I Parked On My Tent. I Did It On Purpose.

 After the my rendezvous with the Mississippi River, the highway climbed out of the valley and onto the flat spread of land that Minnesotans call home. I was only going to skirt the very bottom of the state, just north of Iowa until I reached South Dakota.

One convenient thing about the big flat emptiness of the state was that I could do a pretty good job of scoping a town before I exited. No need to guess about how far I’d have to drive to get to a gas station or a McDonalds where I could buy a soda and spend the next two hours using the wireless internet.

And I actually found the landscape to be pretty cool. I liked the vast scale of the fields and sky. From the highway I could see hundreds of them like sentinels in the fields. There was a tension, I thought, about how they were all together, and yet all stayed as far apart from one another as possible, avoiding each other, doing their own thing. They were like awkward coworkers at the company cocktail party.

The turbines reminded me of a joke I’d heard from a Minnesotan friend:

Q. Why is Minnesota windy?

A. Because Iowa sucks and Wisconsin blows.

The most important landmark of Minnesota, if not America, is of course the Jolly Green Giant. This formidable acrylic icon lies in the town of Blue Earth, which would be an excellent name for dreadlocked, new-age commune. And what could be more hippy than a dude who wears leaves for clothing and promotes a vegetarian diet?

I made it just after sundown—barely enough time to snap the iconic portrait of myself with the nutritious mutant.

Just think, I had started the day with Beefaroo Lady, essentially Green Giant’s opposite. Even though they were at diametrically opposed ends of the dietary spectrum, I wondered if they might have had a chance with each other. Could they have gone frolicking together through some magical world of oversized food advertisements?

No. There is no such place and the two of them are nothing more than dumb conglomerations of plastic.

Fortunately, I had already called ahead at a KOA campgrounds in Jackson about 50 miles east of South Dakota. After a long day of driving, I’d have shower, WiFi (yes, the campground offered WiFi ) and a place to sleep that was not my passenger seat.

Over the last hour of driving, the sky turned a deep crimson and the windmills started blinking red, spread out over the miles of fields like sinister fireflies. More creepily, the hundreds of them blinked in unison, as though driven by a singular will.

The campground in Jackson was right off the highway, giving me a good view of the slow pulse over the fields. There were perhaps two other people on the site, snug in their trailers with the football game on satellite.

The wind gusted over the plains in hard gusts. The tarp that I was using as a tent was going to need some reinforcement. Unfortunately, there was only one tree that I could rope it off to.

Ever resourceful, I tied one end off to a water pump and then moved a picnic table over one side of the tarp in order to hold it down. Since there were no windbreaks available, I made one by moving my car to the opposite side, deliberately driving over the plastic in order to secure the end. After some adjustment, I had a fairly workable tent. The fact that the thing was completely ghetto and jury-rigged only appealed to my aesthetic sensibilities.

Compare to what I used in Ohio:

As fun as it was setting up the tarp, I’m afraid that right now I’m not in a position to give it my full endorsement as a viable tent alternative.

The structure that I used did stop most of the wind, which was the most important thing that night. I’d read that when it comes down to it, a good sleeping bag is more important than a good tent when it comes to keeping warm. True, if your tent leaks in a downpour, a warm down sleeping bag will become useless fast. A waterproof bivvy sack would stand up to these elements nicely though.

I got the idea to use the tarp from an account of some photographer who used it while exploring Yellowstone in winter. Chances are that he had a warmer bag than me and had better idea of how to improvise a shelter.

While my setup worked reasonably well for that night and in Ohio, the concept is probably more applicable in wooded areas where the winds are not so fierce and it is easier to incorporate structures like tree branches to lend stability. Having tent stakes and poles is also probably useful if you don’t want to have to park your car over your tent to prevent it from blowing away. 

When I awoke that morning, the wind was still gusting and it was numbingly cold. I had brought a small stove to cook oatmeal, but found that either my lighter was out of gas or my hands were to stiff to work it. I decided to pack up and find a good restaurant along the highway. I found Chit Chats.

When I sat down, I had an appetite as big as the land. I ordered up a delicious, all-American heart attack consisting of six slabs of French toast and a spiraling galaxy of hash browns. The waitress brought a tray of syrups that were as big as milk jugs. I washed the breakfast down with towering mug of hot chocolate—topped with whipped cream of course.

1615 Miles

Welcome to South Dakota. Every other mile, there was a billboard up advertising some great American icon. There were at least 50 miles of advertisements for the Corn Palace in the city of Mitchell and maybe 150 miles of billboards for Wall Drug out in Rapid City.

At first the land was pretty much like Minnesota, but then the road took a steep decline, descending to the level of the Missouri River. Cottonwoods grew up along the shore. On the other side, the highway climbed into desiccated hills, brown and alien. Like the land in Minnesota, the far side of the river was open, but at the same time it seemed much older and definitely more western.