Day 3 – Mitchell, South Dakota to Billings, Montana (1175 km)

We covered some serious turf today – 3 states (all of which feature very yummy 75 m.p.h. speed limits) and another time zone closure to the west coast. Today was one of those days that felt like three days – the first two of which were great, the third, well, not so much.

We started the day in Mitchell, South Dakota with a healthy serving of the Best Western’s free waffles, cereal, coffee and tea – to go of course. Our morning drive took us half way through South Dakota’s gently rolling grasslands which became more rugged as we neared the Badlands region.


By lunch time, having passed by what must have been 100 billboards for the place, we pulled into The Wall Drug Store For anyone who has ever driven south to Florida along Interstate 95, Wall Drug is the South Dakota version of South of the Border, complete with it’s own version of the cheesy “Pedro Sez…” bombastic barrage of billboard advertising.

I learned about Wall Drugs in a “Geography of Recreation and Leisure" course I took back in university (a 4th year filler course whose schedule included no 8:00 AM or Friday classes) so it was cool to see it in real life.

For nearly 80 years, Wall Drug has been enticing Mount Rushmore bound families off the interstate with it’s promises of $0.05 coffee, free ice water, and endless supply of everything and anything. We shopped around a little bit, actually bought some drugs (advil Cold ans Sinus) and enjoyed lunch in the shade of an 80' conrete brontosaurus, where Lilo decided she wanted the entire nectarine, not just the pieces we had cut for her.


Back on the road after lunch, the Black Hills rose seemingly out of nowhere as we approached Rapid City. The landscape quickly changed as wild grasses were replaced by the first forests we’d seen in nearly 400 miles. We turned off the highway for Mount Rushmore in the middle of a sweltering afternoon – 103 F according to Canyonero’s external thermometer, and confirmed by the local radio-schmoe.

The drive south from Rapid City to Rushmore reminded me of Niagara falls, though not for the natural landscape but rather the man-made kind: Reptile World, at least a dozen mini-golf joints, the Cosmo Mystery Area (still don’t know what it is), a few water slides, and countless gift shops. It all came to an end however, and nature abruptly returned, as we crossed into the National Park.

Mount Rushmore is a very cool place on many levels. I never knew that it was never in fact completed (or never believed it when I heard this fact) The educational displays informed us that the monument was intended to feature a full bust of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln – that is from their chests up, not just their heads. Not to mention Lincoln’s head isn’t even finished, so it looks like he’s wearing a really bad rock toupee!
Nonetheless, the scale of the sculpture is enormous, the detail impressive, and the thought of how much work went into the monument is astounding.

The surrounding mountains and forests are beautiful, and we took advantage of the opportunity to take Lilo on a little hike. Not to self: don’t embark on any trail marked “strenuous” while carrying a baby. It was a work out.


After the requisite trip to the gift shop (our beer cozy collection is steadily growing on this trip!) and some yummy ice cream, we climbed back in Canyonero and once again headed west. Our plan was to drive as far as we reasonably could for the remainder of the day, realizing our goal of making it too Vancouver by Thursday evening would require a push well into Wyoming today. We had no idea had far we’d eventually make it, but more on that later. First there was a last minute decision to take a 30 minute detour from the highway to see Devil’s Tower. Beyond being America’s first national monument, Devil’s Tower is more famous from the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” You know, the rock formation Richard Dreyfuss shaped out of mashed potatoes, and the eventual landing site for the mother ship?

It was very cool. Dramatically tall, I couldn’t get over how it looked like a stump – like it was formed from wood, not rock. Pretty amazing, and definitely worth the short trip off the interstate.

Wyoming was another very interesting state to drive through. The Black Hills came to an abrupt end an hour west of the South Dakota border, and grassy plains briefly returned. But quickly, the grass disappeared and was replaced with dirt covered with only patchy and very rugged looking bushes. The rolling hills became more intense peaks, and valleys looked more like cracks in the earth. What struck us most was the total isolation – there were long stretches of absolute nothingness – not even the barns we saw through Minnesota and even South Dakota. From Gillett, an hour north to Buffalo, Wyoming there were literally no building, and the only a few very tough looking cows dotted the landscape here and there. Nothing, for nearly 80 miles.

Our day took a negative turn in Buffalo, Wyoming – thanks to some bad luck. Advanced research and my handy Streets program indicated very few viable accommodation options in Wyoming, which just happened to be where we would be during the evening hours. The small town of Buffalo was one of the few options – it’s really just a collection of hotels and assorted restaurants at the junction of I-90 and Highway 16 – one of the main roads west to Yellowstone National Park. Turns out, every one of the 7 hotels we visited was fully booked (accept one, which wanted over $100 for a small single room). No worries we thought, our back-up plan was the larger town of Sheridan, just 20 miles further down the road. Unfortunately things didn’t go so well in Sheridan either and after no vacancies at the first 12 hotels we checked, things were looking bleak. Turns our Sheridan is hosting a big freakin’ rodeo this week – hence why the all the hotels there, and in nearby Buffalo, were full on a Tuesday night.

We decided our best option was to grab a quick bite to eat and to press on. This required quite a commitment at 9:00 – the map indicated another 2 hours of nothingness through the Crow Nation Indian Reserve before we’d hit Billings, Montana. But with over 35 hotels to choose from, we decided it was our best option. Little did we know that most of these 35 hotels were hosting the Big Sky State Games, or the National Taxidermists' Association’s Annual Convention.

Now closing on midnight, I found myself in the middle of Montana, with a wife who is dead tired after running into and back out of over 30 hotels in total, with a ticking-timebomb of a sleeping baby who could wake-up hungry and cranky at any moment, with my eyes getting heavier by the minute and my haven’t-had-nicotine-since-Saturday nerves ready to fray, and every hotel room in the city is filled with Johnny long-jump or some old animal-stuffer. Just before I was ready to drive Canyonero into a tree, we FINALLY found the Western Executive Inn. $79 (which is close to $10 per hour for how long we’ll be here), and the place reeks of Alfredo sauce and stale cigarette smoke.

I’m going to pass out, and hope all of tomorrow is as good as the first two-thirds of today.