I drove through the Badlands enjoying the scenery, the early morning coolness, the promise of another sunny day and the ubiquitous song of the Western Meadowlark. Meadowlarks, Eastern and Western, are declining grassland birds who suffer from the earlier cutting of hay and silage these days. They are the corncrakes of North America. But with their…
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Not so bad lands
The Badlands National Park is 224,000 acres of scenery south of the I90 and it is stunningly beautiful. A prairie grassland with striking rock formations. And the sun shone all day. I saw Bison and Pronghorn Antelope roaming the Plains, Bighorn Sheep on the rocks, Mule Deer in the valleys and Prairie Dogs in…
Wall Drug
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I didn’t really want to go to Wall Drug but I am glad that I did. The legend behind the drugstore, restaurant and shopping arcade on the I90 is that it was set up in the 1930s and wasn’t really making a go of it until the lady behind the business had an idea. They…
Leaving Midland, SD
I woke early this morning and knew that it had been raining in Midland, SD but that now the air had cleared. I got up, dressed, tip-toed down the creaky wooden stairs of the Stroppel Hotel and strolled down the rain-soaked main street. Midland was quiet at 630am although there were orioles singing, House Sparrows…
Grass
Today, the sun shone all day and the birds came out and it was great. I occasionally renewed my friendship with I90 heading West but mostly I stuck to smaller parallel roads that took me out of the homely and friendly Sioux Falls and through a mainly arable, mainly flat landscape broken up with wetlands and…
I love I90
I’m in South Dakota – only just over the border from Minnesota, but in Sioux Falls. I started in Wisconsin, drove right across Minnesota and arrived here in South Dakota. This is the West – although Sioux Falls doesn’t seem very wild at the moment. And that mammal from yesterday – thank you to those…
Happy Birthday Bob!
Robert Allen Zimmerman is 70 today. Happy Birthday Bob Dylan! And today I did something that I have never done before, but I am going to do it again fairly soon. That probably makes it sound much, much more interesting than it was. But I enjoyed it – one often does the first time. And…
Five states of mind, two films
Today was a driving day. I started off somewhere south of Pittsburgh and ended up somewhere east of Chicago. So that’s Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, a short detour into Michigan just to say I’ve ‘been’ there and now in Indiana. My journey today started where the opening and closing scenes of the film The Deerhunter…
Audubon, PA
I might have been keen to shake the dust of New York City from my shoes if there were any dust, but the sidewalks are hosed down each morning and it was a bit of a drizzly morning. But this was the start of my drive West and I was keen to see the miles ticking by,…
Liberty and the pursuit of happiness
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I was in Central Park by 630am – and it may have been too early. There weren’t that many birds around. I added Magnolia Warbler to my list for Central Park but saw few other warblers. I added cream cheese bagel and coffee to my waistline and got a cab south down Broadway. Walking the last few…