Greetings from Cedar Pass Lodge in Badlands National Park in South Dakota. We got here by flying to Rapid City, SD and renting a car there. A quick drive to Wall SD and a visit to the famous/infamous Wall Drug Store – where you can buy everything from toothpaste to horse saddles to Native American artwork – preceded our arrival here in the National Park. The Badlands got their name because they were indeed “bad lands” if you were a settler or trapper trying to cross these lands before the days of paved roads. There is interesting geology here and plenty of beautiful scenery in an amazingly isolated part of the country.
Yesterday we took a drive and passed through the town of Interior, SD with a population of 94; a bit more than 30 miles from there we hit the town of Scenic SD with a population of 58. Between those towns there were scattered ranches, cows, prairie dogs and not much else.
We are only a bit more than 48 hours into this journey but it is becoming clear to us already that this will not be a culinary trip that rates more than 1.5 stars on a 4-star scale. Peg was introduced to biscuits with white gravy for breakfast yesterday and the look on her face made it abundantly clear that she was not going to finish that biscuit. Whatever…
Speaking of food, the Akron RubberDucks of the Eastern League are offering something called “The Screamer” which is billed as a 5-pound ice cream sundae. It comes of course in a RubberDucks batting helmet and consists of a 1-pound brownie and 21 scoops of ice cream. One need not be lactose-intolerant to realize that no one needs to consume such a concoction.
You could make it worse if you wanted to. You could eat “The Screamer” as dessert after consuming a “Heart Attack Burger” offered up by the Kane County Cougars – the Single A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Here are the contents of the “Heart Attack Burger”…
One half-pound beef patty with grilled onions, one fried egg, slices of melted cheddar cheese, chipotle bacon mayo, 2 pieces of bacon and it has a pair of grilled cheese sandwiches on either side serving as the burger bun.
Good luck digesting that bad boy.
More postcards from the road as time permits.
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports.
Ah, Wall Drug. Been there a few times over the years. If you were to drive to Wall, SD you would see the signs along the road……405 miles to Wall Drug. 280 miles to Wall Drug. 105 miles to Wall Drug.
After a while, you just had to stop to see what the signs were all about.
Mark Schooley:
I would love to have had the contract to paint and place all of the Wall Drug signs we saw on the highway. I could have retired a decade earlier if I had landed that gig…