Thursday, July 12, 2007

South Dakota – Land of… Nothing but farming


South Dakota ended up winning out over its northern cousin for our drive West from Minnesota. As we traveled across Hwy. 14, we were overwhelmed by the amount of seriously open land. For the majority of the time, we saw no cars, houses, or people in any direction.

Wheat fields abounded, and we were lucky enough to be driving through during harvest time. We saw them cutting the wheat, and rolling the straw/hay (?) part into those big rolls you see sitting in the fields by the side of the road. Literally wheat/straw/hay rolls (we grew up in the city – our crop identification skills are not the best) as far as the eye could see. One thing we have definitely realized over the past few days is that this part of the country is where real work is done – America is still very much a farming culture.

We camped for the night at a small campground at the Lake Louise recreation area about an hour west of Pierre, which turned out to be a great place to stop. The lake was beautiful, and provided some good sunset watching, and morning fishing. I caught three fish (none of which were more than about 2 inches long). Chris caught one. That means I caught two more than he did. Just wanted to point that out.

Check out some of the pictures.

We have managed to avoid interstate driving for the last 700 miles or so…

1 comment:

Paul Omps said...

hay bales...they're hay bales.