Badlands

Make sure you have a hotel or a campsite well in advance, you will be sleeping in your car otherwise..

I must have taken several thousand pictures…this place is absolutely gorgeous. I would have loved to stay there for months watching the sun rise and set there every morning and every night.

There was a freshwater lake in the midst
of the all surrounding red rock madness.
I swam to some stone formation of a 2 floor height.
Climbed it & had my ‘king of the word’ moment, – )~

We arrived at Sage Creek Campground after nightfall and we were greeted on the road by numerous pairs of bison eyes shining in the dark. It took over 20 minutes to inch the car through, very slowly and carefully. We had big plans to backpack into the wilderness at Sage Creek or somewhere in the South Unit, but it rained all the first full day we were there and our gear got all muddy. We didn’t have the time or energy to backpack out, but we spent the next day (which was nice) exploring past the fossil trail, and then around the door, window, and notch trailheads before we had to move on. Backpacking in the Badlands is still on my list of things to do before I’m dead.

Badlands is pretty and it is a nice drive. One will really get a grasp on the scope of our great land by driving across South Dakota and stopping off in the Badlands.

Things you need to know.

1. Wounded Knee reservation is close and the natives are NOT FRIENDLY. They tried to jump us and syphoned gas out of our truck.

2. Badlands is made of mud not rock. OUtcropiongs are fragile and falling 200 feet can be a death sentence.

3. Watch the sky, rain makes everything treacherous.

4. Mid summer this place is hot. My buddy pushed himself too hard and ended up with a mild case of heat stroke. Wear a hydration pack.

5. Make sure someone knows where you are hiking and when you will be back.

6. Buffalo are not cows. Do not attempt to pet the buffalo. If you startle a buffalo you will die a painful death.

7. Prarie dogs have fleas that carry PLAGUE! Do not touch a live or dead prarie dogs.

8. Rattle snakes that look dead durring the heat of the day may be sleeping. Do not mess with the snakes or you may end up loosing body parts or your life.

1. That is not rock you are walking on its mud.
2. Don’t walk out to the tip of outcropings. (see #1)
3. Mud when wet is very slippery. (See #2)
4. Gravity is a constant (See #3)

I think you get the picture.

If you have disobeyed the above 4 rules, the only way to climb back out on mud covered shoes is to find handholds in the prarie grasses. Good luck mud on mud makes for a hard and messy climb, if you survived your fall.

Hike the back country there, find a dry river bed and hike it for a while. Almost a gurantee you will find fossils. Don’t touch federal felony, but take pix, record on GPS and report to the park rangers. Last time we wee there we found fosilized Turtle Shells and an Eocene era Rhino!

The majority of people don’t ever hike and just drive through, they have no idea what they are missing.

This is a beautiful and rugged place…Loved the way the movie revisited it for me!

Go camping. Listen to the bleating of the animals at sunset… they sound like zombies. Out to eat your brains.

No kidding.

I was using the local tourist guide type maps and found a little day spa in Hot Springs. It was wonderful.