First Steps in the Dakota Territory
Trip Start
Aug 20, 2007
1
14
Trip End
Sep 19, 2007
Sioux Falls,
South Dakota,
United States
Monday, August 20, 2007
But anyway, here we go. The plan when we left was to spend a few days crossing South Dakota, then meet up with a few other friends of my uncles for a trip down 'The River of No Return' in Idaho. I love that name by the way. It makes me think of the trip that Teddy Roosevelt took down the 'Rio Roosevelt' in South America back in the early 1900's. Theres an excellent book about the trip, called 'The River of Doubt'. At that time, the river really was in doubt. People knew where its source was, but didnt know where it ended up. It was believed that the river ran into the Amazon, but no one knew for sure. Roosevelt set off with his son and a dozen or so other men to find out. Along the way, they suffered serious hardship, but in the end succeeded in running the river. Thats what I hope our trip will be like. Obviously without the death and sickness though.
Unfortunately, just 4 short hours into our trip, we got the call from Bill that the river was closed due to wildfires. Does it seem strange to anyone else that a river, which is water, could be closed by a fire? Its like rock, paper, scissors right? Water beats fire, earth beats water, fire beats earth? Well, apparently not always. At this point we were still close enough to home to call the whole thing off, but really, why would we do something crazy like that? Instead, we decided to keep heading west, and see if the rest of the group wanted to find a new location to go rafting.
Late in the first day we crossed the Minnesota border into South Dakota. The first exit we found was advertising a visitors center, and we decided to stop for a look. It was well worth it! The staff at the center were extremely helpful. We loaded up on maps, got advice on sites and campgrounds, and generally had a good time. As we were leaving, they gave us pins with a picture of Mt Rushmore and the saying 'Great Faces, Great Places'. Haha, I love it! Now at this point of the day we were pretty much ready to stop for the night, and started looking for a likely place to camp. We ended up in Palisades State Park, just a bit off I-90.
After finding the park, we went about setting up camp, which went pretty quickly, however starting a fire was another story. It was not only a very humid day, but there had been a bit of rain just before we got set up. We ended up going through most of the paper we had laying around before we finally got it started. I was actually pretty embarrassed by this, as I consider myself quite the able firestarter. But hey, everyone has a bad day now and then. We finished off the evening with some pork chops, baked beans, and salad. And of course a few beers to relax after a day in the car. Shortly after dark a storm rolled by to the south. We wathced the lightning, took some pictures, and then called it a night.
