Gangsters, Rivers, Prairie Dogs and Photo Shoots: South Dakota!

South Dakota is awesome you guys. Like, so awesome and there is so much here! We didn't get to do nearly the amount of things we could have done or that I wanted to do! I will need to come back here someday for sure.

We woke up early and re-stoked our campfire so that we could cook breakfast before our first stop of the day at Devil's Gulch. One needs a hearty breakfast if one is going to be following the footsteps (or hoofprints) of the one of the country's most famous gangsters!

The legend goes that Jesse James urged his horse to leap the 20 feet from one side to the other of Devil's Gulch to escape the lawman's posse that was after him. Twenty feet doesn't sound like a lot, but when you are standing on the creaky, rusty bridge they have going over the spot where he jumped, you truly appreciate the magnitude of that jump.

Also, according to the literature in the little photo-copied brochure the nice old man at the tiny visitor's center gave us, the spot beneath the jump is known as the Bottomless Pit. One time, a 600-foot plumb line was dropped into and never hit bottom!

Of course, in reality, Jesse and his horse probably just raced around the Gulch, but the story is better the other way, and I am all about the story.

Fresh from our gangster adventure, we headed to Sioux Falls to see the river that gives the town its name. It was beautiful and rather refreshing to stand in the spray from the falls on a hot day. Once we left the Falls, I convinced Tom to stop at the Mitchell Corn Palace and it was everything I hoped it would be.

Corn and corny jokes and corn-themed souvenirs, oh my! But, honestly, that there, that is America, and it is what I love about America. They proudly proclaim that it is the only Corn Palace in the World! Know why it is the only Corn Palace in the world? Because it is lame! So lame! But that right there is what is so wonderful about it! They're like "Heck yeah, our corn palace is lame, but we love it and we embrace it and we invite you to come and join us in our wonderful quirky lame-ness." And I'm like, "Yes, absolutely, I will join you in your wonderful quirky lame-ness." And I do. And it is excellent.

Moving right along, we made our way to Chamberlain, SD, which is right on the Missouri River. The rest stop had a gorgeous panorama, and some interesting stuff about Lewis and Clark, but we didn't stay long because we wanted to get to our next big destination: The Badlands.

Oh. My. God. The Badlands are simply breathtaking. Each new amazing sight on this trip makes me imagine that I will never see anything so amazing or beautiful again in my life, and then each time I am proved wrong. And I am so very very glad for that.

America the Beautiful indeed.

I can't do the Badlands justice in words, so here are some pictures.

On the way into the Badlands we stopped at a Prairie Dog ranch where we got to feed the prairie dogs and got some of the most adorable pictures and video ever taken, I think. No seriously, look.

Anyway, we ended the day in Custer State Park where we set our tent up in the dark and crashed out.