I woke up with the wheel in front of me, and then coasted several hours south over the wide plains of southwest South Dakota to Wind Cave National Park. It's one of the few national parks where wilderness camping (away from the campgrounds with bathrooms and electric hook-ups and cars and other people) is free, although barely anyone does it compared to other parks. Most people just go down into the cave on the guided tours. I didn't feel like it and didn't want to spend the money, especially because I was alone and that seemed more like a group activity. I just wanted to keep up my camping streak and see the great plains and hills and whatever was running around freely through them.
I got a permit to hike to one area a couple miles in from the road, nothing too crazy, and then went to the picnic area to cook lunch. I had just turned on my gas burner to cook a stir fry when a park ranger pulled in and immediately began asking me if I was aware of the fire regulations because there was an extremely high alert for fires in the area. I knew that, because the man who gave me the permit made a big deal about not having any fires and only cooking in the designated rings in the picnic areas, which was exactly what I was doing. The guy gave me some strange postured stance for a while with a slight smile behind his aviators and asked me all of these questions about what I was doing and then walked away and let me cook.
Later I arrived at the trail head leading over this hilly field but realized I would have to wait to hike until the large herd of bison which was currently blocking the trail decided to move.
As I waited in my car, one bison ran by, within twenty feet of my car. I'd been passing them and avoiding them and checking out herds of them since I entered the park system in North Dakota, but now I was about to camp in their territory. Or at least have to go through it.
They didn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon, so I rode around a while, saw a dark thunderstorm approaching, drove away, and then went to the head of the road to take pictures because this amazing rainbow had formed over the pathway to the wild.
Eventually the bison cleared out and I was able to hike in to a camping spot. I walked across the field, down a hill, past some sort of small agricultural complex without any noticeable humans around, and then across a small stream and up a hill where I found myself in a large field with a few small trees and a wide expanse of grasslands stretched out before me. I set up my tent quickly and within five minutes about four dozen deer ran within one hundred feet of me, all paused, and then ran away in unison. Then this cacophony of horrific screeches started filling the air, coming from all directions from all sorts of angry mammals and birds, whatever they were. I got into my tent, took off my hiking boots, and enjoyed a peace pipe. Then I stood up under the full moon and gazed in awe...when I heard the loud snort.
I turned and saw an enormous bison about fifteen feet away from me. They have been known to charge and sometimes even gore or at least toss and flip park visitors and send them to the hospital. We had this strange stare down moment that seemed to last about an hour but which was really only a minute, and then I slowly backed away barefoot in the dark, having also set my headlamp down for a moment because of the full moon. Then again, at least it was a full moon and I could see. But it was officially night now, and the more I backed away, the harder it was to tell if the bison was still there or if it was a tree in the shadows. I waited about ten minutes before I slowly approached and saw the bison was gone and had clearly continued marching beyond the hill, probably to join the herd from earlier. I went to sleep around midnight.
Three hours later I was woken up by earth-shaking thunder and very humbling lightning. It wasn't raining hard, just the occasional drops here and there, but the wind was tremendous. In fact, it was so tremendous that my tent had blown down over me because once again my stubbornness over poetry had prevented me from staking the tent down. You rarely need to unless it's an insane amount of wind and you don't have many things with you to weigh the tent down, and this just happened to be that situation. I thought about it for half an hour, and as the animal screeches continued I decided it was time to go back to my car and be safe from lightning and bison and screaming psychotic animals. I'd been doing that more than I'd liked at that point, but I'd had my share of wilderness experiences and had more than enough ahead of me, and you have to pick your battles. So when there was a lull in the thunder and I could see it had moved far enough away, I packed up my tent quickly, put on my headlamp and headed back to my car. I walked down through the field and forest easily enough, and back over the stream, and through the open field to the farm.
That's when things got tricky. It was a pretty simple path to the car. I hadn't hiked more than twenty minutes to get in, and as long as I found the farm I would be fine. But I wandered off through the fields a little to the left, and that angle was all it took to wander up over the enormous hills with downed trees and stumps and broken branches and loose footing everywhere. Before I knew it I was climbing a huge hill, which wasn't the way I came in, although I recognized them from the road. I had simply gone too far to the left, so all I had to do was go right. I had no idea just how far left I'd gone. So I walked and walked and walked and stepped over tree after tree and cut up my knees until they began to bleed pretty steadily, and the lightning flashed in the distance and the thunder boomed, sometimes softly, sometimes swiftly approaching, the rain going back and forth. This went on for an hour and a half, until I finally cleared the hill and saw the road. I just had to walk down the road about ten minutes to see my car. When I climbed into the driver's seat I saw it was almost 5 am. I also saw how bloody my legs were. So I cleaned them up a little and put on some antiseptic and then pulled on a sheet and went to sleep.
An hour later a park ranger's knocking on my window woke me up. She wanted to know what I was doing sleeping in my car at the trail head. I got my permit out and told her I'd been camping but decided to leave during a lull in a huge lightning storm, and then showed her my knees, and explained I just needed to get some rest before another day of riding. She said that was good enough for her and let me sleep.
