Friday, June 1, 2012

June 1st - Out of the Badlands

Today we left the Badlands National Park. It was so nice again today that we almost stayed another day/night. This was the edge of the road on the way out of the park. I almost didn't get this photo snapped. Over the edge of the road is at least a 50' drop. The road has started to "slide" down the hill.



We stopped at the 1880 Town near mile marker 170 on I-90. I was apprehensive about it being a tourist trap but I wanted to check it out. Look at the beautiful sky. I could have taken dozens of photos of just the sky today.
 The 14 sided barn is the entry to the "town". It also contains many artifacts on two different levels. Note the train cars to the left.
 Before actually paying to go into the town we decided to try out the diner. It is actually the kitchen car and a string of dining cars. You get to walk through the kitchen car on your way back into the dining cars. Today's special was hot beef sandwiches (Beef Manhattans). We both had one. They were excellent!
 This is the view of the town from the other side of the barn. I actually took the photo below on the way out. But note the sky in all the photos. After we had entered we were not in the town 15 minutes before it started raining, HARD. The was parked on the other side of the highway, which was over a good, long block from the entry "barn". I wanted to see the rest of the town so I ran out to the RV and got raincoats. I was WET by the time I got to the door of the RV. As I was fumbling in my pocket for the keys the rain stopped. By the time I returned, back through the entry barn (I walked back <grin>) the sky had cleared and was beautiful again. I wished I had a video showing a fat old guy (me) running through the rain.
Below is the 1880 farmstead. It is about a quarter mile from the back of the church that you see in the above photo.
 This is the first windmill I ever saw with this type of wood vanes.
 Kathy only walked part of the way up to the  homestead. This was a swing. It was not attached to the wheels. Above the wheels was the axle, between two support posts. The swing was hung from the axle.
 Looking back down at the town from the swing area.
 The south side of the street.
 The north side of the street.
 The school.
There was far to much to photograph. It was well worth the $8/person entry.
As we continued on east we drove back into the rain.

 Kathy was getting tired of driving, especially with all the hard rain and we stopped at the rest area on the east side of the Missouri River. We no more than got the RV stopped and the rain stopped. You are supposed to be able to see 7.5 miles from this point.
 It rained some more after we left the rest area, but never as hard as it did prior to stopping. We were blessed to be able to see this rainbow for miles. Sometimes only parts of it were visible, sometimes we could see parts of a second rainbow.

Tonight we are at a campground in Mitchell, SD. Mitchell is the home of the Corn Palace. We don't know exactly what that is but tomorrow we will find out.

We had read about the broasted chicken served at one of the restaurants at this exit. It isn't really a restaurant but more like a fast food place in a gas station. It is very close to where we are parked and so we walked up and bought 4 chicken breast. We had no idea how large they might be or even if we would like them. They cooked us four fresh ones while we waited, in some type of pressure cooker, deep fryer. It cost less than $6 for four large breasts. We brought them back to the RV so that we could eat them with some of the potato salad Kathy made the other day. I liked them (and I don't usually like chicken) and Kathy thought they were very good.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

No comments:

Post a Comment