Some things are worth getting up early for – and watching the first morning light wash across the rocks at Badlands National Park in South Dakota is one of them. We set our alarm and were into the park in time to sit and have a picnic breakfast by the rim. Wow. So beautiful and so serene that it’s impossible to find words. Hopefully some of our photos will give an idea.
We were beat to the overlook by a couple of serious photogs, who’d settled in with their industrial-strength coffees, tripods and lenses the size of small bedrolls.
Badlands National Park protects the largest expanse of mixed-grass prairie in the U.S. It’s prairie dog heaven and at one time these grasslands were home to tens of millions of bison. In the space of less than a century the bison had been hunted to the edge of extinction (from 30 million to fewer than a thousand). Now they are protected, procreating and numbers have been building.
Caution: not to scale.
The grasslands are just beautiful but the real star of a visit is the spectacular rock formations – pinnacles, canyons, rock outcrops with vivid coloured bands marking the different geologic eras. (According to the Park Ranger, they often get asked: “Who paints the colours on the rocks?” Sheesh.)
The Badlands are also known for rich fossil beds, but not those of dinosaurs. This was an inland sea environment, so the fossil remains that have been discovered are water creatures like alligators.
We spent most of the day meandering along the park’s Scenic Loop Drive. It skirts the jaw dropping geologic feature of the Badlands – the 80-km long Wall, a formation that is still eroding (albeit very slowly) and divides the park into upper and lower prairie regions.
This is the ancestral home to the Lakota who consider the land to be sacred, a living, breathing entity. It was also here that Lakota leader Bigfoot and his people were killed at Wounded Knee.
At the western entrance to the park is the famous Wall Drug (you can’t miss the billboards that hock the spot for 200 miles in either direction). If you like tacky retail, restaurants, more tacky retail, this is your place. We’re glad we didn’t give it more than a stop for an (overpriced) ice cream cone.
Westward to the beautiful, beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota. More on that next time.
