June 20-21, 2012 – Bad Lands National Park, SD




We left Sioux Falls on Wednesday morning once again in the rain.  The rain quit a short distance out of Sioux Falls and the rest of the drive was cloudy but dry.  We are staying at the Badlands Ranch Resort a short distance south of the National Park.



 

After lunch we went into the park to the Visitor Center where we watched a really nice short movie about the park.  After looking around the Visitor Center we left to discover it was pouring rain so instead of doing the hikes we planned we headed back to the RV Park.



Thursday morning was beautiful, warm and sunny so we headed back into the park.








Our first stop was the Cedar Pass Area where we took several hikes.  One hike was on the Window Trail – a short hike that gave us great views of the area.


 





Another hike was on Notch Trail and was longer – a 1.5 mile trail that leads to a notch for views of the White River Valley.  A short distance into the hike this little guy was sitting beside the trail.  He sat there for a while and let us take his picture.

 





The trail description said the trail climbs a log ladder – what it didn’t say was how high we had to climb!   Nancy is somewhat bothered by heights so it was not an easy climb (but we soon found that it was easier going up than coming down).

 





We hiked along the ledge on the right and all the way to the notch in the center of the picture.

 







The views from the notch were spectacular and well worth the effort to get there.

 






After our hikes we drove to Wall, SD where we fueled up the truck and had lunch.  We also visited the famous Wall Drug but were not impressed – it was too crowded and full of junky tourist souvenirs.  We then drove to the West end of the park and took the Badlands Loop Road where we stopped at several overlooks.

 


When we rounded one corner we came upon these Big Horn Sheep on a cliff overlooking the road - we could see 4 ewes and 2 lambs.  As we rounded the next corner there was a ewe standing on the road and we had to stop until she crossed.




 

Every overlook had great views.


We really enjoyed our visit to Badlands National Park and are continually amazed at the beauty of our country.  Tomorrow we head to Rapid City.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 4-6, 2009

Image
June 4, 2009 We drove Northwest of Jasper along the Yellowhead Highway to Mount Robson Provincial Park. We saw a moose along the river in the distance but wasn’t close enough to get a picture. We saw Yellowhead Lake and Moose Lake, and had a picnic lunch at the Mt. Robson Visitors Center. The scenery is spectacular – a picture of Mt. Robson. Our site at Whistler campground. June 5 We left Jasper in the sunshine and warm but the further North we got, the colder, rainier and more grey it got. As we turned north on route 40 to Grand Paririe, we started to hit a little snow. Didn’t last long but really woke us up. It stayed rainy and grey until we got to Grand Cache then it started to clear. We also got our first real windshield chip today, but a trip to WalMart and a windshield repair kit later we were fixed. The land here is somewhat hilly, swampy and covered with trees. There are some really big oil and gas complexes and some large lumber mills such as the one we saw in Grand Paririe.
Read more

August 24-26, 2009

Image
We headed towards Flathead Lake Monday morning and stopped in Kalispell to get our air conditioner repaired. It had stopped working a couple of weeks ago and August is not the time to be without an air conditioner. The RV dealer we stopped at gave us the name of the guy who does their air conditioning work. He was able to fix the air conditioner (a switch had burned out) in a couple of hours and we were on our way. We drove to Polson, MT at the south end of Flathead Lake and are going to stay here for a few days. We are staying at Eagle Nest RV, which has a cherry orchard on one side, a golf course on one side and a horse pasture on another side. It is a really nice park with lots of grass and trees. Unfortunately, we are at the end of the cherry season and we might not be able to find any fresh cherries. Tuesday morning we decided to take a drive around Flathead Lake. This is a very scenic area with lots of fruit orchards. We found a fruit stand and bought cherries, peaches, tomatoes
Read more

July 28, 2009

Image
We left Valdez this morning in rain and fog and retraced our route back up the Richardson Highway. We ran out of the fog and rain after we went over Thompson Pass and thought we would be able to see more of the scenery. Not to be, shortly we ran into more smoke. We stopped at the visitor center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park but it was really smoky so we didn’t stay very long. The ranger there (we think he was a ranger but he looked about 15 years old!) told us that there are currently 60 fires in Alaska and the smoke here is from the fires North of here around Fairbanks. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest national park in the US at 13.2 million acres. There are only 2 short gravel roads in the park so access is limited to backpacking, hiking and flight seeing. The park is mainly wilderness and has 4 major mountain ranges in it and includes 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US. Unfortunately, because of the smoke we were not able to see any of them. We turned off the R
Read more