Iowa to the Badlands

Time for another blog update, this time from Rebekah.  I apologize for the delay, but internet access has been sparse.  So many fun, interesting, and exciting things have happened since Jeremiah last wrote about Dancing Rabbit.  I will try to do my best to tell about everything without being too detailed or boring.  I will cover our adventures from Iowa to Badlands national Park, but there will be another update to come ASAP from Jeremiah to catch everyone up on the rest of our adventures in South Dakota.

Our last few days at Dancing Rabbit were great.  We had a laid back day where we worked on planning our route and trip to Washington and on Saturday there was a fun filled day of birthday festivities.  Three Dancing Rabbit residents and one resident of nearby Red Earth Farms had birthdays recently so they combined it all into one day.  Using the "Open Space" idea, they created a grid of time slots and locations and everyone filled in the activities they wanted to do in those spaces.  There were over a dozen different activities, such as a ping pong tournament, pond swim, hummus making, capture the flag, scrabble, rotational massage, card game, and even a kissing contest.  Guess who wasn't planning on participating but ended up winning the contest?  That's right, yours truly!

Jeremiah gave a bit of his reflections on Dancing Rabbit, so I'll share mine.  I love the community aspects like sharing meals with cooking rotation, people hanging out in the common house in the evenings just playing games or music or reading, I love how everyone greets each other with a smile, hug, or maybe even a massage trade.  There seems to be so much love in the air!  I also love pond swims with friends and picking ripe raspberries.  I do agree with Jeremiah on the lack of "common" tools and other shared items and their condition.  Not to say there aren't wonderful people who would share anything they have if it was available.  We are talking about a more egalitarian view of no one particular person owning an item, it's shared amongst the community.  As much as I love so many things about Dancing Rabbit, I still think the climate (growing zone 5) would not work for us.

Dancing rabbit will always have a special place in my heart, and who knows, after seeing communities all over, I may want to come back to it, but that's what our jounrey will be about and any observations or judgements we make about DR or any of the other communities are our opinions, based on what's important to us.  At this point, Dancing Rabbit is still ranked #1 out of the one community we have seen!

On Sunday we hopped in our extremely filthy van and hit the road toward western Iowa.

Along the way there were some really cool wind farms with turbines as far as you could see on both sides of the interstate.  We thought they were beautiful!  Symbols of clean energy towering over the otherwise somewhat boring landscape.

We stopped in Altoona IA for a few camping supplies at the Bass Pro Shop.  It was a ridiculously large store and, to us granola crunching liberal vegetarians, it was almost haunted house scary.  There were stuffed animals (and I don't mean the teddy bear kind) leering down at us from above - everywhere we looked!  We tried to focus on our mission - acquiring more comfortable bedding.  We had a queen size air mattress but it didn't fit in our tent.  After spending 4 nights at Dancing Rabbit, sleeping on a foam mattress pad on a wooden platform, we decided our hips would thank us if we picked up something more cushiony to sleep on.  After looking at the thermarest pads, which were $79.99 each (we would need 2), we quickly decided to go with a full size air mattress instead.  This was the first time we had ever seen full sized...everyone else only carries twin and queen.  On the way to checkout we took a detour to a huge hot sauce display.  We picked up some "Rasta Fire" hot sauce.  Anyone who knows us will know it was a splurge we couldn't resist.  Our overnight stop for camping was in Harlan IA at the Prairie Rose State Park.  We arrived at the campgronds, got our tent and cooking supplies all set up, and had some quinoa, miso soup, and beans for dinner (with hot sauce of course).

In the middle of a state park, Jeremiah got a beard trim (courtesy of his favorite stylist), then a quick game of chess and we were off to bed.  We didn't think much of the lighting off in the distance or the wind starting to pick up.

Around 3am we both were awoken by heavy pelting rain, fierce winds, flashing lightning, and deafening thunder all around our little tent.  At one point we realized it was hailing.  The weather report said it was dime to quarter size hail.  Thank goodness our awesome Kelty tent kept us safe and dry but it was noisy!  I kept my Iphone close and checked the weather regularly for tornado warnings (none, thank goodness) and around 4:00 it finally started to settle down and we were back to sleep.

We quickly packed up the next morning and, surprised by the chilly, windy weather in the mid 60s, decided we would make a stop at Goodwill along the way to pick up some warmer clothes.  Most of our day was spent in Sioux City, IA, getting warm clothes, then washing the dirty clothes we had at the local laundromat.  Driving around the town we couldn't believe the flooding from the Missouri River!  There were intersections completely underwater with boats parked there!!

Driving along I-29 there was water lapping against the side of the interstate at one point.  After our day spent in Iowa we were back on the road.

Once we passed into South Dakota, we started seeing signs along advertising the World's Only Corn Palace.  We couldn't miss that, so we stopped in Mitchell, SD to check it out.  A whole building dedicated to corn.  Corn murals, corn signs, even ethanol propaganda!  It was a fun stop after driving for awhile in nasty rainy weather.

Fun in the gift shop.  The murals on the wall behind his head are made of corn!

Once back on the road we decided to stop for the night at Fort Pierre National Grasslands, one of the many places that allows free dispersed camping (park and sleep in your car).  After turning down a few back roads in the grasslands, in the dark, we turned on one that, unbeknownst to us was a thick, muddy trap.  The van slipped and slid (no traction) and, before you knew it, we were stuck.  I started to panic but Jeremiah kept his cool and remembered that you should rock the car back and forth between drive and reverse to try to get unstuck.  We were in the middle of a prairie, miles off the main road, at 11pm at night, stuck in the mud.  After rocking the car back and forth a few times, Jeremiah got out a pushed while I revved it in reverse.  The van started moving!  He continued to push while I continued to lightly give it gas and we were back on the "main" road.  Jeremiah fell down in a knee-deep icy cold puddle, it was raining and windy and cold, but we were relieved to be out of the situation.  Once we were out of the muck we quickly got ourselves set up to sleep in the car for the night, just grateful for a warm, dry place to sleep.

The muddy road where we almost spent the night stuck in the mud.

The next morning we were all too eager to hit the first truck stop for a bathroom and some hot coffee.  It was still cold and raining, but we were headed on to Badlands National Park and Wall, South dakota.  Along the way we passed the 1880s town, complete with the skeleton man walking his skeleton dinosaur.  Why?  I don't know, but I had to get a picture!

We stopped and visited the Ranch Store with it's prairie dogs you can feed.  We feel this is animal cruelty, as the prairie dogs aren't supposed to eat peanuts and many were obese.  We couldn't however, resist an up close look at these cute little creatures and a photo op with the giant prairie dog.

Our next stop was the Minuteman Missle Launch Facility.  A relic of the cold war, this was one several underground bunkers that was manned 24-7 with air force personnel ready to launch a nuclear attack on Russia.  It was an eerie reminder of the evil that countries are capable of in the name of war.

When we finally reached the Badlands, we were amazed.  Even the dreary, cold weather couldn't stop us.  We were wearing our warm clothes from Sioux City, on the first day of summer!!  We stopped at almost every viewpoint, took hundreds of photos, and had a great time.  The vistas were magnificent.  A true reminder of the beauty nature is capable of.  Time for pictures! Enjoy!