A Great Time in the Bad Lands

By Esq. -
Where: A Land that Describes itself as Bad, but in actuality is pretty cool

When: The Great Bach Vacation of 2018

On our way through South Dakota, we decided to hit as many National Parks as we could. And the first one that came up was Badlands National Park. Unless Wall Drug counts as a National Park, but we opted not to stop there. We didn't want to reinforce their aggressive highway sign marketing campaign.

We got to the Badlands and headed straight for the Visitor Center! Actually the first thing we did was stop at the entry gate and allow Katie - a fourth grader- to get us into the park for FREE. Fourth graders get in free as part of the Every Kid in a Park program, and so Katie was our golden fourth grade ticket throughout the trip. And yes we were aware that she hadn't actually started fourth grade yet, but if you've finished third grade... you just round up.

The Ranger gave us some great info on some trails and we wandered around looking at the exhibits.

Here's Molly next to a burrowing owl display. She's an Owl maniac.



Next we chose a trail that was supposed to have great views. And it did, but it also had this long log and cable ladder. Katie was not thrilled about it. We did a lot of talking to get her up.

Once we were past the ladder, though, we wound around through a moon-like landscape until we came up to a notch in the cliffs. As we approached an incredible panoramic view of the rock formations and surrounding landscape opened up. There were eagles soaring on air currents nearby, and the wind was whipping. It was an awesome moment.




Later... we had to go back down the dreaded ladder , but Katie managed it like a trailboss!

We did a driving tour through the rest of the park. The rock formations are striped with bright colors so that you can literally see the past in the different rock layers.

We were not able to see any owls in the wild, but (after much searching) we finally found a prairie dog town. And we also found some nice people who took our picture. 

Badlands: you're so bad, you're good.

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