South Dakota – Riveted

Lead and Deadwood, South Dakota

Laura Domela — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 20:36:28 +0000

We drove over to the towns of Deadwood and Lead today (with a quick whip through Sturgis, but no bikes, so…yawn). We had lunch at a biker bar in Lead (pronounced like in "You can't lead a horse to water") called Lewie's Saloon & Eatery.

Here's the inside:

We had burgers and they were great, but I don't recommend the side salad…it's clearly not their core competence…came in a little cardboard "dish" with a little one-serving packet of blue cheese dressing. I should have known, really. But the burger: fabulous.

Then we did a little exploring around Deadwood.

And the obligatory trek (to walk off that burger) up to the Mount Moriah Cemetery to Wild Bill Hikock's grave. Calamity Jane is buried next to him up there as well.

People still put little bits of things on his grave: playing cards, flowers, beads, what looked like a joint or a hand-rolled cigarette, and this eensy little red cowboy hat:

This is a photo I took this morning looking back down at Deadwood from the edge of the cemetery:

And THIS is the photo I took from the same spot a few years ago when I came through during Spring:

Looks way better with a dusting of snow, in my opinion.

Now we're back at the Airstream finishing up some work and I'm going to make the pumpkin flan for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner. (I'll document and put the recipe here on the blog later on if it turns out good…for those of you who like that sort of thing).

We’re in Rapid City, South Dakota

Laura Domela — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:30:00 +0000

We'll be staying put here for the next couple days…some work, some exploring of the Black Hills, and some giving of thanks. For our Thanksgiving dinner we're planning a nice menu: a duck (smoked on the Traeger), sauteed green beans, savory bread pudding with italian sausage and mushrooms, and pumpkin flan for dessert. (If it all comes out good, we plan to make the same menu as a belated Thanksgiving dinner with my mom once we're home. Hi Mom!) After Thanksgiving, we'll head more west.

We're watching the weather (since we'll be traveling in South Dakota, Montana, and Idaho in November/December…smart!) and right now the weather sucks the most at home in the Pacific Northwest. It's gorgeous and sunny and clear everywhere we're going to be for the next week or so. There might be a little snow over the weekend so we'll make sure we're in a nice spot and not driving if that's gonna happen. It's pretty crazy that just about a month ago we were in the Florida Keys and it was in the 90s.

The Badass Badlands Hexacopter Video!

Laura Domela — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:33:23 +0000

Yesterday, as we were leaving the Badlands, we pulled over at a viewpoint so Kevin could stress me out for five solid minutes while he flew the hexacopter and camera out over some of the craziest, jaggiest parts of the Badlands…the part where if there's any malfunction and the thing goes down there is no getting any of it back. I'm not sure why this stresses me out more than it stresses Kevin out, but it does.

The first two starts out over the abyss both gave a blinking red light which meant a battery issue…so he brought it back in and changed batteries both times and started again. I told him I saw it as a sign that he might not want to do this particular flight. He just checked the third battery and went right back out there.

Bonus find while Kevin was looking for music to go with his video: music by a local Portland band we've seen live a few times called 3 Leg Torso!

Minuteman Missiles and Missileers

Laura Domela — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 23:26:11 +0000

This morning before we left our quiet spot in the completely empty campground in the Badlands National Park, we drove over to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site to get a tour of their Delta-01 launch control facility. (Only 6 people can take the tour at a time because that's how many can fit in the elevator that takes you underground into the bunker that houses launch control.)

In 1955 the Soviet Union successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. In 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched the world's first satellite. The combination of these two developments meant that the Soviets had the potential to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles with hydrogen bombs on board that would be capable of reaching anywhere in the U.S.

This scared the bejeezus out of the U.S., of course. The U.S. response was the development and deployment of Minuteman missiles. These missiles could be launched on very short notice (about five minutes) from underground hardened silos that were built to resist a nuclear blast.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) accelerated the deployment of Minuteman missiles. Over 1000 missiles were poised and ready to launch, with the launch sites spread across the center of the U.S. The reason for putting them in the center of the country was so they would have more notice and more time to launch if a Soviet attack was detected. (Soviet nuclear submarines operating along the coastal U.S. could reach coastal areas too quickly with their missiles.)

