I hadn’t meant to leave you in the jet-fueled haze of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I started writing up my Rapid City layover – a few days exploring western South Dakota with my high school debate friend Kari – but couldn’t find a quiet moment to get the words down, and the world kept on moving a little too quickly.

I guess I’ve got a couple of days now, thanks to getting sideswiped by a dose of our favorite pandemic a couple of days ago (no, it’s not bad, and yes, I’m on Pax and fluids and nasal rinses and gargling, and spending my days either horizontal in bed or curled up in what I’ve come to think of as Annie’s big red rocking chair).

But South Dakota was a great few days. Kari showed me the town, introducing me to her favorite spots around Rapid City, or just “Rapid”, as folks apparently call it. Little gems of shops and restaurants everywhere, and on every corner downtown, a life-sized bronze statue of a different president. Alas, I didn’t get any pics of the presidents, but it’s strangely compelling to stand next to these things and look into their eyes and see them as actual people. Lincoln’s unexpected playfulness, Harrison’s weary contemplation. In spite of myself, this aging left wing socialist hippie feels like he could almost be won over by Reagan’s smile.

West of town, we spent a day driving the Black Hills (cue “Rocky Raccoon”). An obligatory stop at Mt Rushmore amid the swirl of Harleys – it was, after all, just a week before the Sturgis rally. A bit heavy on the “Faith, Family, Flag and Firearms” t-shirts and ethos, but folks I spoke with seemed uniformly kind and earnest. A good reminder that, once we step away from the polarized flamethrower arena of social media, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that we can actually all get along, despite differences.

Driving the winding loop past the Crazy Horse monument and along the Needles Highway brought us from vista to stunning vista. Having squeezed through claustrophobic single-lane tunnels bored through the rock faces that interrupted the highway, it was hard not to be flabbergasted by tour buses coming the other way along the same route. But on we went, waving at bikers and stopping to gawk whenever there was shoulder enough to pull off and park on.

Next day we headed east, first making the obligatory stop at Wall Drug. Say what you will, I’m a sucker for well-done campiness, and Wall Drug, the whole sprawling city-block of it, is well done campiness. Jackalope sculptures, an animatronic T. Rex and “mine tours” scattered among the dozen or so shops that make Wall Drug a veritable theme mall. Our real draw to the place, though, was the wall of photographs collected by Kari’s grandfather, Leonard Jennewein, who captured and preserved important visual records of the Dakotas’ wild west, and wrote the definitive book on Martha Jane Canary, best known to the rest of us as “Calamity Jane.”

The temperature was already excruciating by the time we continued east to the Badlands. I could have spent the afternoon roaming the boardwalks and dirt trails through the otherworldly landscape, running my hands across sandstone layers recording eons of life, and poking my nose into those persistent little forms of life that somehow eked out an existence today. But the rental car was registering an outside air temperature of 108F, which made straying too far from our refrigerated steel-and-petrochemical cocoon unwise.

An evening of catching up on overdue email, then I was westbound before dawn the next morning, setting up for the next adventure.

Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, on the way home.