Years back when I was a young lad, recently graduated from college, in the early years of my career, we used to have discussions among co-workers at lunch about which states were the best, and which could be discarded.

With great swagger and eloquence, I would wax on the unneeded midwest. America could be well-served to squish together the far west with the east, eliminating the fields of corn that sit idly in between and bringing the rockies closer to me. Among my favorite targets were Iowa, Nebraska, and greatest of all, the Dakotas. “Just get rid of em”.

After a travel free month of August, it was time to get back on the road. My destination was none other than those beloved Dakotas.

Adventure started nearly immediately. My flight from Atlanta was to Rapid City, SD via Salt Lake City. The flight to Salt Lake was pretty miserable – it was my first time in coach in a while and it was extremely hot. Even at just 3.5 hours long, I have never been more ready to get off a flight.

As we got within a few thousand feet of landing at the airport, we suddenly accelerated and climbed away. Huh? Winds had kicked up on the ground, and we needed to circle around and try landing again. Ok.

About 10 minutes later, we approached the runway for a second time. A few thousand feet above the precious ground, we accelerate again and rise into the sky. They reversed the landing direction at the airport.

At this point I’m getting a little frustrated. I’m grateful that we have not made friends with the ground at high speed and on our side, but I would like to get off this plane.

We circled again and prepared to land. And what do you know… destination changed. Now we’re headed to Twin Falls, Idaho. Roughly a 35 minute flight. Awesome.

While Twin Falls appears to be a beautiful, rustic town from the sky, I have one small problem with our election to land there. No Delta employees work there. Nobody appears to be there at all. That means nobody is there to re-fuel the plane. That’s generally not a problem, except when the plane needs to be re-fueled. The plane needs to be re-fueled. Oy. After a nearly 2 hour wait on the ground, we flew back to Salt Lake City.

At this point, my flight to Rapid City is long gone. No more flights are available until the next day, so I’m off to a hotel for the night. Great start.

Since I now had more time than I wanted, I did make a visit to Cafe Rio, which is the single greatest restaurant in the Salt Lake City airport.

Fortunately, I was able to catch an early flight the next morning and make it to Rapid City around 11:30am. And so begins the real adventure.

My buddy, Cooper, joined me for the weekend. He was already in Rapid City, so I drove out to Dairy Queen outside of Badlands to meet him. A few chili dogs and a Reese’s Cup Blizzard later, we caravanned (two rental cars now) into Badlands National Park.

We spent most of our time driving through the park, and we made a few short walks around some of the formations.

Unfortunately, my shoes and hiking boots were in my backpack, which was on an adventure of its own to Minneapolis. It wouldn’t arrive in Rapid City for several hours. So, that’s why you’ll see me scrambling around confidently. In flip flops.

FYI, the rock in Badlands crumbles very easily. Based on Cooper’s experience from trying to climb to the top of a formation and having a good ole time trying to get back down, I’m going to recommend you pass on the climbing if you are ever in the park.

That said, there are some amazing formations filled with a lot of rich color. Its a beautiful park. From here on out, the pictures can speak for themselves.

We wrapped up the evening at the Historic Freight House Grill and Taphouse, which is loaded with all sorts of random memorabilia. I was happy to see flags for both the Atlanta Braves and Falcons in place. The restaurant was massive – nearly an entire city block long. We also got to experience an extremely happy (read drunk) local who told us this was “God’s country” and there was no place better.

Well, I am not sure about that.

I will at least concede that, for now, we don’t have to get rid of the Dakotas.