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I drive to as far as I can see, then I do it again, and again, and again, and again. I’m on a road that goes to forever, and then some. Welcome my friends to South Dakota a state I’ve never been to, but a state I fell in love with…
Photo: Don Barone
…here’s the deal I got in touch with the South Dakota B.A.S.S. Nation looking for a tour guide to show me their state, and they sent me nation member Troy Lantz, who brought along his 17-year-old daughter Katy, a very cool young lady with a lot of pizazz and backseat naps.
Photo: Don Barone
Trust me, they sent the right dude, in 15 hours of windshield time Troy (and Katy) took me on a 794-mile tour of the state, from the plains in the east of the state to the mountains in the west and a whole bunch of cool things in between, so come on, check it out…
Photo: Don Barone
We began in his hometown of Winner, S.D., at a place that sounded kind of familiar…a bait shop run by another “db,” Derald Bachman, a pretty cool guy that showed me rows and rows of tackle stuff I had no idea about, but hey this town of Winner and the anglers in it…
Photo: Don Barone
…got together and built a bass pond for the local kids to come and fish in. Troy told me there are a bunch of bass in there, he just for some reason wouldn’t point out exactly where those fish were. Huh.
Photo: Don Barone
After a quick tour of to the rest of Winner, a meeting with a cool dude named Mel, and a drive by their working drive-in we hit the open road on what turned out to be the most epic tour of my life, and trust me, that’s saying a bunch.
Photo: Don Barone
Let me be honest with you, it was like I had somehow driven to Mars. I’m a city guy, a Buffalo, N.Y., guy, wide open spaces to me was our driveway…
Photo: Don Barone
…I grew up with a blocked view, houses, buildings, you could mow our backyard in eight trips back and forth, I think it was like 1/1,000th of an acre, not so much out here…
Photo: Don Barone
…I mean, who mows this stuff?
Photo: Don Barone
South Dakota, believe it or not, has more shoreline than the state of Florida. It’s the 16th largest state in the union covering 77,000 square miles most of which is dedicated to agriculture.
Photo: Don Barone
Now check this out, for a city guy this figure is almost to hard to grasp, South Dakota has about 10 people, 10, per square mile. In perspective New Jersey, the state with the most, has 1,205 people per square mile. By the way, Manhattan alone has 27,000 tightly packed and slightly cranky folks per square mile.
Photo: Don Barone
If you know me you know I’m like a red blob weather magnet wherever we go…and yep, even here on the plains, it got me.
Photo: Don Barone
Yep, more driving, Katy told me that the nearest mall from where she lives is three hours away, which to a teen is like, wow you know. Sometimes Troy drives an hour and a half to grocery shop. So we drive a couple hours, maybe more and then suddenly we somehow end up on Mars…
Photo: Don Barone
…or as more commonly called, The Badlands, or “mako sica” as the Lakota’s, part of the Sioux Nation that also consists of the Dakotas and Nakotas tribes, called it meaning “land bad.”
Photo: Don Barone
Imagine, a city dude looking at this, and when I say to me it looks like Mars, I’m not the only one who thought that way…
Photo: Don Barone
…the movie Starship Troopers was set here as an alien planet filled with big bugs that ate people, mainly those Starship Trooper dudes and…
Photo: Don Barone
…the are was also used in the movie Armageddon…don’t tell anyone but it was the surface of the asteroid.
Photo: Don Barone
It’s 244,000 acres of postcard views…
Photo: Don Barone
…a billion or so years ago this was the bottom of the shallow Cambrian Sea…
Photo: Don Barone
…each stripe is a layer of sediment laid down through millions and millions of years. Erosion knocks about an inch a year off this place, in fact all of it has been shaped by water.
Photo: Don Barone
I have to tell you, since I was a little kid all I’ve ever wanted to be in life was a Paleontologist. I have a childhood love of dinosaurs that has never gone away and standing here, to me, was a childhood dream come true. Out there in those nooks and crannies…
Photo: Don Barone
…lies the world’s richest Oligocene Epoch (33 to 23 million years from today) fossil beds, the world’s richest collection of the fossilized remains of the creatures who lived way back then.
Photo: Don Barone
Just to stand on the rim and look at it was a dream come true, and for a moment, I was a little kid again, for a moment I could hear the waves lapping the inland sea, for a moment I could hear the roar of the most dominant life forms to inhabit this earth…so far…dinosaurs. Thank you, South Dakota, for a moment I’ll never forget…by the way, look close…
Photo: Don Barone
…there are people standing out there, I didn’t even see them when I took the photo…
Photo: Don Barone
…and speaking of tourists, no I wouldn’t do that…
Photo: Don Barone
…or this…
Photo: Don Barone
…but thanks in part to “the selfie,” and beautiful sights that you want to make your friends crazy that you are there and they are not…
Photo: Don Barone
…tourism is the second largest money maker in the state…
Photo: Don Barone
…even my tour guides became tourists in their own state…but nowhere here draws more than the original fab four…
Photo: Don Barone
…these guys.
