On our way, we paid a visit to Rapid City, South Dakota, for our lunch break. What a nice town. Lots of 2-story buildings, a Main Street, everything looking very much like it was thriving. No empty storefronts. No rundown properties. There was an Oktoberfest underway in a square in the center of town. Lots of people out and about. A very nice park just a couple blocks off Main Street.
After wandering around downtown Rapid City for a bit, we took a secondary road to the park, rather than I-90--a more scenic approach to the Badlands. It is rather startling. You're driving across the plains for about 80 miles, and suddenly there are the most amazing rock formations.
We took a drive through a portion of the formations at sunset, soon after arriving, just to get our toes wet. Loved the views. It is so quiet, out amongst the rocks. And what you see is so beyond what you might expect. Makes for a special experience.
The light is very different in the morning. This is the view from our cabin.
After breakfast, we headed out on the Badlands Loop Road that takes you through the heart of the rocky wonderland. There are parts of the park that are eerily desolate. Parts reminded us of images we've seen of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in the Middle East. It's a very unusual area. In some ways, pretty. In other ways, remote and harsh. And each time you come around a bend, the view is different. It might be staring down into jagged spires, or it might be a sweeping view across the grasslands. But then it might be more gently shaped mounds or looking up to castle-like formations.
We took a number of boardwalk trails out into the rocks and trails to viewpoints at the edges of precipices. But we weren't very tempted to stray. These signs were at every entrance to every walk, no matter how short or long.
We went to Wall, South Dakota, for lunch and visited the famous Wall Drug. What an odd place. It's huge, a maze of attached shops, and crawling with people. There was some nice merchandise here and there and an actual drugstore. But there was also every form of ticky-tacky tourist souvenir "stuff" known to man.
After this dose of reality, we headed back to our National Park lodge. We decided to drive back the way we'd come so we could see the formations from a different perspective and with the late afternoon light.
As it turned out, it was also a better opportunity to see animals. We visited a prairie dog town. We also saw a coyote out, presumably for a dinner stroll.
We watched a buffalo walking across the grasses. He came from quite a distance away. Several of us were watching him approach. He seemed to be making a beeline for us, and we all knew we needed to retreat to our cars if he got too close. But he just walked on by without any interest in us. He obviously had someplace to go. The prairie dogs scurried as he passed through, but he paid no attention to anyone or anything.
And we got to see a small group of bighorn sheep.
While we spent time in the Badlands, we saw some beautiful sights. At times we were on the valley floor (actually the Buffalo Gap National Grassland), looking up. Or we might be driving on a high plateau or along a canyon rim. We could be driving through what felt like prairie, yet 20 feet away was this odd, chiseled, eroded, unearthly view of rocks. Quite fascinating.
Especially loved the feeling of the vastness of the grassland and the play of light and shadow from the clouds.
After we got back to our homestead, we sat on our deck and watched the sun set. A group of 6 deer wandered past us, just a few feet away, nibbling grasses. We had a pair of cottontails also sharing the sunset with us, as well as a lone porcupine.
All in all, quite a visit to this unusual and special spot.
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