really need to spend a sunset and sunrise in this place. We’ll start drifting east tomorrow afternoon. I’ll post any cool pics I get tomorrow and get the starry night photos up from a couple of days ago.