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The Badlands

Of course, we drove into the Badlands listening to The Boss. The sun was setting as we drove in and it was one of the most amazing sunsets I've ever seen. We got out at a couple of spots to look around at dusk.
There's only one campground and we headed there- the Badlands are not nearly as popular as Yellowstone and the Tetons, it seems. It was pitch dark when we arrived and windy. The first thing we did upon getting out of the car was to securely weight down everything we put on the ground. Even my huge maglite was getting blown around. The terrain was so different from anything I've ever seen- this was my first time on the plains. All I could think about was Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books I love growing up. Everything was totally flat, with nothing to break the wind. There were even sun/wind screens over the picnic tables at each campsite. Kate slept outside of the tent that night and I think she got a little more than she bargained for as far as the wind gently blowing across her face. In the middle of the night, a youth group in 15 passenger vans arrived, keeping their headlights on for what seemed like hours.

The next morning, the sun/wind screen was already necessary as a sunscreen as we were cooking breakfast. There were heat advisories everywhere and the highs were around 110. I just checked the weather for the Badlands today and the high was 29 with a low of 14. Hence the name.It was so stinking hot that we really didn't do much hiking- about half a mile up into the formations so that we could really see them, armed with liters of Gatorade. We were practically on our hands and knees scrambling up them they were so steep. The rocks are really crumbly- everytime you touch them to steady yourself, pieces of them come off in your hands like really heavy sand. While we were up on the plateau, I thought a lot about what it must have been like to be a pioneer and stumble upon these formations... How on earth you would get your horse and wagon down such a precipice! And the weather is so bad, it's not like you could just stay there. While I often averr that I should've lived a century ago, this was not one of those times.

We had planned to spend two days there, but after another short hike and sometime in the (air-conditioned) Visitor Center, we decided to head on out about noon and drive as far as we could that night, en route to Chicago.

Labels: travel

posted by CP @ 5:20 PM 0 thoughts