The unspoken question: could three cranky old friends (old both chronologically, and in the length of their near 50 year friendship) manage almost three weeks in a car together all day, every day? We’ve worked together, played together, partied together, lived together, dated some of the same women, mourned together, but…. Well, 17 days, 21 states, and 7,310 miles later, we’re still speaking.

The genesis of the drive was a comment Tom made to Paul, that he had never seen the Grand Canyon and would like to do a road trip there. It was repeated to me and I suggested if we were going to drive that far, we should see more than one thing, maybe do a loop to see several national parks.

It took a couple of years to finally commit to a route. We were looking at a fall departure and Paul suggested we start in the north and move south to try to avoid weather issues, which we did. It didn’t wind up mattering for the weather, but hotels and restaurants were starting to close or go to shortened hours for winter, so fewer choices, and would likely have been even fewer if we had gone south to north.

So on October 1, Paul and I left Savannah, drove to North Carolina to pick up Tom and headed west. First stop was briefly in Saint Louis to get a photograph with the arch, and then head north for The Badlands.

Any thoughts I ever had of the Badlands before the first time seeing them (prior to this trip) was based on western movies and TV shows, showing them as stark, arid, severe, forbidding places. There is some of that, but, like most things in life, it’s more complicated. I’ve posted a new gallery of photographs from the day we spent there.

For “Badlands NP, SD, 2024” gallery, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000ce5ZZKFWxQg