When we spoke at a conference in Honolulu on 2012, Hawaii became my 48th and my wife Dina’s 49th state. I was lacking only Nebraska and North Dakota, while Dina hadn’t been to South Dakota. Ever since then, I’d been scheming ways to convince her we should knock off the last three. We even planned to combine a family event in Denver with a trip to the Black Hills via Nebraska in October 2013, but had to reroute to New Mexico when a government shutdown combined with three feet of snow made the Black Hills unworkable. Getting to her 50th state was not a priority for Dina. But she did want to see the Black Hills and the Badlands. And wanted lots of adventures as we turned 60, including climbing multiple mountains in a “not-over-the-hill tour.” Finally, I suggested a year ahead of time that part of how we could celebrate turning 60 could be a road trip from my sister in Denver to her brother in Minneapolis, stopping at national parks in the western portions of our three missing (and, conveniently, neighboring) states. My sister in Denver sweetened the deal by offering to take her up a 14,000-foot mountain, and my sister-in-law in Minneapolis jumped in with a women’s canoe journey in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota. Those incentives made her willing to drive out of the way into North Dakota, especially when we researched Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We would mostly drive along back roads until we reached Interstate 94 after doing all the parks. And between family visits, we would mix Couchsurfing hosts and no-frills motels. The trip would be affordable, scenic, and a big difference from our lives in the verdant, crowded Northeast. Everybody coordinated calendars, and we caught a plane from Hartford to Denver in July, 2917. True to her word, my sister took Dina and our 15-year-old twin nieces up Mount Bierstadt. Her husband has knee problems and I don’t do well at high altitude, so the two of us went to a museum while the others climbed their mountain. After a few days visiting, we picked up a tiny rented Yaris and headed northeast to our first destination: Scotts Bluff National Monument and adjoining Wildcat Canyon State Park, in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. These twin parks were an excellent introduction to the canyonlands in these three states. I wrote on my Facebook page that day, “I had no idea Western Nebraska would be so beautiful!” The next day, we continued northeastward and reached Interior, South Dakota (population 94, as of the 2010 census), just outside the gate of Badlands National Park. I gave Dina her “official” welcome into the 50-State Club and after depositing our bags, we headed in on a beastly hot day and did several short hikes along the north side of the park road, including Cliff Walk, Door, Window, and a couple of others. None of these took more than about 40 minutes, but it was in the high 90s with no shade, so we avoided any of the longer hikes that day. In the evening, we went to an astronomy program at the park, and got to see Saturn and its rings, three of Jupiter’s moons, and an incredible rising full moon through high-powered telescopes. And then the next day, we got up early and hit the hiking train (on the south side of the road this time) before 8 a.m., hiking the short, steep Saddleback trail and then a nice chunk of high-prairie grasslands behind it. Then all the way down the south loop as far as the connector to Wall and I-90, with the inevitable stop at touristy Wall Drug. We had originally planned to drive all the way through the park to Scenic, but when the road turned to dirt, it was too much for the little Yaris. But it was good that we tried, because on that half-mile stretch of dirt, we saw the only bighorn sheep of the trip. The Badlands were certainly gorgeous, but it was a lot of white stone. Coming into the Black Hills, we still had the beautiful rock formations—but they were surrounded by magnificent pine forests. As New Englanders, we were thrilled to see all those trees, all that green. In one full and two partial days in the Black Hills, our favorite parts by far were Custer State Park and the Crazy Horse monument. On the wildlife loop at Custer, we saw several small clusters of burros (who come right up to your car and will eat out of visitors’ hands), antelopes, and numerous small and large birds. And the scenery along the Needles Highway (especially at the rock formation called Cathedral Spires) was stunning. There are good views of the Crazy Horse Monument from the visitor center, but it’s still a mile away. (You can get closer with an optional bus ride.) But the real reason to visit is the fascinating history of the monument, the lives of Crazy Horse and other chiefs of the time, the Sioux culture, the relationship of Chief Henry Standing Bear and New England sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, and the quest of Ziolkowski’s surviving family to continue building the monument. The last of our three “new” states was North Dakota. We were blessed in Theodore Roosevelt National Park with excellent hiking, two very close and one distant bison encounters, hundreds of prairie dogs, a bison carcass straight out of Georgia O’Keefe, and several sightings of deer and antelope. And our Couchsurfing host tipped us off to the t-shirt and swag waiting for me at the welcome center in Fargo (the other end of the state) for making North Dakota my 50th state. And from Fargo, Mineeapolis is a straight shot down Interstate 94 where we returned the Yaris with 1624 new miles. The most we drove in a single day was four hours. We hiked observed wildlife, and visited several museums. We had a great time. And we crossed being in 50 states off my bucket list. Green/social change business profitability expert Shel Horowitz shows you how profit by greening your business, turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance, and marketing these commitments. Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (Morgan James Publishing), highlights profitable and successful socially responsible strategies used by companies from Fortune 100 to solopreneurs: http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/guerrilla-marketing-to-heal-the-world/ To discuss your next project with him or schedule a no-charge 15-minute strategy session: shel [AT] greenandprofitable.com, 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m., US Eastern Time), Twitter: @ShelHorowitz |
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