Renditions and water boarding, sleep
deprivation, continuous loud music, fingernails on a
chalkboard -- hell, that is a walk in the park compared to the third
day in a minivan with three tired and bored kids. Note to the Intelligence Community: Stick a Taliban in a Sienna for three days with kids and drive around the desert.
The days have been long, and I have been
somewhat of a drill sergeant in getting the kids out of bed and on the road.
The alarm has been set for either 6:00 or 6:30 and out the door by 6:30
or 7:00 depending on whether the hotel has a breakfast or not. We have not arrived at the hotel until 9:00-9:30 after a late dinner. So the
kids have become worn out and disinterested over the last few days.
That changed at the end of the fourth
day. I'll get to that later.
First Impressions:
Iowa City has a homeless problem,
western South Dakota is under-rated, and again (note-to-self) never, ever eat
at a national park concession if possible.
We passed a lot of birthplaces of this
President or that person along the I-80 drive from Cleveland to Iowa City.
I thought to myself, this is interesting....there are a lot of
accomplished people from the mid West, but they all seem to have made their
names elsewhere and few had returned. Ronald Reagan did not retire to
Dixon, IL. But then again, Nixon did not retire to San Clemente, nor did
Clinton to Arkansas.
Iowa City was merely a transit point,
but it left an odd impression on me. The area around our hotel, which was
in a good area of town, was so infested with homeless people that it reminded
me of Van Ness Boulevard in San Francisco, where the territorial homeless
occasionally get in fisticuffs over the prime hustling territory. The
homeless in Iowa City were not necessarily threatening, but it makes for some
uncomfortable avoidance of eye contact and trying to spirit kids through
gauntlets of homeless people while searching for a place for a quick bite.
So we were out early and headed to
South Dakota. Our goal was the western part of South Dakota. It was
a long drive and the kids were getting very restless by the time we got to the town of Wall. I remember the billboard signs for Wall Drug aligning
Route 90 from my trip as a kid. It seemed like there were hundreds, if
not thousands of them. We decided to stop there, allow the kids to
stretch their legs and see what the fuss was about.
I have to give the owners credit.
There is not much in the town of Wall. The Wall Drug business
itself spans multiple blocks and includes a book store, a rock
shop, dining, etc. etc. It is its own little mall. It would
not be impressive in any suburb of a larger city -- in fact it would be very
kitschy, but quite impressive in the literally the middle of nowhere. And
it probably seems more impressive than it really is given you've just arrived
after multiple hours of driving through nothing. I wonder if it is more
impressive driving from East to West than from West to East for that reason.
It seems that Wall Drug basically creates enough traffic to support a
number of other small businesses in town.
Just
west of Wall, the trip starts to get interesting. A few
miles south of the town, is the western entrance to the Badlands
National Park. After quickly exploring Wall Drug near dusk, we decided to
take the 20 mile or so loop back through the Badlands. When we got there and
the scenery changed, the kids immediately lit up and stopped squabbling.
Highly worth the drive through, especially in the low light of morning or
evening which makes the different colors more vivid.
 |
| In the Badlands |
We made the mistake of eating at the Cedar Pass Lodge, the in-park concession. It was late as we made our way toward the south entrance to continue the drive to Rapid City. Let's just say the service was awful and the food was worse. It should be a crime that this place is allow to stay in business. Regardless, the overall trip to the Badlands was a great experience and gave the kids a sense of what might come, perking them up overall. The comments coming from the second and third row had changed from intra-sibling sniping to "oohs" and "awes".
