The Badlands to our own private Idaho

One night while camping in the Badlands we decided to drive a couple miles outside the park and have a beer at the Wagon Wheel bar in Interior, SD (pop. 67). This town hasn't managed to capitalize on it's proximity to the park...we bought a pint of tequila at the store below because we felt sorry for the people there.

Back in the bar, Gina asked the bar woman if the sign outside town regarding the population was correct. Were there only 67 people in town? She pointed to the Native American guy next to us,"He's leaving so it'll be 66 now". "Yep, one girl gets pregnant and three guys have to leave town" he said.

The next day we started on our journey west. First stop was Rapid City, SD to get my blood checked. My platelets still weren't over 100 so I'm still waiting to resume taking the Dasatinib. The service at the cancer center was, well, fast! So, we had lunch in town and took a picture.

We decided we liked the area so much that we would camp in the Black Hills, not too far away. We got to the campground and, as I was talking to the volunteer camp ranger, a yellow jacket crawled under my toe and stung me (I was wearing sandals, you see). After running around for a minute or two like I had been stung I got in the car and we drove to the campsite. As soon as we got out of the car we both heard the buzzing and realized the campground was swarming with wasps. The ranger said, yes, it was true, the yellow jackets were all over the place. By this time my toe hurt so much I couldn't walk and we decided on the spot to hightail it out of the Black Hills. On the way out of the area we saw a billboard advertising the University of the Black Hills and noticed the yellow jacket is their mascot!

Back in the car we did some calculating and figured if we wanted to make it to Glacier National Park we better put some miles on. We drove until we were tired and stayed in a cheap motel right off the highway in Gilette, WY. The next day we drove into Montana and because it is a really big state we drove all day through beautiful country and we were still in Montana! Outside Glacier park the campground was packed with big-ass RVs but they had an area reserved for tents down by the lake. Our neighbors told us there was a black bear out behind the tent area...that's when Gina reminded me  how lucky we are to sleep in our van. I got up in the middle of the night to pee and something big was chowing down on the chokecherries surrounding the van and our neighbors tents. In the morning I discovered this pile of bear shit chock full of chokecherries less than twenty feet from the van. Note the artsy nature of this pile, mimicking the outline of the mountain in the distance.

That morning we got up early and drove to the Many Glaciers campground in the park and got a nice campsite there.

The first day in the park we hiked from the campground up the Swiftcurrent River Valley. The second day we took the boat from the Many Glaciers Hotel to the end of the lake, hiked to a second lake, took another boat and then climbed up to the Grinnell glacier...a round trip of 7.4 miles and 1600 foot elevation gain. I was completely devastated by the time we got back to our campground. We didn't see a grizzly but heard from another helpful volunteer ranger that a griz had used the trail the day before and many people had to go back down to the lake.

We left Glacier park and drove to Missoula where we saw the true nature of these fearsome bears. This one appears to be eating a building.

We cycled all over town and had some excellent local brew. We felt like hipsters with all these young people around. Are you still with me. Don't worry, this brings me to today.