South Dakota - Day 30 - to Shadehill campground

Shadehill State Recreation Area, Lemmon

Monday, 30 August 2021

I took my time about leaving Indian Creek Campground this morning because Google said I'd only need 2 hours to get to the next campground and I didn't know what it might be like there, whether there'd be a lot of dogs, that sort of thing.  At least here, I already knew what we had and it was comfortable.

When the dogs and I were on one of our morning walks, Dext and I saw a Mourning Dove sitting on the road by someone's campsite.  I stopped to give it a chance to fly away, but it just kept sitting there.  I was worried that Dext might upset it, so we kept walking but moved to the other side of the road.  When it still didn't fly I knew something was wrong.  Instead, it walked - walked - underneath the campers' car while we walked by.  I guessed that it had flown into the car window and stunned itself, and it was still recovering.

today's route

I drove back through Mobridge and back across the Missouri River.  Halfway across, a sign told me I was now in the Mountain Time Zone.  I'll be in this time zone until January, when I move into California.  It's a little disconcerting listening to Morning Edition being over by 8:00 AM.

Just on the west side of the Missouri, a sign told me: "Welcome to Standing Rock Indian Reservation."  Another sign told me this is land of the Sioux Tribe.  The pink area on the map above shows this reservation flows into southern North Dakota part way up to Bismarck.

Farther along the road I crossed the Grand River, and a sign told me it too was part of Lake Oahe.  That lake makes itself felt over an enormous territory.

I drove by folded hills that were high enough for climbing lanes to be useful.  I passed fields of corn, hay and sunflowers.

McLaughlin, pop. 663, is visibly a farming town based on the Farmers Co-op facility with huge silos along the railroad tracks.  I passed cows, horses - some with thick hocks - and lots of bee boxes.

Near the unincorporated town of Walker, I saw 10 or 12 huge silos sitting in a field.  I guess they were the property of some company but I didn't see a sign.

I passed a farm that harvested hay on a major scale and had what looked like hundreds of bales gathered in a paddock.  When I say "hay" I mean some kind of grain, like hay or alfalfa or whatever they grow around here and put in bales in the fields.  Actually, this grain is a big crop in this whole area.

We stopped at the city park of the tiny town of McIntosh, pop. 173, to take a leg stretch.  The park was a small area, but grassy with well-grown trees around the perimeter, a nice playground and 1 picnic table.  The only other thing in this park was a memorial for a local resident.

This is the memorial (see below).

A true and faithful friend.
A kind and skillful physician.
A beloved and honored citizen.

What an incredible epitaph.  I'm not sure I've ever known anyone this full of virtue, and I can't imagine having lived a life so good that people would want to say these things about me.  I'm sorry not to have known him.

I saw Goldfinches in town.  So beautiful.  This town - Home of the Tigers, by the way - seemed much larger than the 173 people their sign shows.

I continued to drive by scattered towns, scattered farmhouses, scattered herds of cows, scattered bee boxes.  I didn't see many trees, and many of the ones I saw were clearly planted.

For days I've been seeing LARGE numbers of grasshoppers, though I now think they must be locusts because they fly.  They're as prevalent as lovebugs in Florida, and make as permanent a mess on vehicles.  It's impossible to keep from being coated with these things as I drive, and they require a lot of elbow grease even on windows, let alone the bodywork.

Yesterday was the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and New Orleans celebrated that by being pounded by Hurricane Ida.  Apparently the newly-rebuilt levees worked this time, but the amount of damage was still devastating.  The good news (if you can call it that) is that Katrina accounted for more than 1800 deaths across its reach, while Ida's death toll is about 70, including the deaths in New York City among those who lived in basement apartments that flooded.  That situation raised some questions about the role of climate change in the severity of the flooding and about what steps to take to prevent that in the future.  Good questions.

I continued to drive through high but smoothly round hills.  The hills are a golden tan from the native grasses and look so smooth and soft it's like they're covered in velour.

The largest town I came to today was Lemmon, with 1,227 residents.  I'd expected to find gasoline in towns along the way, but I only found it in a few and the prices were so high I thought it might be because the towns were so small.  The price was a bit lower in Lemmon, $1.39/gallon, but that's a lot higher than it was a week or so ago.  I wonder if the oil companies have jacked up their prices because of the refineries that were hit by Ida - even though that hasn't yet had an impact on availability - just on perception.

I turned south from Lemmon and tried to find Shadehill State Recreation Area.  Neither Google's directions nor the highway signs were as much help as I'd've wished, but eventually I found it.

And this was yet another state park that was unstaffed, so I had to drive around a bit to find the waste tank dump station, and then to find my campsite.  South Dakota's state parks would be pretty nice if they'd just realize that not all users live here and go to the same places over and over - or that not all users have smart phones - or that not all users even have a good internet signal.  Would maps really be too expensive for them?  The few I've gotten aren't high quality - just the kind that are Xeroxed.  Oh well.  I'll only be in the state 1 more night after this.