The Stunning Beauty of the Badlands
It may be uninhabitable, but the landscape will take your breath away
It’s summer, which means travel for my family. It also means that between commentary on life, social issues, and our years living in Texas, I will deliver two to three posts a month about our family’s summer travels until the end of the year.
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The first time Jeff and I traveled to Yellowstone, the Badlands were not on my itinerary.
I had never heard of the national park before, even with a few drives through South Dakota during my childhood. I knew about Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, and that was our destination. It was a long drive from our overnight stop in Souix Falls to the KOA I had reserved near Mount Rushmore. We didn’t have much time to sightsee on our way across the state.
But we had already determined we needed to stop at Wall Drug. And then Jeff saw the sign.
“Look, there’s Badlands National Park. Should we stop?”
I had a schedule to keep. “Why would we want to stop in the Badlands? It doesn’t sound like a good place to stop.”
I was wrong. I was so wrong. In the short drive to the visitor center, we discovered a beautiful, rugged desert landscape that took my breath away. I suddenly regretted our need to get to the Black Hills before sunset.
Preorder my book to read more about that trip and many more camping experiences over the years.
So when we planned to take our kids to Yellowstone, Jeff and I both agreed that we needed at least one full day to explore Badlands National Park. I reserved two nights in Wall, South Dakota and hoped we would have enough daylight after we arrived to at least drive into the national park on our first night. A stop to see the Corn Palace in Mitchell put us a little behind schedule and the kids wanted to explore Wall Drug once we parked our camper. Daylight was fading fast and a storm was building in the west, but I wasn’t giving up on seeing the sunset in the park after we ate dinner.
Before we went to bed, I wanted our kids to see why we made seeing the Badlands a priority for this vacation. The storm clouds hung over far western regions of the park, but Jeff drove toward the entrance closest to Wall then turned onto Sage Creek Rim Road. Immediately, the prairie opened up into deep, dry canyons of rock formations reaching into the sky, the layers of sandstones, siltstones, mudstones, claystones, limestones, volcanic ash, and shale showing different hues as they reflected the colors from the setting sun.1 The pictures we had shown our children before our vacation had not prepared them for what they would see along the rim. Our daughter was speechless. All day she had watched the landscape of farmland mixed with long prairie grass waving in wind.
“What happened to my screensaver?” she finally asked. We laughed, because it was a pretty apt description of what we had seen all day.
As Jeff continued the drive up the road along the rim, we watched bison frolicking in the prairie. A few ambled up and across the road in front of us and other park visitors trying to drive to the best place to watch the sunset. Jeff stopped multiple times to wait for another bison to cross the road, the massive beasts not caring in the least that they had interruped our sunset viewing experience, making it clear they ruled the plains.
The rain held off, allowing the sun to slowly drop into the break in the storm clouds. As we watched the sunset over the South Dakota plains, my 15-year-old daughter wrapped her arms around me and put her head on my shoulder. Together we watched the golden sun dip beneath the horizon, the red glow reflected on the rugged landscape behind us. Our vacation had officially started, and I couldn’t wait to explore the park once the sun came up.
Vacation mode also meant our family slept until mid-morning, even though we had changed two time zones in our drive west. We were quickly learning to change some expectations as we traveled with two teenagers now. We packed up water bottles and snacks and traveled to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center, nearly 30 minutes away. On our way, we stopped to hike the Window Trail, which was more a “choose your own adventure” hike with the goal of reaching numbered posts that told us we were going in the right direction. We quickly discovered that the trail restrictions in Badlands National Park are far looser than in any other park we have visited, mostly because the constantly changing landscape due to natural erosion of the tightly packed rock and mud formations. We climbed up and down the formations, looking for natural landbridges until we reached the final post.
Unfortunately, our daughter also twisted her ankle as we reached the midway point of the hike. It didn’t end the hike, but it certainly put into question our ability to do any more long hikes for the day. The sting came off of the injury after lunch, but it was still tender for a few days.
After a quick visit to the visitor center and spending more money in the park store, we enjoyed our lunch at the Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill, just outside of the national park.
Then Jeff got to fulfill one of his wishes for the park, driving the unimproved portion of the Sheep Mountain Road all the way to the top of Sheep Mountain Table.
The first time Jeff convinced me to take the road less travelled was when we were on our family vacation to Arches National Park. When we visited Canyonlands, he decided he wanted to test the limits of our F-150 and take the road through the canyon on our return to Moab. I had my doubts and spent most of the drive holding onto the handle next to my door, but he was right. The drive was stunning. Then, when we spent three days exploring Big Bend National Park, he insisted we go off-roading again. And again, it took us to a beautiful hike we wouldn’t have otherwise known existed.
So when Jeff said he wanted to drive to the top of Sheep Mountain Table, who was I to argue?
The drive initially took us on a dirt road along the canyon floor, but then we climbed up the mountain. When we saw the sign for “High Clearance Vehicles Only,” Jeff continued up the path, following the tire treads of those who had gone before us. We bounced along the road, eventually following a park ranger’s advice when he passed us and told us to take the left side of the road instead of the right, where we were trying to stay out of the way of those coming back down from the top. We watched the storm clouds grow as we worked our way to the top, and by the time we got back to the main road, we saw lightning streaks. The drive had been worth it and we finished it just in time.
After spending more money shopping in Wall and eating dinner, we headed back to the park for one last experience. The park rangers were doing a night program at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center and we wanted to see the Badlands night sky. The first ranger talked about prairie dogs and the efforts to bring back the black-footed ferrett to the plains. The prairie dogs of the Badlands are currently experiencing a form of bubonic plague, so there are signs everywhere telling visitors to avoid getting close, but we learned that one of the reasons this is so problematic is prairie dogs are a keystone species. They are essential to the survival of many other species on the plains, including the nearly extinct black-footed ferret. Current conservation efforts to bring back the black-footed ferret includes cloning technology. It was a fascinating and wholly unexpected presentation.
We wrapped up the night learning more about constellations and planets and looking at the night sky through the telescopes provided by the park rangers. While the sky wasn’t quite as bright as in Big Bend many years ago, it was still an impressive sight and we were glad we had made the effort to return to the park one more time.
The Badlands may be a difficult place to live and thrive, but it is absolutely worth visiting. While the landscape may be inhospitable, the views are stunning and the life that does thrive there will take your breath away. It was the perfect national park to start our family vacation.
Do you want to know more about how I plan our vacations? Check out this blog post and get a copy of my planning spreadsheet below:
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For more information, check out Geologic Formations: How Badlands Buttes Came to Be (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Thank you for taking me on your trip to the badlands, Sarah. It was so worth going! You're a good writer and the photos are excellent, too. Thank you.
The Badlands are breathtaking. I've been twice now: once camping with my husband in Sage Creek (THAT was an experience!) and again when I was on a solo trip. Thank you for sharing your captivating writing about this beautiful place.