Buffalo Hunt

July 6

We enjoyed the burgers so much at the Badlands Saloon that we went looking for more buffalo today. And we found some, too, but couldn’t get within range.

I picked up my prescription at Wall Drug. But we had breakfast there in the Wall Drug Cafe. Billboards all the way to the state line advertise what Wall Drug has to offer, including home-made donuts and 5-cent coffee. So in addition to eggs and bacon, that’s what I had. Joanna had some very good pancakes.

After breakfast, we walked around and looked at some of the attractions. I bought a cheap switchblade and a conventional folding knife in the camping goods department. Joanna bought a travel pillow and some myrrh-scented balls.

We saw the replica mine, walls and walls of historic photographs, the jackelope, and even an animatronic T-Rex.

We also stopped at the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands visitor center, which is a block up from the drug store in the two blocks that constitute downtown Wall. According to a ranger, most of the bison are in the Badlands National Park. The national grassland wraps around the park, and there are some buffalo in the section south of the park.

So we headed in that direction. We went back to the park, entering this time at the gate where we left the day before. This time we took a gravel road, Sage Creek Road, through part of the park we skipped yesterday.

There is a section labeled Roberts Prairie Dog Town. That is apparently a misnomer for Prairie Dog Metropolis. It stretches for miles along both sides of the road. There is an overlook where I was able to get out and walk on a couple of short tracks throught the town. The prairie dogs sat at the doors of their burrows and squeaked in protest.  

Farther along the road, we saw some dark spots on the prairie. Even with the binoculars we couldn’t be sure what we were looking at. One silhouette looked like the mismatched halves that make up a bison—the huge head and hump and the relatively small ass end.

Another mile or so, there were cars parked on both sides of the road. That’s an indicator that somebody has seen something. This was a smaller herd, but much closer. Even without the binocs, I could make out the shapes of buffalo bulls. With the binoculars, I could see the calves following the cows.

Curiouser and curiouser, though, were a small herd of almost tame bighorns. They were ewes with young, four adults and four lambs.

They were on a bluff below a viewing area, and just walked by us all, and passed between two parked cars, one of which had its engine running. All, that is, save one ewe and the lambs. The ewe waited for the running car to leave and then joined the other adults, which were grazing at the roadside. 

The lambs went a few yards back down the hillside and started grazing there. They had the same attitude toward humans as that monkey in the Cambodian temple. 

It ate fruit from a bag and ignored the Chinese tourists who posed for photos that would look like they were petting it. 

Ignored them, that is, until one came too close to the bag. that brought a quick hiss and a show of teeth.

Nobody pretended to pet the sheep.

We continued on the gravel road till we left the park and eventually came to South Dakota Highway 44. This is one of the roads we traveled through Hutchinson County a couple of days ago. This time it  took us through the Badlands and across the Grasslands, with nary a buffalo in sight.

We did see some workers on the roadside who appeared to be out to kill prairie dogs. Now, given my experience with something as small as chipmunks, which were able to undermine my driveway a few years ago, I can understand that.

But then we took a gravel road north back to the Badlands National Park. Shortly after we turned onto it, we saw a sign: "Prairie Dogs Have Plague." It advised us to keep our pets in the car.

We also ran into a traffic jam of sorts. Nobody honked any horns. They just mooed. Unfenced cattle had decided it was time to cross the road. 

They must do that a lot, judging by the evidence. There was cow shit lying in the middle of the road for the next mile or two.

The wall of the Badlands is very clear when you see it from the south. It really is a barrier. It reminded Joanna of the Great Wall, which she visited a few years ago on a trip to Red China.

The trip back to Wall took us through the striking section of the park with the gold and red mounds. 

We rested at the motel for a while and then went out to dinner. We tried a new place, the Cactus Cafe. It took me three tries to order a beer. The waiter kept disappearing before I could ask for anythng. When I finally asked for a New Belgium, which was on the menu, the waiter looked at me and said, “I have to ask.”

I asked him to explain. I have to ask to see if we have it. Well, yeah. 

He seemed surprised that it was his job to find out. He went and came back and said they had three ales. One I didn’t know. I asked him about it. “I don’t know,” he said. We said good-bye.

We had salad, mashed potatoes, and a rib eye at the Badlands Saloon, where we had the buffalo burgers yesterday. We tried some chicken gizzards, too, as an appetizer, but it was like trying to chew leather. We gave up on them.

I had a New Belgium Fat Tire, an amber ale that I have had a few times before; the Deschutes Fresh Squeezed, the IPA I had yesterday, and something new to me, Moose Drool, a brown ale from Big Sky Brewing in Missoula, Mont.

Joanna asked the waitress about a supermarket. There’s one up the street from the bar. In fact, it’s just around the corner from our motel. So we walked there to buy some fruit and a few other supplies.

We tried to get some pie (also advertised on billboards) at the Wall Drug Cafe, but it was almost nine and the place was shutting down. I keep forgetting that 9 p.m. is late in much of the United States.

So that’s another day in former Sioux country, gang.

Be well, all, and to all a good night.

Harry