Photo: Don Barone
Mount Rushmore, last year 2 million people came to see it, came possibly to pay their respects to America’s founding fathers/Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, President Abraham Lincoln and President Teddy Roosevelt. Quick coolness fact: Originally Thomas Jefferson was going to be to the right (stage right) of Washington, but it wasn’t working so they blew up what they had of him there and put him in the place where he is now.
Photo: Don Barone
The faces are about 60 feet top to bottom, it took Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and about 400 men and women earning roughly $8 bucks a day 14 years to complete the project…total cost: $989,992.3. Obviously back then the government kept better records.
Photo: Don Barone
90 percent of the “carvings” were carved with dynamite. The one face, the one face that choked me up while looking up there was this one, George Washington. I live in New England amidst the history of the Revolutionary War of which I’m a history buff, Washington actually did stay with his troops in our town a couple of time. Without Washington and his soldiers and common folk who fought to turn this land into America there could easily be the faces of kings and queens up there. God Bless those who fought and won our freedom led by this man.
Photo: Don Barone
As I was standing there suddenly music came up over the speaker system, it was The Star-Spangled Banner and the crowd broke into song (you can listen below), and off to the side stood a lone flag but…
Photo: Don Barone
…I was drawn to the sight of these two trees on the side of the mountain, and something came over me. I thought of my buddy who was killed in Vietnam, thought of all the men and women who died for our freedom, these two lonely trees about knocked me out, to me they tied Mount Rushmore altogether, with the famous faces up top and these two trees who serve and who die, for this country. It’s weird but I know nothing about those trees but I hope to God they remain there. I know, weird.
Photo: Don Barone
Next day more of west South Dakota, it’s like two different states within one, suddenly we are in the forest, trees everywhere…
Photo: Don Barone
…hills and mountains everywhere, and whatever these things are, around every turn…check out the bottom of the photo it’ll give you a perspective on how big these things are…
Photo: Don Barone
…suddenly we go around a corner and there pops out one of the prettiest mountain lakes I’ve ever seen…
Photo: Don Barone
…Pactola Lake.
Photo: Don Barone
Obviously not quite a secret lake, but wow, just wow. I’m not a tree hugger but I’ve got to tell you we start screwing up stuff like this, and I’m going to become one. We live on the one miracle in our solar system, some call it Earth, that gives us gifts, gifts that without them we wouldn’t be here, please do what you can to not muck it up.
Photo: Don Barone
Chief Crazy Horse, in stone. There have always been legends in my family that my maternal grandfather, Clay, was of “First Nation” indigenous heritage (Canada’s Native Canadians) but I’ve never found any proof of that and kind of doubt it, but, from a young age because of it I’ve been acutely aware of other folks, other places, other ideas. I don’t really know who got here first and don’t really care, I respect everyone’s heritage and like Grandpa Clay used to tell me, “Ain’t no difference Donnie, we all the same species,” which of course I had no idea what he meant until I got to college and found out yep, Gramps was right. As I was taking this picture I was also silently saying a prayer, for all of us.
Photo: Don Barone
Dear South Dakota…as we drove back to Pierre, the capitol and location of the Bassmaster Elite gig this week…
Photo: Don Barone
…I just sat in the passenger seat deep in thought as Troy drove into the sunset while Katy slept in the back seat…
Photo: Don Barone
…Dear South Dakota what an amazing place you’ve got here, a place where the sunsets in the mountains and…
Photo: Don Barone
…on the plains, all within your border.
Photo: Don Barone
Dear South Dakota you welcomed me, and all others to your state in a way similar to how America welcomes all with a statue in New York Harbor, a lady there…
Photo: Don Barone
…a lady here. Your statue is called “Dignity,” the one near me goes by the name of “Liberty,” to me pretty much the same thought. I read on your statue this: “...have the sculpture stand as an enduring symbol of our shared belief that all here are sacred and in a sacred place.” Dear South Dakota…
Photo: Don Barone
…it is in fact “Dignity” and “Liberty” that indeed make this place sacred, make all who live between those two statues and everywhere else, sacred. Thank you for knowing that, thank you for inviting us in, thank you for showing me a magical land, and please know this as I drive back to my place, I will always remember your place and will speak kindly of it, and with love.
db
Photo: Don Barone
