Hello, South Dakota Air and Space Museum at Ellsworth Air Force Base

by   •   Tourism
 

For my final activity of the Rapid City area in South Dakota, I decided to visit the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, officially in Box Elder, but with an Ellsworth Air Force Base postal address and just outside the Ellsworth AFB secure entrance.

As I’ve mentioned before, I know very little to nothing about aircraft, apart from just general information about commercial planes from major United States airline carriers that I ride to get to different places in the country. Because of this, I can’t really give much specific information about the planes that I saw. To make matters worse, the actual museum was closed on the day I visited due to a private event, so I was only able to look at the planes parked outdoors and had very limited information.

With that being said, one of the more obscure supplementary reasons why I continue to go to air museums is actually because I personally think I am not very good at photographing aircraft, and one of the best ways to get better, apart from doing research and learning from someone who is already good at it, is to keep trying and practicing and analyzing your work to identify ways you can improve.

So, come along on my aircraft-photographing journey where I try out various different angles, perspectives, and crops to experiment with what makes the most visually-appealing capture. I’ve also included a couple photos of the visible innards of a few aircraft, in case you somehow stumbled across this post as an aircraft enthusiast and actually know what you’re looking at, unlike me.

 

—§—

 

Hello, Badlands National Park in South Dakota

by   •   Hiking
 

Approximately 60 miles (or around 100 kilometers) east of Rapid City, South Dakota is Badlands National Park, a rugged and sprawling area under the National Park Service. Continuing on my journey to get as much value as possible out of my America the Beautiful Annual Pass and visiting as many national parks as reasonable during my road trip, I decided to stop by Badlands.

I mentioned this in a previous blog post, but my stay in Rapid City hasn’t particularly been optimal due to the weather—it has been unmanageably windy (up to the point where a box containing a large pizza—which isn’t exactly the lightest thing ever—literally nearly took flight out of my hand, and would have if I didn’t notice and clamp down on it with my chin), and I also got snowed in for a few of the days… not to mention the overall extremely cold temperatures.

Because of this, I was unsure how many more opportunities I would have to get out and explore, so I decided to assume that I wouldn’t be able to return to Badlands, and planned to be able to see as much as I could in one day.

Like usual, I took a ton of photos. I tried to take pictures of informative signs along the way, but it’s very difficult to remember exactly where each pho­to­graph was taken because my Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II doesn’t have built-in GPS, and I take a ton of stops.

With that being said, I took stops in this order, and the photos below are posted in chronological order: Hay Butte Overlook → Pinnacles Overlook → Ancient Hunters Overlook → Yellow Mounds Overlook → Conata Basin Overlook → Homestead Overlook → Burns Basin Overlook → Prairie Wind Overlook → Panorama Point → Bigfoot Pass Overlook → White River Valley Overlook → Fossil Exhibit Trail.

From there, I arrived at the Saddle Pass Trailhead. Because I had a plan to see as much as possible in a single day, I didn’t really do that many hikes—I would only take quick walks no longer than half a mile at each overlook and viewpoint—but I definitely wanted to hike Saddle Pass Trail because of how allegedly technical and challenging it was. With that in mind, I started climbing and realized that, yes, it was indeed extremely technical and challenging.

Then I arrived at a huge mountain. I had already scrambled up and scaled a bunch of rocks, and even crawled under some small openings in the rocks to get to where I was, and realized there was absolutely no way that it could get even more difficult—up to the point where you’re basically rock climbing now—and still be listed as a “trail.” My realization was correct—when I backtracked and looked around a bit, I discovered that I completely missed the real trail and went the very wrong direction. The real trail was much, much easier, and although it was relatively steep, it was completely manageable.

There was a very nice view from the top.

After Saddle Pass, I made a quick pass through Cliff Shelf Nature Trail, then arrived at my second “main” hike, Notch Trail. Although these trails that I’ve been hiking have been relatively short, I had completed a lot of them by that point, so the fatigue was very slowly building up. Still, Notch Trail was the one I was looking most forward to, as it was one of the top-rated trails on AllTrails for Badlands National Park.

