Travelogues
2017 Summer Trip

Sunday, June 25

Back to Casper

It's time for us to head back west. Badlands National Park was our farthest east "port of call." We explored Badlands for a week and were just beginning to understand the timing and lighting for the park. I focused more on the wildlife than landscapes initially because of the weather (and because the prairie dogs and burrowing owls were so much fun to watch). Even though the lighting never really improved, we concentrated more on landscapes the last couple of days. We needed a couple of more days to really have a better understanding of where to shoot in the park. Most of the visitors who take one exit off I-90, drive through the park, and then get back on I-90 at one of the next exits have no idea what they are missing.

We made only one stop today. We stopped at the Minuteman Missile National Historical Park just outside Badlands. Growing up in the early 60's, I remember the Minuteman missile silos a few miles from my grandfather's farm near Blair, Nebraska. They were scattered out in the plains in the middle of farmer's fields. At the time, it seemed very strange. I know there are still missile silos in Nebraska, but I don't know if they are still in the area I knew.

The displays in the Visitor Center included the control panels, switches, keys, and the seats the missileers used in one of the missile silos in South Dakota. At the end of the walk-through displays was a list of nuclear war close calls. The Russian officer (Vasili Arkhipov) who prevented the captain of a submarine from firing nuclear-tipped torpedoes during the Cuban missile crisis was one I hadn't heard about before. That was incredibly scary. The one I had read about was in 1983 when Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov used common sense to determine that an alert that the U. S. had launched 5 ICBMs was a false alarm. He was supposed to report any signs of an American missile launch to the Soviet high command, but he realized that if the Americans were going to launch a pre-emptive strike, there would be far more than 5 missiles launched. Petrov ignored the launch warnings and reported a false alarm. He may have prevented a nuclear holocaust.

We drove through rolling hills and prairie all the way to Casper. There were only scattered trees on the prairie except for a few tree-covered ridges. With all that flatness and nothingness, the sky seemed huge. There was a stark beauty to all the prairie grasses blowing in the wind. I'm glad we visited this area in the spring when all the grasses are still green.

We reached Casper about 5:30, so we had a relatively easy day. When we checked in at the campground, the owner was talking to another camper and telling her that this was the 8th straight day that it wasn't windy. In Casper, they don't count the days that it's windy. They count the days that it's not windy because that's more unusual. No wonder we saw so many wind turbine farms around Casper.