We had come, mistakenly, for the wildflowers. We'd heard that in spring, South Dakota's Badlands erupted in blooms. Though we identified some provocative species—woolly locoweed, meadow death camas, and Western false asphodel, a carnivorous plant disguised in white frippery—we were a few weeks early for the main event. It was the start of May and still a bit chilly for most of the species to blossom.
As it happened, that was just fine. There was much to experience here courtesy of both nature and its human juxtapositions. South Dakota exemplifies the relationship between the odd—distinctly American—bedfellows of kitsch and transcendence. The 2021 Oscar-winning Nomadland, largely set in a tent and RV campground adjacent to Badlands National Park, astutely chronicles this coexistence, which we experienced firsthand.
A cotton candy sunset over South Dakota's Badlands National Park.
Over the course of five days in this Midwestern state, my partner, Jeanne, and I drove 250 miles in a great loop from Rapid City east to the Badlands and then south and west to the Black Hills. We watched glorious sunrises over desolate canyons give way to mock trading posts and fiberglass jackalopes. We glamped and slept in log cabins, hiked and also shopped. All along we marveled at the beauty and complexity of this corner of America.
Our plane to Rapid City touched down in a pounding rain. We sat out the storm at Tally's Silver Spoon in the city's downtown and then perused the Native American art at the Prairie Edge Trading Co. & Galleries down the street and combed through the wares at Doc & Alice, a consignment shop in Rushmore Mall, where Jeanne, a shoe buff, scored a pair of knee-high lace-up Uggs—a New Yorker's idea of prairie chic.
When the torrent subsided, we drove east across the plains. The horizon offered seemingly all the earth's green and all the sky's blue with the receding storm sandwiched between. Gunmetal clouds unleashed lightning on distant silos. “Homemade Donuts,” “Get a Rootbeer,” “Free Ice Water,” “Cowboy Up”: The prairie was punctuated with hand-painted signage for Wall Drug, that infamous attraction cobbled together from an original 1931 pharmacy and a subsequent cafeteria, chapel, Westernwear store, and backyard theme park. We were headed to the town of Wall, home of Wall Drug but also the Wounded Knee museum, which tells the story of the Miniconjou Lakota people and the US 7th Cavalry Regiment's massacre of nearly 300 of their members in 1890 on the Pine Ridge Reservation, 80 miles to the south.
A watering hole in downtown Spearfish.
At Pump House Coffee & Deli in Deadwood, vintage gas signs decorate the bar.
The museum was closed, so we ventured a bite at Wall Drug (terrible burger, exemplary
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