~4:30AM MDT: After a night of intermittent insomnia, Astrid lay awake, staring up at the ceiling of her tent. The weather reports indicated a good chance that a severe storm, with “golf-ball-sized hail” may heading for the family as they slept in their tents in The Badlands National Park. She spent the next hour imagining what golf-ball-sized hail would do to a tent or an unprotected person, and trying to find more accurate radar maps on her phone through a slow cell connection. Finally pushed to action, she woke Bjorn with an important question that had shot through her busy thoughts, “Is your camera still outside?”
The camera was still outside, left there to gather star-trail photos until the battery ran out sometime in the night. Astrid told him about the possible storm coming their way. They woke Snorri and took a survey: stay and sit out the storm or pack up and get to the car ASAP?
They chose to pack up; it was much less messy that way. They made it out to the car by 6:00 AM MDT, in time to see a clear crimson sunrise.
A few more “Looking and Waiting,” stops along the park road–notably free from storm–gave them time to eat a granola-bar breakfast before parking in the the Notch Trailhead Parking lot to wait as the storm moved in. Astrid drifted off to sleep while the rain–not hail–washed off the car dust onto the pavement.
When the skies dried up and the sun came out, the family came out of their car, too and headed down the Notch Trail, now with an inch of gluey clay over all the ground. This trail weaved through rocky hills, and crevices, up a ladder to higher hills and overlooks with interesting geological formations.
When they arrived back at the parking lot and were walking to another trail, they passed a car with a soggy tent spread on the car hood to dry, and for once, Astrid was glad she wasn’t a heavy sleeper.
For lunch, they followed the highways signs to Wall Drug, in Wall, South Dakota, famous for its legendary business model of offering tired, thirsty highway travelers “free ice water,” and a large selection of many other things–gew-gaws, food, souvenirs–for sale. It was crowded with people just like them, wanting to see the spectacle.
“If we are going to get COVID, this will be the place,”’ Bjorn commented as they walked through the maze of little shops crowded with people that made up Wall Drug.
On their way back to the park, where they would be staying that night (in a cabin), they stopped at one of the more obscure National Parks–Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. During the Cold War, hundreds of Minuteman nuclear missiles were hidden beneath the fields of the Mid-West. This particular missile site included three attractions: the actual missile silo site (with disarmed missile), the launch control site, disguised as a typical house, and the visitor center and museum. Both launch control and the missile silo were mostly underground.
The launch control facilities controlled 10 missiles spaced about three miles apart. The family visited the visitor center and museum, then visited the missile site, but the control facility wasn’t open to visitors. One of these minutement missiles had the same power of 80 “Little Boys,” the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII. In retrospect, the Cold War seemed distant, a little overwrought and unneeded, and hard to understand, but at the time, the threats and tension were real.
Back in The Badlands National Park, the family checked into a cabin at Cedar Pass Lodge, where they would spend the rest of the day, except Bjorn, who would head out at sundown to catch the sunset over the park.
The storm that missed them that morning showed up that night. Astrid and Snorri watched it move in on a TV weather station radar map, and listened as the rain, wind and thunder intensified. Though Bjorn didn’t have good cell service, he knew there was a storm coming, because he took pictures of it approaching. He just didn’t know how bad it was going to be.
“I’m going to stay out here and wait until the storm passes over,” Bjorn called and told Astrid, the sound of violent pattering of rain making it hard for her to hear him on her end.
“Okay, be safe,” she said, thinking it was already storming where he was. But it wasn’t. He didn’t know the severity of the storm. She was in the middle of it, the wind and rain pounded the little cabin, the electricity flickered regularly, thunder shook the cabin windows. He just saw it in the distance.
Bjorn returned later that night, in one piece and a little “impressed” by the violence of the storm he sat through. Despite the hail, the car was un-dented and whole, except for a cracked windshield they wouldn’t discover until they got home two days later.
Not I 