An hour later she knocked on my window and told me I had to leave. If I was camping it would be fine to stay that long, but not at the trail head. I tried to make a case for my being in dire need of rest before I got on the road, and that technically it would be fine to pull over here and nap during the day if I was driving, so what's wrong with napping in the morning? I didn't win that battle.
So I drove out of the park and saw many sites in the hills again, monuments and trees and strange rocks and winding roads and tourists and license plates and gas stations and convenience stores and hotels and families and couples on vacation.
I'd decided to spend the night in a federal grassland near the border of Nebraska, since they're free and not even parks. But first I wanted to get some more water and clean out my cooler. Entrance to and using the picnic area at Wind Cave is free, so I went back there, even though it was a little after dark, and dumped my garbage, rinsed out my cooler and filled up my water cooler. I was just about to leave when a park ranger pulled in with his flashing lights and started asking me questions. He said he'd recognized the vehicle from before, asked where I was going, what I was doing there, etc. For some reason he asked for my license and ran it through a computer as "standard procedure" even though I had already confirmed that it was free for me to be using those facilities. We got along fine though. I pretended he was a fellow adventurer and appreciator of beauty. I imagined I was talking to my grandfather. I asked this man where he was from and how he ended up working at the park. It turned out he had worked at several parks in the Dakota area. I made a special point to continually remark on how awe-inspiring and beautiful the place was to me, and quickly mentioned my adventure the previous night. You could tell he felt friendly, but was also clearly profiling me. Even so, he had nothing on me and I was free. He kept asking where I was staying that night and if I was staying at their campground. I think they really suspected I was just driving around and sleeping at the trail heads in my car. That's something that happened more than a few times over the course of my 100 day journey, but overall it was a small minority, and I was in a tent on the ground much more often than not.
I escaped wind cave and headed south to the border with Nebraska to find the federal grasslands. You can just go off road and sleep where you want. The problem was that they're just an area of the map, and you need an actual road to get on them from the highway, and many of the entrances were fenced off. The other problem was that there was this open fire burning in one of the fields in the distance. Because of the flat plains I couldn't tell how far away. It wasn't spreading fast, but it was decently sized. Maybe a few hundred feet in diameter. So I was looking for spots on the other side of the highway and out of site of the fire. Someone in a gas station had mentioned there being a lot of fires going on, so I figured somebody knew about it already. I think I did see headlights near it. Anyway, sometime around 1 am I found an open section of gate and drove through. I learned very quickly that the area was meant more for 4 x 4 off-road vehicles, and that the clumps of grass came very close to my bumper, so I would be best off just finding a spot and staying there.
Unfortunately the fire was still burning in the distance so I just went to sleep in my car again. One more day and I'd be in Denver meeting old friends from NYC and couch surfing in El Paso. In two more days I would be camping in the Rocky Mountains with two of my greatest friends, who were flying out from New York to visit for Independence Day.
I got a permit to hike to one area a couple miles in from the road, nothing too crazy, and then went to the picnic area to cook lunch. I had just turned on my gas burner to cook a stir fry when a park ranger pulled in and immediately began asking me if I was aware of the fire regulations because there was an extremely high alert for fires in the area. I knew that, because the man who gave me the permit made a big deal about not having any fires and only cooking in the designated rings in the picnic areas, which was exactly what I was doing. The guy gave me some strange postured stance for a while with a slight smile behind his aviators and asked me all of these questions about what I was doing and then walked away and let me cook.
Later I arrived at the trail head leading over this hilly field but realized I would have to wait to hike until the large herd of bison which was currently blocking the trail decided to move.
As I waited in my car, one bison ran by, within twenty feet of my car. I'd been passing them and avoiding them and checking out herds of them since I entered the park system in North Dakota, but now I was about to camp in their territory. Or at least have to go through it.
They didn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon, so I rode around a while, saw a dark thunderstorm approaching, drove away, and then went to the head of the road to take pictures because this amazing rainbow had formed over the pathway to the wild.
Eventually the bison cleared out and I was able to hike in to a camping spot. I walked across the field, down a hill, past some sort of small agricultural complex without any noticeable humans around, and then across a small stream and up a hill where I found myself in a large field with a few small trees and a wide expanse of grasslands stretched out before me. I set up my tent quickly and within five minutes about four dozen deer ran within one hundred feet of me, all paused, and then ran away in unison. Then this cacophony of horrific screeches started filling the air, coming from all directions from all sorts of angry mammals and birds, whatever they were. I got into my tent, took off my hiking boots, and enjoyed a peace pipe. Then I stood up under the full moon and gazed in awe...when I heard the loud snort.
I turned and saw an enormous bison about fifteen feet away from me. They have been known to charge and sometimes even gore or at least toss and flip park visitors and send them to the hospital. We had this strange stare down moment that seemed to last about an hour but which was really only a minute, and then I slowly backed away barefoot in the dark, having also set my headlamp down for a moment because of the full moon. Then again, at least it was a full moon and I could see. But it was officially night now, and the more I backed away, the harder it was to tell if the bison was still there or if it was a tree in the shadows. I waited about ten minutes before I slowly approached and saw the bison was gone and had clearly continued marching beyond the hill, probably to join the herd from earlier. I went to sleep around midnight.
