Day 1 of Autumn 2023 Trip to Mountain States, on the Road

Early autumn 2023, I made a long road trip to explore some mountain states at the beginning of the foliage season. This post would be the first (two) days of driving when I reached Kadoka, South Dakota, the eastern gateway town of Badlands National Park.

Towards the end of September 2023, I made a 2.5-week road trip to the mountain states of the United States. Along the way, I checked out South Dakota (Badlands / Black Hills), Wyoming (Devil’s Tower / Medicine Bow) and western Colorado (Grand Junction region / Black Canyon of Gunnison / San Juan Mountains).
Leaving Chicago, it’s a 2-day drive to reach Badlands National Park. Since I spent most of the two days driving, I labeled them day 0 and 1. For the 0-th day, I had some errands to run in South Wisconsin. Alongside the errands, I briefly checked out Chazen Museum of Art, which was in the campus of University of Wisconsin, Madison. It’s a small art museum, with a handful of interesting exhibits (and a fair amount of college students looking for an aesthetic environment to study).

Click here to display photos of some of the exhibits at Chazen Museum of Art.

Ellipsoidal Brain Teapot, Nuclear Winter
By Richard Notkin.

The Fall of Novgorod
By Klaudii Vasilievich Lebedev in 1891

Night Rain at Azuma Grove
By Utagawa Hiroshige in 1835

The Colonnade at Versailles
By Giovanni Boldini

Theseus Combating the Minotaur
By Antoine-Louis Barye in 1846.

After leaving Madison, Wisconsin, I headed for Minneapolis, Minnesota where I spent the night. The next morning, I addressed some errands in Minneapolis, before driving west towards South Dakota.
Unlike my drive yesterday through Wisconsin, which was largely through woods, leaving Minneapolis and heading west, I was among a typical midwestern landscape, endless farmland extending as far as the eye can see. It’s harvest season, evident by the ears of corns that bounced off transportation trucks onto the roadway. In addition, bugs were unpleasantly many as their corpses created quite a nuisance on my windshield.

Just before 2:30pm, I crossed into South Dakota and reached the first stop of the day, Devil’s Gulch.

Devil’s Gulch was accessed through a half-mile gravel road from the town of Garretson. It featured a creek that cut through red quartzite canyons. The canyons were limited in size and area, but had high aspect ratios and thus were of interest. The park offered free admission.
Devil’s Gulch was famous for reportedly being the site where Jesse James, gang leader and outlaw, in 1876, after a failed attempt to rob First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, jumped across the ravine and thus (temporarily) escaped law enforcement.
In my opinion, the narrowest part of the ravine wasn’t that long, and any capable horse should have no issue jumping over it. But even more perplexing, after I took the short loop trail, I found out the ravine could be bypassed (despite through woods) just a short distance away. I had no idea why the law enforcements of the 19th century didn’t find their way around and continued their pursuit.

For this trip to the mountain states, I brought mostly long-sleeved shirts anticipating colder weather. I was also wearing one during my visit to Devil’s Gulch, which was certainly too much for the day.

Click here to display photos from Devil’s Gulch.

Devil’s Gulch
From the footbridge near the parking lot.

Footbridge across Devil’s Gulch
From Scenic Overlook (which wasn’t that scenic in the end).

Devil’s Gulch
From Waterfall Observation Point watching the confluence of two creeks.

 
Devil’s Falls and Devil’s Gulch
Barely any water flowing at the waterfall during my visit.

After leaving Devil’s Gulch, I had a quick lunch before visiting the state’s most populated city, Sioux Falls. In particular, I checked out the series of waterfalls which the city was named for.

The waterfalls were created by the last glacial period of the North America that changed the course of the Big Sioux River. The melted glacier water eroded sediments covering its bedrock, exposing high ridges of the bedrock such as the quartzite at Sioux Falls.

The whole area was a giant urban park, with a series of waterfalls at various places along Big Sioux River. It also featured a “Visitor Information Center”, and interestingly, an observation tower next to it.

Click here to display photos of the Sioux Falls.

Overlooking Sioux Falls

Overlooking Sioux Falls Park

Overlooking Sioux Falls

Generator Room
Now housed a cafe.

Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls

Big Sioux River Downstream
Through typical rocky terrain.

Smithfield Meat Packing Plant
One of the largest pork packing plants in the country.

Various structures used to tap into the power of the Sioux Falls, like the hydroelectric plant (whose building was converted to a cafe nowadays), and Queen Bee Mill, a seven-story building that used to produce flour but was destroyed by fire.

After stocking up on some supplies, it’s past 5pm by the time I left Sioux Falls, and I had 3.5 hours of driving ahead of me to reach my overnight lodge in Kadoka.

About halfway into the drive, I stopped at a rest area just before crossing the Missouri River. Among typical amenities of a rest area, it featured a giant statue “Dignity of Earth and Sky” honoring the area’s native American people.

To the west of the rest area, a trail leads to an overlook of Missouri River. While the landscape was mostly flat around the river (so the views weren’t the most spectacular, and frankly, partly obscured), the warm layer of gold cast by the setting sun added some degree of aesthetics to them.

Before reaching the rest area, I drove through a patch of mild rain. Just as I was appreciating the views of the Missouri River, that patch of rain caught up with me. I quickly raced back to my car, only to find out the light drizzle was accompanied by very strong wind. (No wonder I drove through a wind farm just minutes ago.) To put it mildly, it certainly made my subsequent snack break at this rest area not so pleasant.

Click here to display photos from the rest area near Missouri River.

Rainbow

 
Statues
(left) Dignity of Earth and Sky (right) a giant tepee.

Missouri River

Missouri River

South Dakota was not a very populous state, and its only major interstate, I90, felt reasonably empty in the day. After I left the rest stop, the sun had set and it’s more deserted. That combined with South Dakota’s generous 80 mph speed limit meant it’s quite an enjoyable drive to the town of Kadoka.

A brief review of the hotel for the night, Grandpa Joe’s Place. It’s the best rated hotel (of 4 total) in the town of Kadoka, even better that it’s not the most expensive. It’s so confident about its services that it’s no longer listed on Expedia (likely to save on commission). It’s the furthest from I90 so it should be the quietest.
The room I stayed in was pretty clean, that came with a spotless bathroom. My only complaint was the lack of grounded power outlets by the bed, and the few flies in the room. 😖
After gaining an hour by crossing into mountain time, I only made it to the hotel around 8pm. With that, I called it a day.
END

Day 1 of Autumn 2023 Trip to Mountain States, on the Road by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.