A few summers ago, I celebrated my 50th birthday on a blowout trip out west, hitting prime targets such as Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, the Grand Tetons and Rapid City, South Dakota. The latter came inclusive of Mt. Rushmore, Deadwood, the amusing tourist trap, Wall Drug (you’ll see their most wonderfully corny billboards for hundreds of miles) and the spectacular Badlands.

After hitting all the local highlights in Rapid City, I not only took a four-mile run on one of the local trails through a beautiful mist in the Black Hills, I also spun around the way flat Rapid City, coming home with a huge haul of Red Sonja, X-Men, Cerebus and other comic books from The Storyteller.

I then drove back into the Black Hills to check out a couple of breweries I’d spotted, Firehouse Brewing Co. and the bodacious Sick ‘n Twisted Brewery, where the owner’s dog kept me company on a couch while I pulled down a pair of dark and amber ales. All that time with some mighty fine hops, I had on my mind, Prairie Berry Winery. Having nearly pissed myself spotting their roadside placard, I simply had to bring home a bottle of their Red Ass rhubarb wine. Unless you don’t like wine or you don’t imbibe at all, how could you not?

The Prairie Berry estate, as you can see above, is dropped into a rustic mountain splendor. Sadly, I only went in long enough to fetch two bottles of Bad Ass, as I had just gotten an emergency ping on my cell phone about a tornado warning within miles of our hotel. Suffice it to say, I bolted back as fast as I dared, getting back just in time to catch these pictures of a super cell whirling with reach of us. The storms out west pack as much of a punch as their commercial trade…

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.