The Badlands National Park, South Dakota

As beautiful as the Badlands are on the outside, it is hard to enjoy them when you know how fragile they are.  On the outside they look solid, as if they have stood there for a thousand years just as they are. Unfortunately the Badlands are eroding at an incredibly fast rate, almost an inch a year in fact. It is estimated than in about 500,000 years it will be a huge pile of dirt.  

The two little specks are my dad and me

Well, enough with the depressing stuff.  Let's focus on how beautiful the badlands were. When we were there it was so amazing.  The rock towers rose over a hundred feet and had so many different levels and colors.  Also they rose in tiers so you can rock climb up them and get to where you can see for 50 miles around, which admittedly isn't that hard in South Dakota with the land so flat. In addition you can see millions of years into the past.  Just by climbing down one tier you go thousands of years back.  In some cases you can even see the differences in time by the color or texture of the rock.  There is one layer called the fossil layer, called that because, you guessed it, it has a ton of fossils in it.  In fact the badlands are the largest discovered collection of mammal fossils in the world.  There was also a place called the yellow layer.  It is where some of the oldest rock is, and is bright yellow because millions of years ago the Black Hills and Rocky Mountains began to rise and drained the sea from the badlands. As the sea receded the black mud became oxidized and turned yellow.  Now it is just a really cool place to drive through.  

That's me up on the rock

As we exited the rock formations we came to a huge stretch of grass land.  As we looked off to our right we saw dozens of little holes riddling the ground and several people off to our left just staring at the holes and taking pictures.  We pulled over, got out of the car, and immediately heard a constant squeaking.  It turned out that there was an entire colony of prairie dogs in the field, and boy are they loud.  

After the prairie dogs got annoying (which happened surprisingly  fast) we found something even more surprising.  A herd of big horn sheep grazing right beside the road. As we drove by we took a few pictures, and it was shocking how the sheep weren't afraid at all.  In fact one of them crossed the road right in front of us as if we weren't there at all. My experience at the Badlands is definitely going to be hard to top, and I think that I will remember it for the rest of my life.







Next stop: Wind Cave