To infinity and beyond: South Dakota and North Dakota
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We’d been thinking of visiting South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and Badlands national park for almost a year. Then an opportunity came when one of our friends gave us a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from Delta. We did not hestitate even a bit in buying two tickets for a round trip from Chicago to Rapid City, SD. Although it was an impulsive trip, we had a lot of fun observing the wildlife in the great plains of South Dakota and North Dakota.
We started our journey on June 22. It is always a long journey if we start from the small city of Champaign. We first took a train to catch a flight from Midway to Minneapolis. But the flight got so delayed that we would not make it to another flight from Minneapolis to Rapid City. Because of that, we needed to change a flight from Chicago to an earlier one. It took us in total of 12 hours just to go from Champaign to Rapid city, which was as long as if we drive there. Anyway, South Dakota and North Dakota are rare gems to us. We never thought that these states could be so gorgeous!
On the first day there, we went to Devil’s tower in Wyoming first. The tower is in Wyoming, but it’s very close to South Dakota. We could spot it from afar (10 miles from the location, I think). The tower is naturally formed igneous rock and was considered a sacred place by the native around there in the past. Besides the tower, we also got to see a prairie dog town. Unlike those we saw in Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks, prairie dogs here are not afraid of humans. We took a lot of pictures of them!
In the afternoon of the first day, we went to Mount Rushmore and Badlands. Mount Rushmore is an iconic place that is known worldwide. It was not the most impressive place we have been to, but it was not as bad as some people told us. (We have been told that the actual sculpture is small. No, it’s not. I think it’s very impressive sculpture, just not so much to see.) Then we were headed off to Badlands. What we did were basically stopping at every view point. We spent so many hours even though we didn’t hike at all. We saw a lot of wildlife including bisons, rattlesnalkes, prairie dogs, and pronghorns. The last stop in the park for us was the Panorama view point where we saw a beutiful sunset and mountain goats there.
On the second day, we only had one place to visit, Theordore Roosevelt National Park. The reason that we could only fit one attraction on that day was because of the long distance from Rapid city to the park. We spent 9 hours just to drive back and forth. We stopped at the painted canyon which is part of the park but not close to other parts of the park first. We then reached the foot of the park around noon, so we stopped at Cowboy Café in Medora for lunch. Medora is a cute cowboy-themed city and the nearest place to the park that offers food and gas.
We then went to the south unit of the park. The view were mostly like painted canyons but the area was also very green, which was very contrastly beautiful. After that, we drove for one more hour to get to the north unit. I think the north unit offers more variety of scenaries. We love the area with all the cannon balls. The spot was so unique! We also got to see more than 50 bisons walking along the park’s fence. That was the first time I saw so many bisons. Overall, this trip impressed us in many ways. We both love the nature in this part of the country and also love driving there as there were almost no car. We would totally recommend it!
Before this trip, I had never been to Texas or New Mexico. Initially, our plan was to visit only Big Bend National Park in southern Texas, near the border with Mexico. However, we stumbled upon a blog where the author mentioned that there are several other national parks not far from Big Bend. In fact, the area is home to four remarkable parks– Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns, and White Sands. Despite their proximity, these parks are incredibly distinct from one another. We thoroughly enjoyed exploring the unique natural beauty each had to offer.
After we found out that there are some flights from Willard (a regional airport in Champaign) that are inexpensive, we started flying out from here instaead of Chicago. We got a really good price of plane tickets to Seattle, so we decided to go to more national parks! The two parks that we visited were Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks. We thought about going to North Cascade as well, but the time was limited so we planned to visit there next time. Visiting these two popular national parks in the fall was such a good choice–less crowd, nice weather, and fall foliage!
Midwest surprisingly offers us many national parks to visit all year round. One of the national parks near Illinois is the Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City, Kentucky. We rented a car from Champaign and drove around 5 hours, excluding small stops in Indiana. We had never been to Kentucky before, and we believe that not many international students had been there. Plus, this was the first time we visited a cave in the US, and we start with the world’s longest known cave system!
Although Poy graduated from the Scripps-Oxford joint Ph.D. program in Biochemistry for half a year and already started working at UIUC as a post-doctoral researcher, his graduation ceremony was held way later in May 2024. His family also came from Thailand to attend his graduation ceremony in San Diego. We then spent over a week afterward traveling around the west coast, including California, Arizona, and Nevada. It was my first time (and his family’s first time) doing a road trip in the west coast. We enjoyed a huge variety of natural wonders that the west coast has to offer.