2024 Road Trip To The West; Part II

One of the two churches at the "1880 Town" in Midland, South Dakota
This one is St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church.  (click any image to enlarge)
With the exception of an iPhone photo below, all images made with my Nikon Z8
And 24-120mm f/4 lens.

This is a continuation post of my road trip out to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks primarily to photograph large mammals such as grizzly bears.  However, along the way out and back, I planned my adventure to be able to stop at various places and photograph.  You can find Part I here and a post about what gear I took and why here.

It is now Day 4 and I'm traveling west through South Dakota on Interstate 90...

As I was kicked back, relaxed and driving the highway, I spotted an old, white wooden church sitting in the middle of nowhere.  It appeared as though it had been abandoned decades ago.  At first, I looked at it and thought it was interesting, then almost immediately thought, I have to photograph this old church on the prairie!  As I noticed the church I also saw an exit off the interstate highway.  I quickly exited and started searching the nearby roads for the church but couldn't find it.  How could that be?  It was 'right there.'  Well, it turns out that church and many other 19th century buildings are part of a tourist site where the owners have purchased and moved many19th century buildings to a single site to replicate what an 1880s South Dakota town would have looked like.  The name of the place is 1880 Town.  This looked like a worthwhile place to not only visit but to photograph.

I parked, walked into the visitor’s center and spoke with the lady behind the counter.  She briefly told me about the place so I paid my entrance fee and ended up spending over an hour there photographing the various structures.  It turned out there were two churches (the one I saw while driving is not the one pictured above; I’ll post that in the near future), a railroad station, hotel, one room schoolhouse, jail, saloon, sheriff’s office and many other authentic buildings carefully kept as original as possible.  I love these kinds of subjects.  I could have stayed longer.

Here are a few of the photos from the 1880 Town.

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How would like to stay here tonight?  Lol.

This is a 'two cell' jail.  Not a place I would want to involuntarily visit.

Nineteenth century travel trunks.  I like the patina that these trunks have acquired over the years.

This schoolhouse was tiny.  I suspect there weren't many children living
on the prairie in this area.

This was the Gettysburg, South Dakota railroad station at one time.

This is a photo from 1913 showing the railroad station 'in situ' in Gettysburg, SD.

Inside the Saddle Shop.  Of course, cowboy boots!  It’s South Dakota.

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Typical 19th century wagon with some supplies attached.  The
kind of wagon that would have transported families to the area
from back east.

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My second stop in South Dakota was Badlands National Park.  I had visited this park a couple of times in the past, but I wanted to take a look with fresh eyes and with photography in mind.  It turned out I didn't stay long mainly because the light was bad.  A very overcast day with heavy cloud cover, for the most part.  I made a few exposures but I felt largely uninspired.  That said, by the time I was leaving the light was getting better but I was already on my way out.  

The Badlands are interesting but photographically, in my opinion, limited in the variety of subject matter.  You may feel differently about it.  I will say, however, that there was more 'green' vegetation scattered among the erosion artifacts that I had ever seen before.  There must have been a lot of rain this spring or early summer.

The lack of contrast or 'pop' in the below images reflect how dull of a day it was.

The Badlands consists of highly eroded soft siltstones, claystones, mudstones, sandstones and
limestones.  For more on the geology of Badlands National park, check out the National Park
Services page here.

Even though most of the Badlands consist of soft eroded rock, I was surprised at the amount of
green present.  This was an iPhone snapshot from the road.

There are also very colorful layers of rock that were laid down between the grayish
layers.  Again, in this area of the park, lots of green.

If you look carefully and not just glance at your surroundings, there is quite a bit of color present.:

Steep canyons are also present.

Portrait of a bison.  Lastly, and surprising to some, there is a herd of bison (not buffalo)
present in the park.  There is also a herd of bighorn sheep but I did not see them on this visit.

You don't want to be this close to a bison!  I thought I would include a heavily cropped photo of an
image taken in the same sequence as the one above.  The Nikon Z8 and 180-600mm f4.5-6.3 lens are performing admirably.  This lens is pleasingly sharp!  The ‘subject detect’ locked right in
on this bison’s eye.  I'm very happy with the photos I've made with it so far.  Bring on the grizzlies!

In my next post, I will continue my journey west through South Dakota, Wyoming and into Montana.  I hope you find this interesting.  If there is something else you would like me to include in these posts, like more photo data or otherwise, let me know.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com. 
 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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