It was a great trip, one of my favorites. Lots of beautiful scenery and interesting places. We got to visit a popcorn factory on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation, step into an authentic Arikara earth lodge, go on a jeep ride through an elk herd (we did it slowly and quietly - not like we were ram-rodding through them or anything like that!) and visit lots of museums and meet a lot of great people. The byway goes through four different Lakota reservations. Most of the byway is in South Dakota, and part of it continues on into North Dakota. I highly recommend this trip to anyone.
On one part of the trip, as we were driving over beautiful rolling hills, we almost ran out of gas. We saw on a map that there was a town coming up, so thought it would be no problem to fill up there. However, when we arrived, the gas station was just a husk of a station - it had been closed down for some time. We started thinking that we might have to hoof it a ways, or stand on the side of the road to flag down passing motorists. Luckily, we saw some folks out on a ranch, and we pulled in there, barely on fumes. They happened to be branding cattle. Normally, they'd only have diesel fuel on the premises, but they needed regular gas to power their branding equipment and had an extra gallon to spare. It was enough to get to the next town. Whew!
Here's a page from the article I wrote. The photo is one my wife actually took from inside the earth lodge - she just happened to catch the hawk flying over it:
A great trip, and I hope you get a chance to go!
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