At about 6:30 pm the sun began to set behind a large bank of clouds and for the first time I was forced by low light levels to remove my sunglasses. I still had an hour until I reached my destination and it was beginning to look like darkness would descend before I arrived. Then an amazing thing happened; the sun broke through underneath the clouds, lighting up the surrounding wheat and hay fields with this electric glow, giving each field a slightly different color, from deep green to dusty brown.
After dinner I was treated to another natural phenomenon which, to me was awesomely beautiful, but to the residents of North Dakota it is probably so common they don't think twice about it. The town of Elgin was surrounded by thunderstorms, but separated by enough distance that the thunder was not audible. But the lightning was awesome. Every second or two there was streaks of lightning, sometimes from the top, other times from the bottom. Often it was just a dull glow somewhere within the clouds and frequently the lightning was a web-like sheet covering most of the cloud itself. What a show, and all in an deafening silence. I am easy to identify as a non-native.
Part of what makes all of these scenes so interesting is the wide-open nature of the setting. There is nothing obstructing your view, especially when you arrive at the top of one of the countless rolling hills. It is a little like being on top of a mountain, with nothing around you; the sky is so BIG that it makes everything else seems very small.
I have seen only the southernmost tip of the Badlands, and I regret not going through the heart of the area west of Dickinson. Babcock and Turner were obliged to ride through the most desolate sections, and their report follows:
This was to be our hardest day's work, but we had been told that we could follow the wagon road twenty miles farther, and at the end of that distance we were obliged to take to the track for fifteen miles through a most desolate country. This region abounds with rattlesnakes and we met two. The first encounter was an unpleasant one for me. It was before we took to the railroad, and in many places the wheel tracks were cut very deeply into the ground. The result was a tumble now and then, and on one such occasion, after picking myself up a few feet from my bike, I wiped my face and concluded to get a lemon from the package on my machine. At the first move I heard the warning rattle of a snake. I don't know how high I jumped but when I alighted I saw the snake about four feet from me. Looking around for something to murder him with I finally thought of the revolver which had been a useless weight for 1600 miles. I indulged in a little target practice at that snake, and after he had been a good snake for some minutes I mounted my wheel and rode on, thankful that my tumble had not been five feet farther on. Later in the day Mr. Turner was warned by a large rattle on the railroad track. He had laid down his machine, and with the true instinct of a photographer grabbed his camera and went "snaking." In this affair I was simply an assistant, Turner dictating all the poses which he desired me to cause his snakeship to take. We took that snake full front, profile, couchant, recumbent, rampant and finally Turner said, "now, Babcock, stir him up and make him look very pleasant." So with a short (?) stick I did my best to make him smile, the camera snapped and then Turner went at him with a club. After purloining the snake's music box we went on ready to believe the statement that you can find more snakes than you want in the Bad Lands of Dakota.
Just west of Sully we ran through some country covered with stumps and holes of petrified trees. There were hundreds of them, and so near the track that the passengers may observe them from the car window, but from such a hasty view these curiosities might be mistaken for ordinary white rocks. At Dickinson two of these huge petrifications serve as gate posts at the station.
East of Sully we left the railroad and had a quick, pleasant trip to Dickinson, and our trip through the Bad Lands was past. It was one of our pleasantest days, perhaps because the clouds obscured the sun.
The next segment should be a relatively easy push in to Bismarck. It will take me an hour longer than it otherwise might, because I enter the central time zone. It appears that the time zone boundary at Bismarck is the river that separates that city from Mandan to the west. I wonder if it causes any confusion for the two.
108 hard-fought miles to Elgin, with the unexpected payoff right at the end.
Dennis