If you look closely at the photograph below, you’ll see a wooden ladder in the middle leading up to the top of the hill. That was the most challenging part of the climb, and this trail is definitely not for people who are afraid of heights or have ankle or knee problems, especially considering that the lad­der was a little wobbly at some areas, but if you’re comfortable with your maneuverability and climb confidently, it’s definitely doable. There was a bit of traffic backed up there as people tried to get up and down, but everyone I saw eventually made it.

I feel like Notch Trail would’ve been fairly leisurely for the remainder of the hike, but the high winds during the day I visited made it a bit more tricky. There are some areas along the middle of the trail that has some pretty steep bluffs, so I had to be careful not to be blown off balance and risk falling. I eventually made it to the summit, which had some amazing views.

For some reason, I don’t really have too many great photos from the top that I find satisfying (either that, or there isn’t really much in the pictures to provide visual scale to see just how high up it was taken), but I think a big “wow” aspect of the hike here is the contrast between the climb and the sum­mit. Throughout the hike, you’re generally surrounded by a lot of rock and have fairly limited forward visibility due to the path winding between rock formations. However, once you reach the top, you suddenly have an explosively wide, vast view of Badlands National Park facing south.

After Notch Trail, I also walked the Window Trail, named as such because the end of the trail has a rock formation that looks like a window. … This photograph below clearly is not that window, but it was on my SD card chronologically during the time that I would’ve been at Window Trail, and it was unique scenery relative to the rest of Badlands, so I decided to share it.

My final hike of the day was Door Trail. From the parking lot, it leads down to an area where you can read about the Badlands’ badness via some in­for­ma­tional signs, and then take some stairs to walk out directly into the badlands. The trail takes you about half a mile out, and is named “door” be­cause it is supposed to be a door to the real badlands—the trailless backcountry badlands of over 300 square miles (or approximately 800 square kil­o­me­ters) surrounded by the Badlands Loop State Scenic Byway, Interstate 90, South Dakota Highway 44, and South Dakota Highway 73.

For my final stop before reconnecting onto Interstate 90 and heading back to Rapid City, I took a stop at the Big Badlands Overlook, the location where a lot of the most signature photos of Badlands National Park are taken.

Badlands was very different than the other recent national parks I’ve visited—Grand Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, Arches, and Wind Cave. Although Bad­lands might not have been as impressive or breathtaking as some of the bigger national parks, Badlands still had its own special charm to it—the charm of something being so rugged, yet still having its own unique kind of beauty.

I don’t have a map with GPS tracking because my walks and hikes were split up across many smaller trails, but according to my fitness tracker, my total distance was right around 9 miles. That ended up being very similar to my hike at the Grand Canyon this past December, but it was a lot less tiring be­cause this was nine miles split up over several hours with many driving breaks in between.

If you choose to make your own trip to Badlands National Park, I think a two-day trip is the minimum you’ll need to see everything there is to see, and still do enough activities to make it feel like you’ve experienced the true Badlands experience. I only took stops along South Dakota Highway 240, but there are many other paths you can take to see other areas of Badlands.

 

—§—

 

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is overrated

by   •   Tourism
 

Of course, a trip to Rapid City, South Dakota wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Mount Rushmore National Memorial… at least that’s what you’re supposed to think, based on how popular it is. So, for one of my Rapid City tourist activities, I drove my way up into the Black Hills National Forest to see the faces of four of our past presidents carved in stone.

And that’s it. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. You can’t really get much closer than how close I got for that photo, and that’s with my point-and-shoot camera zoomed in all the way. Washington is prominently visible and Lincoln is pret­ty clear, but Jef­fer­son is sometimes obscured, and Roosevelt is practically only visible from certain angles.

The path up to Mount Rushmore was nicely decorated with all the flags of the 50 states, as well as a few of the territories.