The Minuteman was meant as a defense/retaliation weapon, not as a first strike weapon. The idea was to serve as a deterrent so that the Soviets would know that any attack they launched could be met with 1000 Minuteman missiles going the other way.

The missiles were spread across such a wide area so that it would take an enormous number of Soviet missiles to knock out all the sites. The missiles themselves were located about 15 miles from the control centers, and one launch control center controlled 10 missiles around it. There were five control centers in a squadron, and there were three squadrons in South Dakota — South Dakota had 150 Minuteman missiles.

By locating the missiles away from population centers, it also meant that any Soviet attack against the missile facilities would result in far fewer casualties.

We started with a tour of the above-ground quarters of Delta-01. There were about ten people in the above-ground facility at all times (3-day shifts) and two missileers below ground in the launch control center (24 hour shifts).

The above-ground facility is "preserved" to be a museum of sorts and it basically looks like someone's grandmother's house, or a bare bones rec center decorated in 1970s liquidation sale furniture. I should have taken a photo, but I was too busy cringing at the matching nubby rose pink suede sofa and loveseat, shellac'd oak furniture, and giant forest photo mural that covered one whole wall (complete with a family of deer staring out at me).

I did get a couple shots of some of the cool details in the office/communications area of the place though:

We climbed into the elevator and headed below ground (about 30 feet down).

Looking back up the elevator shaft from the underground facility:

Missile launch bunker artwork:

The launch control central hub was in a watermelon-shaped concrete enclosure that appeared to have about 10ft thick reinforced concrete walls, and a giant steel and concrete blast door.

This is the door to and from the launch control center (more launch control bunker art):

The other side of the door (and that "hallway" is actually a path through the wall):

The control center itself was a separate unit inside this outer shell, suspended on giant springs and shock absorbers so that the missileers and the equipment could still work even with a nuclear war going on outside:

This is basically the whole place. There's a tiny stainless steel bathroom just out of the picture on the right, and on the left out of frame is a fridge and microwave (added modern convenience!), as well as an oxygen machine and some other equipment. (It's about the size of an Airstream…maybe a 34ft.)

There's a sleeping area for one missileer to get some rest while the other remains at the helm. Note how the two missileer chairs are on rails, with seatbelts, so they can keep steady if being bombed while trying to launch missiles.

Launching the missiles worked pretty much like you see in spy movies (the good ones, anyway). There were two launch keys stored in a locked red box.

The box was locked with two combination padlocks. If the order was given to launch, it took both missileers opening their padlocks to open the box and get the keys. The two launch controls were 12 feet apart (so that one person couldn't reach both). The two missileers would do a countdown and turn their keys simultaneously. At the same time, they had to be on the phone with another missile launch control center…the missileers in that other control center would also have to vote by turning their keys simultaneously. So it took four missileers at two different locations to launch any missile(s).

Launch panel #1:

Launch panel #2:

The Minuteman missiles, if launched, would have climbed 700 miles into space at a speed of over 15,000mph. They would then have re-entered the atmosphere reaching their targets in the Soviet Union approximately 30 minutes after launch. Unlike in the movies there was no "cancel" or "self-destruct" capability. Once the missiles were launched, they were irretrevably on their way to their targets.

After the tour wrapped up, we headed up the road a bit to go see one of the actual missile silos. When these things were all active and armed, they were not a secret from locals nor were they kept secret from the Soviets. Quite the opposite. By making them visible (especially from the air) the Soviets could count how many intercontinental ballistic missiles the U.S. had and by having 1000 of them, the U.S. hoped to discourage any attack and actually prevent a nuclear war.

This is what the missile launch control center looks like from I-90.

I doubt they had these road signs at the time, however:

The gate in front of the D-09 missile silo:

The top of the missile silo (now covered with glass — silo door half open so you can look down in and see the prop missile), and the hardened UHF antenna on the right. These antennas allowed the missile launch commands to be given from "looking glass" aircraft that were in the air constantly from around 1961 to 1990 and could launch the missiles if the ground stations were unable to.

