Beautiful Badlands

The first National Park we visited as full-time South Dakotans was the Badlands National Park in Southwest South Dakota. What austere beauty!!!!!!!!!!!!!Rising out of the arid grasslands, the sheer rock walls were as beautiful as they were stark. Jo was fascinated at the different photographic opportunities provided by the way the shifting sunlight struck various rock formations. Oh what a beautiful introduction to western National Parks.

After dropping off our Big Sky in a nearby campground, we drove through the Badlands National Park, enjoying both the natural beauty of the rock walls and the fascinating fauna. There were prairie dogs popping and up down from their holes everywhere alongside the road. Just after seeing a herd of big horn sheep, we had a mother and baby pronghorn antelope dash across the road in front of us. mazing how much animal life can prosper in such apparently arid land.
After passing through the park, we drove on to the small town of Wall in order to visit the famous Wall Drug Store. Throughout our trip westward from Sioux Falls we had seen dozens of billboards advertising this drugstore. An amazing bit of self promotion, reminding us of the billboards one sees on interstate 95 advertising the “South of the Border” tourist trap at the border between North and South Carolina. The Wall Drug Store appears to have taken over a whole series of shops on one side of the main street in “downtown” Wall turning each store into a shop focused on a different type of tourist souvenir. The highlight for us was the “singing cowboys”, two displays of crude mechad up very tasty hot roast beef sandwiches at a very reasonable price, accompanied by coffee which cost only 5 cents a cup, so we certainly benefitted from our trip to the famous Wall Drug.

We went back into the Bandlands National Park the following morning and enjoyed going through the excellent, informative displayed in their Visitors Center. Before leaving the park, we took a short hike on a loop trail just north of the Visitors Center. There were only a few people at the trail head parking lot, and we had the trail virtually to ourselves, it was so quiet we whispered when we spoke to one another. It was wonderful just standing still at several spots on the trail listening to the quiet of the Badlands and absorbing its stark beauty. An added bonus was spotting a pronghorn antelope resting just 20 feet off the trail in a patch of trees. The antelope apparently hoped that we would not notice it as it sat there quietly. Perhaps because we ourselves were being quiet while hiking, the antelope remained sitting while we stared at each other. Befitting testament to the advice we had read in the Visitors Center that the best way to appreciate the Bandlands was to quietly absorb its beauty.