Badlands NP

Driving into Badlands National Park, mid-afternoon on an early August day, it was VERY HOT. We stopped at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center to watch the video, get my Jr. Ranger book and look through the exhibits.

**Little back story this was the same weekend of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which is an hour and a half northwest of Badlands NP. I knew this, so I had made reservations prior to leaving on this trip (in June) at the National Park campground. I had not stayed at any KOAs, at that point, and wasn’t sure how I felt about them…. I LOVE THEM!!!!**

When we got to our campsite it was about 100° outside and not getting much cooler throughout the night. Well the campground had two trees and each site had a table that “kinda” had shade. From there, we could see the KOA advertisement, and it appeared that it did have trees and shade! So, I called, made a reservation and away we went. It turned out to be exactly as advertised. It was MUCH cooler in the shade, which did help. We set up the tent, did some laundry, and went for a swim!

The following morning, we packed up and headed to the park. I had to do a few hikes to earn my badge, so we started with those, prior to the visitor center. We did the Door Trail, Window Trail, Notch Trail, and the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail.

Now many of these look very similar and are hard to distinguish. Which is which? Not sure, but here are some pictures from Badlands National Park starting near the Cedar Pass area.

___________________________________________________________________

HISTORY:

1929, Badlands National Monument is created. It was redesignated in 1978 as a National Park

Rock Layers and Time Periods:

• Pierre Formation
  • 75-68 million years ago
  • shallow sea across the land
  • grey & black shale
  • remains of ancient marine life, no dinosaurs
• Chadron Formation
  • 37-34 million years ago
  • lush wet forest
  • gray-green siltstone & soft clay
  • found jaws of animals with flat, broad teeth
• Brule Formation
  • 34-30 million years ago
  • prairie ecosystem developed
  • gravel, sandstone, siltstone & ancient soils
  • bones of early horses, pigs, and camels
• TODAY
  • Water & wind scour the land
  • Rock layers are being eroded

FUN FACTS:

• 240,000+ acres
• Dances with Wolves (1990) & Thunderheart (1992) were filmed in Badlands National Park
• 337 acres were used as a gunnery range for precision & demolition bombing exercises during WWII

Animals:

• Butterflies
• Red-Winged Blackbirds
• Ground Squirrel
• Plains Spadefoot Toad
• Cricket
• Meadowlark
• Bighorn Sheep
• Swift Fox
• Black-footed Ferret
• Prairie Dog
• Burrowing Owl
• Bull Snake
• Red-Tailed Hawk

___________________________________________________________________

While we were doing those few hikes, it had started to rain and after earning my badge and taking some pictures, we decided we would only stop if we saw something REALLY impressive or an animal we hadn’t already seen. Basically, we would stop for a moose, fox, wolf, or bighorn sheep.

A bit more than half way through the Park Loop Road, just before the homestead overlook, I noticed these three out of the corner of my eye. I pulled into the parking lot and we ran in the rain to go take a picture of them looking down the cliff to see this…

My dad didn’t notice them while we were driving and was expecting them to be very far away, but they were rather close, just down a cliff.

We continued to drive and my dad noticed a few white butts on a hill coming up. We had seen many antelope, and weren’t going to stop for those, but as we got closer we realized they were actually big horn sheep. Here is one of the pictures, but there were about 20-30 here.

As we continued out of the park we were talking about how neither of us had seen that many big horn sheep. My dad had seen at most 7 together at a time. We thought that was it for the park, but instead we were greeted by about 50-70 big horn sheep grazing just outside the park on both sides of the road.

 

And that was it for the park, including the picture of my Jr. Ranger badge and souvenirs!

NEXT TIME at Badlands: I’d like to see it while it isn’t overcast. I had read before going that the cloud coverage would drastically affect the colors of the rugged terrain.