At the end of the path was the entrance to the museum and the auditorium. The museum wasn’t particularly large, and it was pretty text-heavy, but there were some exhibits showing smaller models of the stone and how the stone is most effectively carved at that height and at that kind of scale.

Apart from that, there was a short hiking trail around the area, and that was about it. The trail was called the Presidential Trail, and it had a lot of places where you could stop to read about the different presidents and look at Mount Rushmore from various different angles. One of them allowed you to walk into a cave-like structure and peep at Washington through some rocks.

Partway down the trail, there was a nice view back towards the entrance where you could see the flag display, entrance to the museum, and seating for the auditorium.

Further down the path was the Sculptor’s Studio, which was unfortunately closed due to being off-season. From there, I took the scenic route back to the park­ing lot.

I think for someone who is a huge Mount Rushmore enthusiast, you can get through everything there is to see (including all the museum exhibits and the videos that play in the miniature theater) in about 2-3 hours at most. I personally took about an hour and a half starting from when I entered the park­ing garage to when I got back to my truck.

This is definitely one of those places where you would go just so you can say that you’ve been there before, but isn’t something majestic or breath­tak­ingly stunning like some other national parks or national monuments. I think the most impressive thing about Mount Rushmore is just the fact that a man decided to carve gigantic faces into the side of a mountain, and then pulled it off.

One thing to note for America the Beautiful Annual Pass holders is that admission to Mount Rushmore is still going to cost you US$12.00. They man­age to get away with doing that because they charge that amount for using the parking garage, not for actual admission to the memorial. This means that, if you walk to Mount Rushmore, you could get in for free… but that isn’t exactly a viable thing to do, considering Mount Rushmore is fairly deep into the mountains, and there are no other free parking areas from which you can safely walk to the memorial.

Being a little disappointed at how quickly that went, I decided to continue westbound on South Dakota Highway 244 and came across a little parking area where I could take a photograph of the profile view of Washington.

Continuing even further westbound led me to an intersection with a dirt road that takes you to Horse Thief Lake. There was nobody else around, so this was an amazing opportunity to take in the view, enjoy the tranquility of the water, and watch squirrels scurry around up and down the rocks.

Would I recommend a trip to Mount Rushmore National Memorial? Absolutely not. However, would I recommend a trip to the Black Hills that includes a stop at Mount Rushmore? Definitely yes.

My stay in Rapid City was unreasonably, unmanageably windy and cold, so I didn’t have much of an opportunity to go out and do everything I wanted to do. However, what I did manage to do in the Black Hills was great.

If you plan a vacation around Mount Rushmore in addition to stops at places like Crazy Horse, various hiking trails in the Black Hills, the scenic drives around Sylvan Lake, and maybe even some of the mines or the Presidential Wax Museum in Keystone, then that would make for a far more complete day than just going to only Mount Rushmore.

 

—§—

 

Hello, Reptile Gardens in Rapid City, South Dakota

by   •   Tourism
 

I’ve been looking at a lot of rocks and mountains lately from all my hiking and visiting national parks and monuments, so I decided to switch it up a bit and go to the Reptile Gardens south of Rapid City, South Dakota to look at some animals.

Apparently the Reptile Gardens is in the Guinness World Records as having the largest reptile collection. I remember the Dallas Zoo in Texas also having a lot of reptiles, but I didn’t count the number of reptiles on display in either one of the locations, and the Reptile Gardens did indeed definitely have a lot of reptiles.

It’s still considered off-season (and it’s still pretty cold outside), so not all the exhibits were open. Apparently, Reptile Gardens has a lot of interactive areas where you can pet reptiles, but those weren’t available during my visit—the only animals I were able to safely touch were the giant tortoises that were just peacefully lying around (and even then, I only pet their shells).

Reptile Gardens is composed of both an outdoor area and a few indoor areas. The largest indoor area was the Sky Dome, and the mezzanine level had a ton of snakes. According to the labels next to the exhibits, the Sky Dome is home to some of the most dangerous snakes, both under the metric of the number of people who die to the particular species of snake per year, as well as the species with the strongest venom. And of course, there were plenty of non-poisonous snakes on display as well.

