Oregon Trail: Badlands National Park

I had exactly one place on my must-see list before we left Virginia and it was Badlands National Park. That choice, in fact, informed our route: we would head west on I-90 through South Dakota rather than staying up north on I-94 through North Dakota. All our hustle of the day before to get all the way from Michigan to South Dakota was to set up today's visit to the badlands. I am afraid that the pictures in this post do the place no justice: pictures just cannot convey the texture of the land. The park is absolutely unearthly spectacular and worth spending a couple of days seeing.

Tuesday morning before leaving Sioux Falls for the Badlands, though, the first thing we did was to tick off one of the first items on the list that the guys gave us at the bar the night before: see the falls. I was worried about rush hour traffic, it being 8am and being from the DC area, that means hellish traffic. I needn't have worried; we were cruising down the interstate at 65 mph and 8-9 minutes later, on a very chilly and misty morning, we pulled into Falls Park on the banks of the Big Sioux River right downtown.

The falls themselves are spectacular and picture worthy, even in the light rain. The park surrounding the falls, Falls Park, proved to be one of the very nicest urban parks that I have ever visited anywhere in the world. Sioux Falls should be very proud of their treasure.

Stunning Sioux Falls

Falls Park, One of the Best Urban Parks Anywhere

Queen Bee Mill Ruins

Big Chute in the Big Sioux River

Rock Dove in its Traditional Habitat

Bison Sculpture

Sioux Falls Power and Light Hydro-Electric Plant

Annie Walking Among Huge Cottonwoods

Leaving Sioux Falls, we headed due west on I-90 towards the badlands through more farmland, surprise of surprises. Individual fields would stretch for miles along the interstate, boggling my mind at the time and equipment necessary to farm such vast acreage. In one field, we saw a massive 5-gang disc being pulled behind a huge 8-wheeled tractor. All along the interstate grew acres of sunflowers, sorghum, millet, wheat, and other grains. There's some serious farming going on here. As Ann drove, I saw the first of many meadowlarks flitting on the roadsides.

About halfway between Sioux Falls and Badlands National Park runs the mighty Missouri River, dividing South Dakota physically and spiritually into East River, characterized by grain farming, and West River, hillier, drier, and mostly given over to cattle. We were driving along I-90 through flat East River farmland when suddenly the ground fell away and we dove straight down for a long way until we came to the Missouri River. At this point, the wind had gotten up and we were experiencing some really big gusts. In fact, it was so windy that there were whitecaps on the river. After crossing the very narrow Mississippi at St. Cloud the day before, the Missouri seemed like a proper river.

In a total aside with a bit of relevance to this story, can I just say that the silly time zones just don't change at any logical place such as a state border? For example, Central time starts most, but not all the way through Michigan while Mountain time starts somewhere in South Dakota west of the Missouri River. For the longest time, we could not square our arrival time at Badlands NP as displayed on the Garmin with the number of miles remaining until Ann finally figured we had to be changing time zones. That got me looking into time zones in the US and I have to say that they are largely wacky.

The Color Palette of the Badlands in One Photo

Bad Lands to Traverse, Hence the Name

Gorgeous Banding in the Rocks

A Totally Different Look

This Could be Mars

Still Life in Mud

Trees are not abundant in this landscape. When we climbed to one of the peaks, there were a few juniper trees, otherwise, it is a treeless place. Here where these junipers are situated, Ann saw her first magpie and heard it chatter. Further west, we would see hundreds more.

Still Life with Junipers

The Dogs Enjoyed Sniffing About

Looking Way Out South

Love the Layers in the Rock

Annie in Front of Yellow Mounds

The color palette of the badlands is similar to the desert palette: browns, tans, golds, and colors of the earth. Vegetation is short and tough. Flowers in bloom were few and far between and mainly yellow in color, blending right into the buff colored grasses and hillsides. The most common yellow flower was the one just below, the Curlycup Gumweed (what a name!). I brushed the foliage and my hands came away with a sticky residue smelling distinctly of pine resin. This is no doubt a useful strategy to preserve water in an arid climate and no doubt most animals and insects do not want to eat something tasting like this.

Curlycup Gumweed, Grindelia squarrosa

Butterflies on Broom Snakeweed, Gutierrezia sarothrae

Plains Pricklypoppy, Argemone polyanthemos
Annual Sunflower, Helianthus annuus

I've got to say that I was really excited to see bighorn sheep, the only large mammals that we saw at the park, a couple of deer aside. I have seen a bighorn before in the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rockies in northern New Mexico, a radio-collared ram at about 12,000 feet, but the radio collar kind of spoiled the experience for me. It was truly amazing to be just feet away from the ram in the second photo.

Big Horn Sheep Grazing Desolate Landscape

Big Horn Ram

As we were tooling along the park road at a sedate 30 miles an hour, I spied a familiar site. Round mounds of dirt poking through the very short grass as far as the eye could see. I used to spend a lot of time on the prairies near Denver watching prairie dogs and the ferruginous hawks that would hunt them, so I pulled over quickly knowing that Ann had never seen a prairie dog. Grace went absolutely nuts about the prairie dogs, body rigid and quivering, pressing her snout so hard into the window glass that I wondered if the glass would break.

Black-tailed Prairie Dog Town

As you can see in the photo below, prairie dogs are about the cutest creatures ever (unless you're a rancher and then you will likely take a contrarian position). They are pudgy; they waddle; they're super social and curious; and they are very vocal, constantly uttering high-pitched squeaking barks as they stay on the alert for predators.

Black-tailed Prairie Dog

Western Meadowlark, Sturnella neglecta

After touring the park, we headed back out to I-90 via the town of Wall SD, home of the infamous tourist trap Wall Drug, whose signs we saw every couple of miles for hundreds of miles. We did not stop; I don't play well with tour buses full of people. It was only about an hour into Rapid City SD, our home for the night, and we stopped along the way to get some take-out from a place that was supposed to have really good sandwiches. Not so much.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventure to Custer State Park, the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life.