And Back to Badlands Again

It's starting to feel a bit ridiculous, always posting about returning to Badlands.  Summer travel plans to visit family in the midwest has made it simple to swing past here en route.  I like being here too much to pass up the opportunity to exist in this landscape whenever I can, and so here I am.  This weekend is the long awaited astronomy festival here at Badlands, and I'm really looking forward to some of the talks and other events.  In an odd stroke of coincidence, a wonderful fellow artist from back home happens to be teaching a workshop in Rapid City this weekend, and is hanging a brief show at the Dahl Art Center.  I believe it will be up from tomorrow through the following thursday, and if you're local, his work is well worth the trip to see.  Opening reception tomorrow from 5-7pm.

Today I am sitting in the office at the Budget Host, waiting out the wind and waiting for friends to be available to see.  My tent is in a heap out in the elements, held down by a giant tractor tire 'borrowed' from the playground next to my site.  With luck all will still be intact to be setup for sleeping tonight.  Doing our best to prevent the loss of yet another tent.  There is a story behind that thought.  Many years ago, while camping in Mohave Desert, high winds destroyed our tent in an epic manner.  Park rangers told us after the fact that it was gusts of 70 mph, quite normal for the area.  Why this info couldn't be posted at the campsite escapes me.  Short story is that by 2am we were giggling in the tent as the corners took turns buckling in to touch our faces.  By morning we found several snapped poles.  Mended these with good ol' duct tape, and moved to a cheap hotel/casino in Primm, NV.  We ended up replacing that tent with a nicer, sturdier model built with more cross poles.  A couple nights ago we had this tent set up here in Interior, SD, just south of the  east entrance to the park.  It got a bit windy, and at 3:30am we were standing up inside, bracing the poles with our backs to keep them from bending in.  Today's forecast showed a strong wind advisory.  It is always windy here, and often very windy.  Extremely windy isn't rare, either.  We staked out the guy lines for extra support, and watched.  Forecast said the winds will peak in early afternoon, dying down after 3pm.  But by 10:30, the tent looked about ready to take flight.  Gusts in the 40s, steady winds about 30mph.  So the decision was made to protect our shelter and lay the poles flat to survive the day.  Luckily it's not also raining.  High winds and gusts make a lot of my favorite hiking spots more treacherous than reasonable.  So I stopped in to see some folks in the visitor's center, worked on my website a bit, and figure I might as well make a blog post.  It's wednesday which is park employee volleyball day.  In a couple hours we'll head over there, grill some dinner, and hang with friends. 

A couple photos from my phone:

After sunset last night, from Door/Windows area.

Tent weighted down with tractor tire.