Badlands National Park

Our time back in the States has been really busy. Trying to cram in visits with friends and family, trips to the beach, checking out new restaurants, and preparing for Afghanistan has been very time-consuming! Stepping back and reviewing our vacation road trip helps to slow things down. It was only a few weeks ago but seems like ages sometimes!

Near the end of our trip, we headed from Mount Rushmore to Badlands National Park. Passing the Black Hills along the way, we realized that we definitely hadn't budgeted enough time for South Dakota and mentally added another park to our "must visit" list (which is getting pretty long). Badlands was pretty amazing though and well worth the trip. The terrain was a mixture of the prairie grass and rugged canyons, spires, and plateaus that house fossils tens of millions of years old.
Unlike Arches and Canyonlands, Badlands has more relaxed regulations regarding backcountry hiking and camping. From the site pictured above, we saw a family of three scurry right up one of the canyon walls without any specialized equipment. Far in the distance, you could see the Badlands Wall which local Native American tribes used as a scouting location - they had been hunting there for nearly 11,000 years.

Of course Badlands has had some controversy in its past due to the struggles between the Native Americans and incoming homesteaders. The Stronghold table was the site of the last Ghost Dance conducted by followers of the Lakota prophet Wovoka who believed that they would overcome the "white man". Of course, the massacre at Wounded Knee, 45 miles from the park, unfortunately said otherwise.

Wildlife is plentiful in the Badlands - bison and prairie dogs are most common. We didn't see any but the park's official literature and all the DANGER signs around the park tell me that rattlesnakes are also pretty common. Also unseen - bobcats, bighorn sheep, and coyotes. However, the most surprising threat was from the ubiquitous prairie dog (can you see it popping into the foreground in the above photo) who, as pictured below, have PLAGUE!