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Cowboys and Indians, bison and bears - the American Wild West is a thrill a minute

By Tom Leonard

Published: 13:09 EST, 25 January 2013 | Updated: 06:29 EST, 27 January 2013


Maybe we should have paid more attention to its name: The Badlands. It was 3am and our two-week road trip through South Dakota and Wyoming was about to come to a dramatic end.

Just an hour or two after we’d peeked out of our tent to admire the 360-degree lightning display across this starkly beautiful lunar landscape, a massive storm was threatening to blow away the family
tent with the family Leonard still inside it.

We could hear the sound of other campers haring off in their cars. Our three children somehow remained blissfully asleep. I couldn’t face finding everybody’s socks and shoes. So we stuck it out. Colourful formations in Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Of course we survived, as people travelling through the wilds of America tend to do these days. The next day, we gave thanks that there was no Sioux war party on the horizon to catch us with our clothes hanging out to dry, hitched up the Subaru Outback and moved on.

The Leonards — my wife, Marika, and children, aged 12, ten and five — have been doing U.S. road trips pretty much every summer since we moved to New York six years ago.

Thank goodness, they have never so much as mentioned Disney World. But this journey through the ‘flyover states’ of north-west America is a contender for the top spot.

For here we discovered the American West — not tourist-infested California or Arizona, but the real Old West of deepest Wyoming cowboy country, the wicked mining town of Deadwood, the Indians’ sacred resting grounds and Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills, and Yellowstone — the country’s
greatest national park. On the face of it: Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota

You don’t need to immerse yourself in the history of the Wild West, but it helps if you do. We flew in to
Rapid City in South Dakota — a short flight from international travel hubs such as Minneapolis or Chicago — where we picked up a car and headed to Deadwood, once the hard-bitten home of Wild
Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.

We moseyed on down to Saloon No 10, whose claim to have been the exact bar where Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead during a poker game is apparently as credible as a hand with five aces.

Our 10-year-old son Joe got roped in to play one of the gamblers in a re-enactment of the shooting. He forgot his only line, but still walked out of that joint alive. The town sits in the Black Hills, famous as the home of Mount Rushmore — the national monument of four presidential heads dynamited out of the rock.

It’s possibly treasonous to say this, but after the grandeur of the surrounding craggy hills, it was somewhat underwhelming. Cowboy country: Deadwood was once the home of Calamity Jane and Bill Hickok

As well as the Native Americans’ own Rushmore — an unfinished 564ft-tall stone sculpture of Sioux warrior Crazy Horse — the Black Hills are dotted with pretty national and state parks where the buffalo really do roam.

One roamed right through our campsite one morning, a little breakfast treat for the kids whom we’d been terrifying with statistics on how many more people are injured each year by bison than bears.

The signs around here warning of mountain lions proved unnecessary — huge disappointment all round — but then my family can be heard coming miles away. That’s not quite fair.

We actually saw quite a lot of the cute, furry little mammals that abound here and our five–year-old could soon tell his prairie dog from his whistle pig. Adventure: Leonard and wife, Marika with Meike, Joe and Ivo

American friends had told us that the colourful rock spires, deep canyons and jagged buttes of Badlands National Park, 75 miles east of the Black Hills, were not to be missed. They weren’t wrong.

In the park’s backcountry, we hiked through the desert terrain and looked for remains of three-toed horses, sabre-toothed cats and ancient camels (yes, really) — just a few of the prehistoric animals whose bones are still being uncovered today.

But it’s not all about wilderness round here — this is the U.S., after all. We just couldn’t keep away from the famous 76,000-sq ft drugstore at Wall, just north of the Badlands, which is about as kitschily commercial as America gets and worth a stop, especially if you crave a stetson-shaped telephone stand.

The same goes for a Cold War underground Minuteman nuclear missile base just outside the park, now run by the National Park Service and perfectly preserved.

The U.S. won that war, but they were whipped at our next stop — just into Montana for the annual
re-enactment of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Here in June 1876 the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians famously wiped out Custer and his 7th Cavalry.

The heat — 110c and no shade — almost wiped us out, too as we watched enthusiastic young Native
Americans kick clouds of dust as they galloped around a much smaller band of patient troopers.

Afterwards, as the children wallowed around in the muddy Little Big Horn River with young Native Americans, the man who has played Custer for years heard my accent. Leaning down from his horse, he solemnly handed me a spent bullet shell and enthused about the Queen.

Then our trek west really began, on towards the Rockies through Wyoming’s cowboy country (the
kinda place where men wear their stetsons during Saturday night dinner at the local steakhouse). We didn’t stop until we reached the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park and another famous town, Cody. Roaming: Notorious bison in breathtaking Yellowstone National Park

Set up by notorious Wild West showman and favourite of Queen Victoria, Buffalo Bill Cody, it celebrates cowboy culture.

We watched the sun go down over a night rodeo where 11-year-old girls raced their horses across
the stadium and clowns got knocked about by angry steers. When we finally dragged ourselves away, we were completely unprepared for the scale of Yellowstone National Park —stretching to nearly 3,500 square miles of lakes, canyons and mountains.




Half the world’s geothermal features are here and the children were fascinated by the steam-belching, multi-coloured hot springs and mud pots. We took a chance with a remote riverside campground famous for a grizzly named Stompy who loved nothing better than jumping on empty tents. It was idyllic.

America’s national and state parks are some of this country’s greatest treasures, and you miss them at your peril.

So with a road trip that takes in half a dozen of them, what could be better? Apart from a nerve-shattering night under canvas — nothing, really.

Travel Facts

BA flies to Rapid City via Dallas. For information about Badlands,
www.nps.gov/badl/planyourvisit/index.htm. For Yellowstone National Park lodgings, visit www.yellowstonenationalparklodges.com. In Cody, stay at Best Western Premier Ivy Inn and Suites, www.bestwestern.com.



American road trips: Cowboys and Indians, bison and bears - the Wild West is a thrill a minute

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