This is the back half of the silo door, slid halfway open uncovering the missile silo interior:

All in all it was a super interesting tour. Kinda creepy, but also kind of interesting that it all apparently worked. It's fascinating the enormous cost and amount of effort that went into building this system. A thousand of these Minuteman missiles* and concrete missile silos, a hundred of the underground suspended launch control bunkers, the staffing to maintain and operate all of this for over 30 years…all in the desperate hope that none of it would ever be used.

*According to our tour guide, just one of the Minuteman missiles had 60% of the power of ALL of the munitions used in WWII by ALL countries combined, including the atom bombs. And there were a thousand of them embedded in middle America. The consequences of using any of them is just incomprehensible. Perhaps the most amazing and awesome thing about this entire defensive strategy is that it worked.

Exploring the Badlands

Laura Domela — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 21:10:31 +0000

We walked over to the Visitor Center to get our National Park Pass this morning and Kevin asked the park ranger which hikes were good. The park ranger said, "I don't know. I'm not much of a hiker." That was it. He pushed her a little bit with more questions ("Which hikes have you heard are good, then?") and she reluctantly pointed to a couple on the map. Hm. Some park ranger! Also, the campground only takes cash (exact change $10/night) and she couldn't give us any change so we headed into the town of Interior and got some iced tea and some change at a little market on the corner.

Interior is a tiny, tiny town.

It's got two churches, a couple of tiny stores, and this tiny tiny jail:

We came back to the campground and paid for our spot for another night, then headed out to drive the scenic loop. It's really, very scenic!

We stopped at Roberts Prairie Dog Town to see some of the little guys poppin' up:

This eagle was trolling for some slow prairie dogs:

A little further down the road we saw a herd of bighorn sheep:

Then after all that scenic stuff, we ended up stopping (finally, after all those crazy signs) to see Wall Drug. We grabbed some lunch in town (the town of Wall, South Dakota) and stopped at a little grocery store and then headed back toward camp. We stopped in at the visitor center for the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and looked at their exhibits and watched a short informative video. I think we're going to go back in the morning for the tour. We'll get to see the missile silo, and go down into the Underground Launch Control Center.

We stopped at a couple of trail heads before we got back to the campground and did a little hiking.

So you walk out first on this little boardwalk deal and then there's a spot where you can take some steps down to the terrain. (Being ware of rattlesnakes, of course, as the sign said.) This is where we were hiking:

The "trail" is marked with these 10-inch tall markers that are numbered….when you get to the first one, you scan around the landscape for the next one, and so on. It's a great way to mark a trail like this (and maybe one of the only ways it would work in this crazy terrain)…plus, it makes the hike feel a little like a game.

We're back at camp now and planning to grill up some salmon and zucchini for dinner tonight (and probably get a jump on tomorrow's work day so we can go see the missile thing!)

We’re in the Badlands!

Laura Domela — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 21:47:48 +0000

We got here right around sunset…just enough light to see how incredibly cool this place is going to look tomorrow.

Our drive was easy (a bit long) and uneventful today from Le Mars, Iowa, to Luverne, Minnesota, and onto the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Lots of this:

What is UP with all the fireworks for sale? For the past few states we've been in there are fireworks stores EVERYWHERE. These folks must like to blow some shit up.

We stopped in Mitchell, South Dakota to have some lunch and check out the Corn Palace. This is the Corn Palace:

And this is the close up of one of the corn murals on the side of the building:

It's pretty remarkable, really. It's also pretty funny that everywhere it says "Corn Palace" it also says "World's Only." Um, yeah.

We passed the very cool "Man Walking Dinosaur" skeleton in Murdo, South Dakota:

We also passed the "Largest Bull Head" or something like that. It's huge, and those little skeletal upright sheep at the base of it kinda creep me out:

The texture in this shot was cooler in black and white, so here it is:

Tomorrow: sightseeing around the Badlands!