Of course, snakes weren’t the only reptiles on display; there were some lizards, dragons, toads, and frogs too, among other reptiles and amphibians. The bottom floor of the Sky Dome had a loop around the main vegetative area that housed crocodiles and alligators as well, including a sixteen-foot-long giant saltwater crocodile named Maniac, but that area had very poor lighting and none of my photos came out that well.

Taking a quick detour outside, there was a bald eagle named Cheyenne; she has apparently been a resident of the Reptile Gardens for over a decade now.

Back inside the central area of the Sky Dome where there was more vegetation, there were also some parrots. They were out in the open just perching on branches, and I was a bit confused as to why they weren’t just randomly flying around and away.

When I researched it online, I found out that a lot of zoos clip their wings as to inhibit their ability to fly. I’m not sure if the Reptile Gardens also do this, or if I just happened to get really lucky and saw the parrots when they were staying put for some rest—I wasn’t able to find a staff member nearby at the time to confirm.

And last but not least, my favorite section of the Reptile Gardens… had nothing to do with reptiles. Instead, it was the Prairie Dog Town, which housed a bunch of black-tailed prairie dogs running around in their enclosure and munching away at some hay.

The Reptile Gardens was a surprisingly pleasant trip. It had more of a small-town zoo kind of feel to it (which makes sense, because Rapid City is a pret­ty small city), but it definitely wasn’t at the cost of quality.

I actually liked this zoo a lot better than some of the other zoos I’ve been to, because I noticed that Reptile Gardens seems to put a lot more care and attention to detail into the animal habitats. I’ve seen a lot of other zoos build comfortable and compatible enclosures and environments for the animals, but I noticed here on many occasions that it looked like Reptile Gardens wanted to go beyond that and give the animals a luxurious home instead.

Another thing I noticed was how hilariously large the gift shop was. There was a lot of pretty decent and unique merchandise, and I felt like it acted more as a general Rapid City gift shop, rather than just a gift shop limited to the Reptile Gardens. The staff there was nice as well; I had a nice con­ver­sa­tion with one of the employees there who asked me about my travels and told me some stories about Rapid City that she’d experienced from over four decades of her living there.

I stopped by here because I saw that the general consensus from previous visitors was very positive, and I agree with that sentiment. The outdoor grounds were also still under active construction and renovation, so if you decide to visit, it’s possible that you might be able to see a lot more than I was able to this time around.

 

—§—

 

Hello, Museum of Geology at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

by   •   Travel
 

Ever since my arrival in Rapid City, South Dakota, it has been ridiculously and unmanageably windy. I mean that in the most literal way possible—the wind is so strong that I have trouble walking in a straight line, I have to have my steering wheel perpetually turned slightly against the direction of the wind when driving or else I will be pushed off the road, and I nearly had an entire pan of pizza take off and fly away from my arms.

While waiting out the wind and hoping it settles down in the coming few days, I decided to do an indoor activity and visited the Museum of Geology, part of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. I’m not exactly the biggest geology enthusiast, but the museum had good reviews online and it had free admission, so I decided to check it out.

I read a majority of the informational posters and signs about the different kinds of rocks and learned a lot about how different rocks are formed, but be­cause I wasn’t already that familiar and knowledgeable about geology, I wasn’t able to retain all the precise details of each of these rocks are and what is special about them. For the sake of avoiding accidentally giving wrong information, instead, here is just a large dump of photos of rocks and formations that I thought looked interesting.

 

—§—

 

Hello, Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota

by   •   Hiking
 

On my way from Scottsbluff, Nebraska to Rapid City, South Dakota, I took a stop at Wind Cave National Park, a national park a little north of Hot Springs, South Dakota. Ever since booking this segment of my road trip, I’ve been particularly looking forward to Wind Cave, as this would be the first time I would be spelunking—I regularly hike upwards onto mountains, but never downwards into the earth.

