The Badlands...Not So Bad

Today was our longest day yet. I’m typing this at 9:41 p.m. and while Zach is driving with another 3-4 hours left before we arrive in Lincoln. So why are we still driving you ask?

Before leaving Keystone, we decided to take a run down the President’s Alpine Slide. We took a ski lift to the top of the mountain and then we each rode a wheeled sled down 2000 feet of slide. It was fun but we lost about an hour as we enjoyed zooming down the hill.

We finally hit the road for Badlands National Park. It was 1.5 hours away. We punched in Badlands National Park and my GPS decided to take us to the southern entrance. To get there we drove through Pine Ridge Reservation to the visitor center which is just a portable trailer. After speaking with the ranger, we realized we should have turned a different way 30 miles back, so we headed back the way we came and then an additional 30 miles to the Interior Entrance and the main visitor center. That ended up being an additional hour of unnecessary driving. The only good thing was that on the way to the Southern Entrance, we saw a herd of privately owned bison close to the road. Unfortunately, we didn’t think fast enough to stop and take a photo. When we backtracked, they were nowhere to be seen. They must have moved on to greener pastures.

 

The Badlands is a barren land of tan rock that looks like dried mud. It is slowly eroding leaving canyons and walls to view and explore. We went on several hikes and visited a working fossil lab in the visitor center. Hikers regularly find fossils buried in the walls, but alas, we found none. It was still pretty cool to see paleontologists slowly drilling rock away from a fossil. She looked like a dentist cleaning tartar off of someone’s teeth.

Everything in the park is spread out, so to get anywhere it was a drive. We took the scenic loop and ended up further north and west in South Dakota which again added time to our trip. Before leaving the park we drove 5 miles down a gravel road toward Prarie Dog Town. The prarie was full of prarie dog holes with the little critters popping their heads up out of holes and running from one hole to the next. They were squeaking at each other and it was fun to try to predict where they would pop up next. It was kind of like “Whack a Mole.” Off in the distance we saw some buffalo so we took some photos and headed out once again.

 

Aside from a quick stop at Subway for sandwiches and stopping for gas or to change drivers, we’ve been driving ever since. Well, it’s my turn to drive…

P.S. We arrived at 2:00 a.m. We’ll spend the next three days visiting with my sister, brother-in-law, nephews and my parents.