Go West! Day 3: Badlands! (part 1)

Posted by Kim-Son Nguyen ⋅ June 23, 2011 ⋅ Leave a Comment

Day 3: La Crosse, WI to Rapid City, SD via Badlands National Park
Mileage: 654 miles

This is going to be my first picture-intensive post. We woke up to a beautiful sunny morning in La Crosse, Wisconsin and decided to check out downtown La Crosse, which turned out to be a peaceful small town by the mighty Mississippi river. Unfortunately we didn’t have the foresight to stop and take a few photos of the town. We then crossed over to the other side of the Mississippi to enter Minnesota.

We stopped at the Minnesota side to take a few photos of the famed river.

Looking at the tranquil, slow-moving water, we found it hard to believe that this was the largest river system in North America, starting at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, and traveling 2320 miles southwards to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. According to Wikipedia, “with its major tributaries, the Missouri River and the Ohio River, the Mississippi drains all or parts of 31 U.S. states stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Canada–US border on the north, including most of the Great Plains, and is the fourth longest river in the world and the tenth most powerful river in the world.” I had seen the river from an airplane before, but this was the first time I got to see it up close.

We returned to the car to start the long drive to Badlands National Park, our first major destination. Our goal was to make it there before sunset. But first we had to travel through Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes and, except for Alaska, the northernmost state in the US. We didn’t see any lake but lots of this:

We played Taboo and Jeopardy to pass the time in the car. Interstate 90 was in excellent condition, and the BMW just wanted to eat up the miles rapidly.

We finally stopped near the border with South Dakota to have lunch at the Blue Line Cafe.

I hoped none of my former primary care patients, who had heard so much about healthy eating from me, would ever see the kinds of food we consumed on this road trip.

After lunch, it was more of the same flatness.

At one point, the sky started to look threatening.

But it cleared up as we crossed the Missouri River, which bisected South Dakota into halves known to residents as “East River” and “West River”. Eastern South Dakota is home to most of the state’s population, and fertile soil in this area is used to grow a variety of crops. West of the Missouri, ranching is the predominant agricultural activity and the economy is more dependent on tourism with attractions such as Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore.