Tuesday, 10 August 2021
No shooting stars again this morning, though plenty of other stars and the Milky Way too. So nice.
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| today's route |
On the road
As I was leaving Angostura campground this morning at 7:15 (an hour and a half after official sunrise), a deer crossed the road in front of me. That's the only deer I've seen at this campground, though I think Dext has been scenting them based on the way he alerted while we were out early this morning.
We went back through the Oglala Lakota COVID checkpoint, but this time it was cursory. It was 2 men today instead of the 2 young women. They didn't ask me any of the questions the women had asked and they didn't write down my license plate number and they weren't very insistent about mask-wearing. Maybe it made a difference that I was wearing my mask when I rolled down the window so they figured I already knew, but it was a big change.
Today I noticed that the housing I saw is mostly single-wide mobile homes and prefab buildings. I hadn't noticed it yesterday, which makes me glad I came back by.
I saw lots of horses again, several foals, a mom with twins. Very sweet.
Today I noticed the sunflowers don't just face the sun, they lean into it.
I stopped at the gas station in Pine Ridge and I noticed signs everywhere saying, "FACE MASK REQUIRED Even if you have been vaccinated. TRIBAL LAW." And in fact, almost everyone was wearing a mask, even outdoors, like me.
I saw quite a few highway signs along the road warning, "Hill Blocks View." And sure enough, just over the rise there'd be a driveway or an entering road. It seemed to me if the hill really was blocking the view, which it was, then there should be "no passing" stripes in the road, which there weren't.
At Batesland, pop. 108, past the turning for Wounded Knee, I saw the COVID checkpoint for oncoming traffic.
A little farther down the road I came to a sign saying it was the town of Swett. What I saw were a few houses and 4 enormous silos. I looked it up to see about a population and learned that in the 1940s there were 40 residents. But the post office closed in 1945 and, bit by bit, people sold out so eventually the whole town was owned by one person. Ownership was passed from person to person until in 2014, the current owner put it up for sale as a ghost town. After it didn't sell within several years the bank foreclosed (why would they bother?) and it's still for sale for $250,000, though they might take less by now if you're in the market.
The town of Martin, pop. 1,071, is proud of its Livestock Auction and Cafe. I guess buying cows makes you hungry?
I came to the Rosebud Indian Reservation, a federally recognized reservation of the Sioux Tribe, but I didn't see much information about them online. I passed the turn for the town of St. Francis and saw a sign for the Buechel Memorial Museum. I've learned that Mr. Buechel was in fact Father Buechel, a Jesuit who was here on a mission for the church in the early 1900s. He was a photographer who spent years documenting the people of the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations. South Dakota State University, which now owns the photos and other artifacts Buechel collected over the years, says this collection is "one of the most important historical and sociological records in the state."
A sign told me I'd moved into the Central Time Zone.
By the time I got to the town of White River, pop. 581, it was almost noon Mountain Time, which made it almost 1:00 on my new time zone. I saw a sign directing us to City Park, so we went there for a leg-stretch and lunch.
Ever since I'd turned on US 83 to head north, I'd seen signs now and then saying the road was closed ahead, but I wasn't sure I believed them. So often local folks know a way around things like this that I figured maybe I could do that too. But at the park, I saw a young couple and asked them if the road really was closed, and they assured me that it was indeed and that everybody was taking the detour down SD Hwy 44. So I drove 4 miles back down the road to pick up 44 eastbound. This was not one of South Dakota's better efforts at roadbuilding, and it seemed like a very long drive to US 183. In fact, it was 40 miles, so it actually was a long drive.
I passed through the village of Wood, pop. 62, where I saw a sign at a business:
Last Chance
Cheap Beer
Fully Clothed Bartenders
Somebody's got a sense of humor.
I passed the turn for the town of Ideal, which is unincorporated and I'm guessing is quite small, because it was just a dirt road leading to it. Early settlers thought the area was "ideal" for farming, hence its name.
And there's plenty of farming around here. I saw corn, sunflowers, soybeans?, maize?. I saw cows and horses, hay bales out in the field where they'd been harvested and grazing lands. I saw a large herd of bison - so many it was like seeing a herd of cows.
I drove a short distance on I-90 and then turned north on US 83, passing a billboard that said, "An American Icon - Wall Drug." Myself, I think that's flinging the word "icon" around a little carelessly, but there seem to be a lot of folks who don't agree with me.
I passed through the Fort Pierre National Grasslands. That's the green area on the map, and you can see it's a pretty good-sized area.
The land here was flatter than I would have expected, being in the middle of the state, though I guess that's the influence of the Missouri River which runs right through Pierre. There were croplands as far as I could see.
All day I saw lots of bikers, even on the back roads I was traveling.
And I came to the campground, heavily patronized by people interested in fishing, based on the number of boats I saw.
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