northeastern Nebraska
Visited: June 29, 2004
NPS Site Visited: 63 of 353
Second Visit: Sometime Soon
NPS Website
National Wild and Scenic Rivers are nebulous things. Not the rivers themselves, but deciphering which areas around them actually constitutes park land. We did cross the Missouri at one point in (an unsuccessful) search of a passport stamp in Yankton, S.D. We [...]
Archive for June, 2004
Missouri National Recreational River
Posted in Uncategorized on June 30, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Wall Drug
Posted in Uncategorized on June 29, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Wall, S.Dak.
Visited: June 28, 2004
NPS Site Visited: Not an NPS Site
Local Website
WHAT IS IT?
America’s most famous tourist trap due to its ubiquitous billboards, traveler-rich location, shameless self-promotion and free ice water.
BEAUTY (2/10)
Wall Drug is a drugstore on drugs. It takes over an entire city block and has grown over the years to include souvenir shops, [...]
Badlands National Park
Posted in Uncategorized on June 28, 2004 | 2 Comments »
Interior, S.Dak.
Visited: June 28, 2004
Second Visit: August 19, 2004
NPS Site Visited: 62 of 353
NPS Website
WHAT IS IT?
Stark, unearthly rock formations, canyons and pinnacles ostensibly, but mistakenly, devoid of wildlife and very hot. The Site contains one of the world’s richest mammalian fossil beds.
BEAUTY (8/10)
Badlands NP is harshly unwelcoming but strangely beautiful and undeniably awesome. The [...]
The Bear’s Lodge that Became Devils Tower
Posted in Uncategorized on June 24, 2004 | 2 Comments »
Gab:
Our education about Native American culture has really just begun. After months of historical sites in the Northeast which made reference to people indigenous to North America only as enemies or problems for early settlers, we arrived in North Dakota and Minnesota to three wonderful sites.
The Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site and Fort [...]
Devils Tower National Monument
Posted in Uncategorized on June 23, 2004 | 1 Comment »
Devils Tower, Wyo.
Visited: June 23, 2004
NPS Site Visited: 58 of 353
NPS Website; Local Website
Why Such a Bad Score?
Click Here for Gab’s Thoughts on the Bear’s Lodge that Became Devils Tower
WHAT IS IT?
An 867-foot high rock, or as the NPS calls it, an igneous intrusion.
BEAUTY (8/10)
Devils Tower rises out its breathtaking Black Hills setting with a [...]
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Posted in Uncategorized on June 22, 2004 | 1 Comment »
near Medora, N.Dak. (South Unit) and Watford City, N.Dak. (North Unit)
Visited: June 22, 2004
NPS Site Visited: 57 of 353
NPS Website; Local Website
WHAT IS IT?
Rugged badlands, renewed mixed-grass prairies, meandering rivers and creeks, abundant wildlife, wild horses, a birdwatcher’s paradise, petrified forests and altogether stunning scenery. The Park exists on and around lands where Theodore Roosevelt [...]
Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site
Posted in Uncategorized on June 20, 2004 | 1 Comment »
near Williston, N.Dak.
Visited: June 20, 2004
NPS Site Visited: 56 of 353
NPS Website
WHAT IS IT?
A reconstructed version of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company’s upper-Missouri Outfit Trading Post.
BEAUTY (5/10)
The reconstruction is well done and quite accurate due to the frontier paintings done by Karl Bodmer, George Catlin and John James Audubon, among others. Despite appearing in [...]
Corn Palace
Posted in Uncategorized on June 19, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Mitchell, S.Dak.
Visited: June 19, 2004
NPS Site Visited: Not an NPS Site
Local Website
WHAT IS IT?
An otherwise non-descript rectangular building topped by painted minarets and onions domes and adorned on its sides by murals made entirely from corn. The very definition of a tourist trap.
BEAUTY (4/10)
Beautiful, no. Cool, an emphatic yes.
The Corn Palace’s gaudy exterior and “corn-ceptual [...]
Pipestone National Monument
Posted in Uncategorized on June 18, 2004 | 1 Comment »
Pipestone, Minn.
Visited: June 18, 2004
NPS Site Visited: 55 of 353
NPS Website; Bookstore Website
WHAT IS IT?
Active quarry where unique soft red stone is mined. The pipestone quarry is sacred Native American ground and the stone it produces can only be used to make pipes.
BEAUTY (6/10)
Pipestone NM looks nothing like it did when the first white [...]
