The Badlands

One of our finest days; western South Dakota continues to amaze and impress.

We got up and out early from Wall with the hope of seeing the sun’s light play over the rock formations in the Badlands, but it was overcast for much of the morning – not so good for pictures but great for biking, and because we had the park basically to ourselves for a couple of hours, we declared it a win.

We came in at Pinnacles and took a short ride down a gravel road to the west so we could get our first view from an overlook.

From there we road east on the loop road discovering dramatic changes around each bend.

In places there is vegetation:

But much of it is majestically austere:

I don’t have much of a handle on the geology, but part of what sets the Badlands apart from other stunning formations in the west is that in addition to fossilized soils (which are the reds and yellows) much of it is clay formed from volcanic ash. So it is softer than other landscapes and it is continually being reshaped.

There are a couple of vast prairie dog towns in the park, and when you stop to check them out there is a great commotion of chattering and diving into holes that is very amusing despite the fact that they are plague-ridden vermin.

The view to the south looks out to the Yellow river valley:

The view to the north is all prairie, a vestige of the grasslands that covered some 40% of the continent:

On the way out of the park, we stopped for a short hike through the “wall” that runs south to north on the eastern edge. The landscape on the other side is barren and beautiful.

It was a great day amid some wondrous natural beauty:

And, finally, here’s a 360-degree video from outside the Badlands Wall (there’s some kids shouting and toward the end as I’m thinking the file size is getting too big, the pacing gets a bit vertiginous).