Tennessee to South Dakota
March-April, 2006
We stayed in the Smoky Mountains for 2-3 days, camped by this stream.
Throughout the South we saw the damage being done by kudzu, an African import with no natural enemies in America. We saw it at its ugliest, in late winter before the vines got their new leaves which prevent other plants from getting any sunlight. Apparently the only thing kudzu is good for is as food for goats.
An old stone house in the Ozarks.
Millions of years of limestone north of Branson, Missouri.
An Amish area in northwestern Missouri.
A museum with tools from early settlers and the Westward Expansion.
The Loess Hills along the Missouri River in western Iowa, created by blowing silt blown in from glaciers furthrer north as they retreated thousands of years ago.
Crossing the Missouri River from Nebraska to South Dakota.
We spent six nights camped along the Lewis and Clark Trail ... in Missouri, here in South Dakota, and later in Montana's Bitterroot Mountains.
Traveling through South Dakota without visiting the Wall Drug Store is unthinkable ...
We also visited the Badlands, with their erosion-created hills ...
... wildlife ...
... and muddy roads after a spring thunderstorm that was so windy that we repositioned our trailer in the campground so it faced into the wind after first setting up broadside to the oncoming storm.
The Black Hills gave us a chance to see Mt. Rushmore ...
... some beautiful roads ...
with tunnels just barely wide enough for our trailer ...
... and Wind Cave National Park ...
... and lots of beautiful, early Spring scenery.
Early Spring means that not all National Forest campgrounds were open or even accessible. Here we were thwarted by snow before reaching a campground and had to make a difficult U-turn with the mountain on one side of the slippery road and a steep drop off on the other.
