Arrival


This is a picture from the window of my small, very scary plane at the Watertown Regional Airport. The plane wobbled violently at take-off and landing. I guess I'll have to get used to these planes if I'm living in South Dakota. As for the airport, I can't say too much about Watertown but it looked to be about the same as the Pierre Regional Airport, where I finally got off the plane. When I first heard "regional airport" I pictured something about the size of one Concourse at a normal airport. This was one building, about the size of a three car garage: one car worth of seating, one car worth of ticketing, one car worth of baggage claim, all in one room. There was also a little side room with vending machines. If it gives any indication, the airport had one men's room, with one stall and one urinal.


This next shot is coming down into Pierre, which again is pretty interchangeable with coming down into Watertown. Pretty stereotypical plains, very flat, very open. What really struck me was how few buildings were out there. From the air you can really see how empty this space is and how few people are down there, though the picture doesn't do much good.

Pierre (pop. 13,000) is one of the larger cities in South Dakota. It didn't strike me as being very different from any highway town somewhere in Ohio with a few restaurants and gas stations. Except in Pierre there is a very pretty state capitol building and a large governers mansion that is set very close to the road and has ridiculously little security by my paranoid, East coast standards.

Western South Dakota is very different from the plains I took a picture of above: more arid, hillier, and, I think, much prettier. I didn't take any pictures on the drive from Pierre to the Rosebud Casino, where we are staying, but I don't think a picture would have done the area much justice. I didn't really get a sense of the place until tonight when I went for a short run: you have to be outside, standing on the plains to realize how beautiful they are. It is a strange sensation of being both very open and very contained. Rosebud is apparently a very flat part of Western South Dakota, but even here the hills keep you from seeing too far along the horizon--but at the same time the sky is enormous. I think I am going to like it here.