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Southwestern South Dakota

Tell-tail signs of buffalo are everywhere. Funny thing, I've only seen one buffalo so far. Where are they all hiding?

The Badlands turns to rolling prarie at this point.

I hit some pretty bad washboarding in the road. To make matters more interesting, it's all downhill, so I ride as fast as I can and in the process get a pretty good body massage. Then, suddenly out of nowhere, a huge snow storm strikes! I'm completely taken off-guard as I slip and slide to maintain an upright position on the bike. The temperature is now hovering around 20 degrees and I find myself entering into the early stages of hypothermia. I'm in the middle of nowhere and I start to worry if I can make it back... to... the... van... I... am... so... cold... right... now...

Okay, okay, if truth be told, I actually manage to break my digital camera. All the jiggling, jogging, and jarring jams my camera's shutter wide open. As a result, subsequent pictures are now all hopelessly overexposed. Sorry, no flash snow storm, no story of me almost freezing to death, just a broken camera. How anti-climactic is that?

Sans pictures, the balance of my day is spent completing my bike ride. I continue my ride to Sage Creek Campground, the ride's mid-point, then backtrack to the van. Following my reunion with the van the evening arrives so I drive back to Sage Creek Campground and settle in for the night. The evening orchestrates a whopper of a thunderstorm. Supported by a torrential downpour accompaniment, surely this wet performance rivaled the one experienced by Noah and his faithful Ark.

In the morning I drive to Wall, SD to buy 2 disposable 35mm film cameras. I will use them as a stop gap measure, I plan to buy a new digital camera once I get to Minneapolis, MN, my next destination after Badlands. My photography today will be limited to the 26 shots on the first disposable camera. Bummer, I'm used to taking 10 times that number with my old digital.