At the time of my visit to Wind Cave, it had only been one week into spring, so it was still considered off-season for tourism, and not all the ranger-guided tours were available. One of the tours that were available was the Fairgrounds Tour, rated by the National Park Service as “strenuous,” which is the one I selected.

The Fairgrounds Tour is a one-and-a-half hour walk through a large portion of the cave, allowing visitors to see many different aspects of the cave sys­tem. As of today, it is also the longest tour during which you are allowed to take photographs; the more difficult and involved Candlelight Tour and Wild Cave Tour both prohibit phones and cameras for safety reasons.

Self-guided tours are not permitted, and for good reason—Wind Cave is the densest cave system in the world, meaning it has the greatest passage volume per cubic mile, offering many opportunities to get lost and die alone without GPS or cellular signal.

Prior to the beginning of our tour, the ranger showed us a map that had extremely complex lines drawn in multiple different colors on top of each other (with the shade of color representing the vertical axis) and packed in a small space. At first, I thought that the map covered a large area and potentially even extended as far as the nearby Black Hills National Forest, but I later learned that the scale of the entire map was only one mile from one edge to the other.

We entered Wind Cave via elevator out of a special room. When we first went a few hundred feet underground, it was clearly extremely windy—the at­mos­pher­ic pressure changes causes extreme wind in Wind Cave—but once we actually entered the cave, we couldn’t feel the wind anymore.

I took a lot of photos during the tour, but note that I took them in camera raw format and heavily edited and enhanced them prior to posting them here. Wind Cave is extremely dim, which meant my camera had a lot of difficulty capturing clean, crisp images. (I took some photos with my camera’s flash on, but that didn’t really help either, because then that would just overilluminate nearby cave structures and leave far-away rocks still dark; I ended up not posting any photos from flash photography.)

Wind Cave is apparently the place with the most boxwork in the world—approximately 95% of the world’s discovered boxwork is inside Wind Cave. Ac­cording to the ranger, boxwork forms when cracks in soft rock are filled with a harder substance, and then the remainder of the soft rock erodes away, leav­ing behind the harder substance that takes a web-like shape.

Wind Cave has multiple different levels, and during this tour, we were able to see all of them. Water has extremely high erosive properties, and once we got to places where water did not have enough time to work on breaking down the rock, the cave was much smoother and had no boxwork.

We eventually made it to a resting point where the ranger told us about the history of the cave, and how the cave was originally used for mining, but was later converted into a tourist hotspot. While we were all safely seated, the ranger turned off the already-dim lights to demonstrate just how dark it is un­der­ground in a cave. She told us to hold our hand directly in front of our faces, which we obviously couldn’t see—there was literally no light, which meant that our eyes would never “adjust” to the darkness.

This area also had some nice frostwork. I tried to take a photo of it, and I captured a lot of cave popcorn, but I didn’t realize that the bulk of the frostwork was out-of-frame (except for a few growths at the far bottom). Again, keep in mind that everything was extremely dim, it was very difficult for me to see (considering I already have horrible eyesight and horrible night vision), and these photos are heavily enhanced in post-production.

As our time together came to an end, we started heading back to the elevator to return to the surface. On the way back, I snapped a bunch more pho­to­graphs of everything interesting around me, including nice rock formations and a lot more boxwork.

Exploring Wind Cave was a great experience. As if I wasn’t already aware enough, seeing things like this reminds me just how vast and complex the world is, and gives me a reality check of how unimaginably tiny my life is compared to the scale of everything else happening. It also acted as a reminder not to get complacent about my safety and the fragility of life—nature doesn’t hold your hand and help you survive like modern-day civilization does, and it’s very easy to stumble into an unfortunate situation that kills you.

 
On my way from Wind Cave National Park to Rapid City, Google Maps decided to route me through 7-11 Road because it was the fastest way to my des­ti­nation, without informing me that it was a dirt road. I was fine with it, though; my truck handled it just as well as a regular road, and I made a new friend along the way.

 

—§—