Three hours later I was woken up by earth-shaking thunder and very humbling lightning. It wasn't raining hard, just the occasional drops here and there, but the wind was tremendous. In fact, it was so tremendous that my tent had blown down over me because once again my stubbornness over poetry had prevented me from staking the tent down. You rarely need to unless it's an insane amount of wind and you don't have many things with you to weigh the tent down, and this just happened to be that situation. I thought about it for half an hour, and as the animal screeches continued I decided it was time to go back to my car and be safe from lightning and bison and screaming psychotic animals. I'd been doing that more than I'd liked at that point, but I'd had my share of wilderness experiences and had more than enough ahead of me, and you have to pick your battles. So when there was a lull in the thunder and I could see it had moved far enough away, I packed up my tent quickly, put on my headlamp and headed back to my car. I walked down through the field and forest easily enough, and back over the stream, and through the open field to the farm.
That's when things got tricky. It was a pretty simple path to the car. I hadn't hiked more than twenty minutes to get in, and as long as I found the farm I would be fine. But I wandered off through the fields a little to the left, and that angle was all it took to wander up over the enormous hills with downed trees and stumps and broken branches and loose footing everywhere. Before I knew it I was climbing a huge hill, which wasn't the way I came in, although I recognized them from the road. I had simply gone too far to the left, so all I had to do was go right. I had no idea just how far left I'd gone. So I walked and walked and walked and stepped over tree after tree and cut up my knees until they began to bleed pretty steadily, and the lightning flashed in the distance and the thunder boomed, sometimes softly, sometimes swiftly approaching, the rain going back and forth. This went on for an hour and a half, until I finally cleared the hill and saw the road. I just had to walk down the road about ten minutes to see my car. When I climbed into the driver's seat I saw it was almost 5 am. I also saw how bloody my legs were. So I cleaned them up a little and put on some antiseptic and then pulled on a sheet and went to sleep.
An hour later a park ranger's knocking on my window woke me up. She wanted to know what I was doing sleeping in my car at the trail head. I got my permit out and told her I'd been camping but decided to leave during a lull in a huge lightning storm, and then showed her my knees, and explained I just needed to get some rest before another day of riding. She said that was good enough for her and let me sleep.
An hour later she knocked on my window and told me I had to leave. If I was camping it would be fine to stay that long, but not at the trail head. I tried to make a case for my being in dire need of rest before I got on the road, and that technically it would be fine to pull over here and nap during the day if I was driving, so what's wrong with napping in the morning? I didn't win that battle.
So I drove out of the park and saw many sites in the hills again, monuments and trees and strange rocks and winding roads and tourists and license plates and gas stations and convenience stores and hotels and families and couples on vacation.
I'd decided to spend the night in a federal grassland near the border of Nebraska, since they're free and not even parks. But first I wanted to get some more water and clean out my cooler. Entrance to and using the picnic area at Wind Cave is free, so I went back there, even though it was a little after dark, and dumped my garbage, rinsed out my cooler and filled up my water cooler. I was just about to leave when a park ranger pulled in with his flashing lights and started asking me questions. He said he'd recognized the vehicle from before, asked where I was going, what I was doing there, etc. For some reason he asked for my license and ran it through a computer as "standard procedure" even though I had already confirmed that it was free for me to be using those facilities. We got along fine though. I pretended he was a fellow adventurer and appreciator of beauty. I imagined I was talking to my grandfather. I asked this man where he was from and how he ended up working at the park. It turned out he had worked at several parks in the Dakota area. I made a special point to continually remark on how awe-inspiring and beautiful the place was to me, and quickly mentioned my adventure the previous night. You could tell he felt friendly, but was also clearly profiling me. Even so, he had nothing on me and I was free. He kept asking where I was staying that night and if I was staying at their campground. I think they really suspected I was just driving around and sleeping at the trail heads in my car. That's something that happened more than a few times over the course of my 100 day journey, but overall it was a small minority, and I was in a tent on the ground much more often than not.
I escaped wind cave and headed south to the border with Nebraska to find the federal grasslands. You can just go off road and sleep where you want. The problem was that they're just an area of the map, and you need an actual road to get on them from the highway, and many of the entrances were fenced off. The other problem was that there was this open fire burning in one of the fields in the distance. Because of the flat plains I couldn't tell how far away. It wasn't spreading fast, but it was decently sized. Maybe a few hundred feet in diameter. So I was looking for spots on the other side of the highway and out of site of the fire. Someone in a gas station had mentioned there being a lot of fires going on, so I figured somebody knew about it already. I think I did see headlights near it. Anyway, sometime around 1 am I found an open section of gate and drove through. I learned very quickly that the area was meant more for 4 x 4 off-road vehicles, and that the clumps of grass came very close to my bumper, so I would be best off just finding a spot and staying there.
Unfortunately the fire was still burning in the distance so I just went to sleep in my car again. One more day and I'd be in Denver meeting old friends from NYC and couch surfing in El Paso. In two more days I would be camping in the Rocky Mountains with two of my greatest friends, who were flying out from New York to visit for Independence Day.
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