In the summer of 2018, my family and I drove cross-country from Indianapolis to Helena, Montana to attend the National Speleological Society’s annual convention. It was our first big trip out west together as a blended family, and we were all excited about everything. The caving would be fun, we were looking forward to seeing our friends, and we’d heard so much about the beauty of the year’s location choice.
Yeah, well, about that location. It turned out to be too good of a choice, at least for us; after the twenty-four hour drive to get there, we never even showed up at the convention. Skipping it entirely- no offense intended toward the NSS, of course; this was a reflection on us rather than them- we instead spent the week wandering every bit of the area that we could, getting tastes of Glacier, Yellowstone, the Tetons, and all those awe-inspiring places in between.
Our road trips are grueling and sometimes awful, though always amazing. This particular one, also discussed in Beautiful Views and Bad Attitudes and Martian Turbines & A Monumental Middle Finger, totaled just over 5,000 miles in 84 hours of drive time during a one-week vacation. It was a big deal for us- a turning point moment, in retrospect- not only that we did that lunatic thing, but that we now knew that we could. More of the glorious world awaited, and we’d now fallen in love with the West.
Today’s image comes from early in that trip, while crossing South Dakota. We had stopped in the Badlands to marvel over some of the dramatic landscape visible from the road. My daughter Ali, then 9, was just as interested in the nearby wildflowers, and I captured this image when she looked up from them.
We moved on again shortly after. Just like with the other sites on that trip, we didn’t have particularly long to spend. But like them too, that short visit was enough to draw me back to the Badlands time and time again.
There, and everywhere: There is always something amazing to find.
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