Badlands National Park, South Dakota

After traveling for miles and miles through the cornfields of the Great Plains, it was a surreal experience to arrive at the Badlands National Park in the southwest of South Dakota. The buttes of the Badlands arise in a unearthly fashion out of the lower prairie plains to create a type of moonscape, or perhaps more accurately, a “mars-scape”. Although the landscape looks at first glance like a desert, on closer inspection one can see that it is filled with an array of banded colors, which themselves change with the movement of the sun, and at night, with the glow of the moon. Compounding this sumptuous visual breakfast, the surfaces of the Badlands present an intricate array of vertical and flat lines that draw the eye into the endless maze of impossibly sharp rain-eroded valleys and perfectly level grass-covered plains. The result is a visual illusion that the colours are separated from the physical form of the place – the former appearing in horizontal bands, while the latter favours endless verticals – you can trace the colour bands across a dozen different peaks and spires of seemingly unrelated formations. Here's what our main man Frank Lloyd Wright had to say about the Badlands after his visit to the area:

“I've been about the world a lot, and pretty much over our own country, but I was totally unprepared for the revelation called the Dakota Bad Lands... What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere – a distant architecture, ethereal ..., an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it.”

The park is split into two parts, the North Unit and the South Unit. The North Unit has a scenic drive, several hiking trails and two campgrounds. The South Unit is co-managed by the National Parks Service and the Oglala Lakota Nation. Interestingly, before the South Unit was added to the park it was used as an aerial bombing range during World War II. Some remnants of this time remain in the South Unit today and apparently a cell phone could activate some of the old bombs. So you have to talk to the ranger in depth if you go into this area - but not on your cell phone.

Geology

The Badlands National Park covers a large area (approximately 244,000 acres) straddling the low, slow-rolling prairies of the Great Plains and the sharp, granite Black Hill mountains. The main area is a plateau between the upper and lower prairies that has been eroded to reveal peaks, spires, mounds and crevices of different colors and layers that correspond to the layers of sediments deposited on the Great Plains over the eons as the area was periodically flooded by a shallow sea and at other times covered with volcanic ash. Once deposited, the sediments were cemented into solid rocks by the pressure of new sediments and evaporation.

Water is the main eroding agent in the Badlands, working away the soft rock layers, carving the shapes that we see today. This process is ongoing. On average the buttes erode about one inch per year.

History

The area we know today as the Badlands National Park was always called “mako sica” by the Oglala Lakota Native People. The French voyageurs called the area “les mauvaises terres a traverser”. Both phrases mean “bad lands”.

The Badlands were established as a national monument in 1939 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an effort to preserve the unique landscape. In 1978, Congress acted to elevate the Badlands to National Park Status. The Badlands make up the largest expanse of protected prairie ecosystem in the National Park System and are bordered by the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (notably where Wounded Knee is located).

What We Did

The Badlands has one main scenic road, the Badlands Loop Road, which travels through the North Unit. Most of the park's day hikes veer off this road and drop into the buttes. We drove this road and did a couple of the short hikes. Most notable was the Window Notch Trail, which meanders through a canyon consisting of white, chalky sediments and then climbs to the “notch”, from which you can see the White River Valley below.

Just as the sun was showing signs of dropping, we made our way along the Sage Creek Rim Road. This drive was a particularly memorable moment of our trip so far. The buttes, which are predominately neutral, light tones, pick up and magnify the changing colours in the sky. Herds of wild bison roam along this part of the park and we encountered 3 separate herds as we made our way to the Sage Creek Campground, where we stayed the night. Our first bison sighting was of a lone bull grazing on an island of grassland in the middle of the complex badlands system – looking for all the world as if he was floating on a grassy iceberg through a vast sea of inhospitable sands. The free Sage Creek Campground is located in the open prairie, with bison and other animals free to roam through. As you'll see from our pictures, the moon rose just as the sun was setting, a big, harvest moon that was so bright we cooked and ate without further assistance from our collection of lamps and torches.

 Right next to the campground is a prairie dog town, which is the series of inter-connected tunnels marked on the surface with round mounds that are inhabited by a colony of prairie dogs. These little guys are the butter-balls of the prairie, but seem to get on okay as the grasslands are full of these little towns. In addition to the prairie dogs and bison we saw mule deer, prong-horned deer, and bighorn sheep.

After getting our fill of the bison herds, we drove through the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and South Unit of the Badlands National Park, which is similar to the North Unit, only pretty much impenetrable and not at all touristy. Where possible, the locals run long-horn cattle on the national grasslands and elsewhere mine gravels.

In summary: They may be called the Badlands, but they sure make for Good Times.  Or - Sometimes good things happen to Badlands.  Or - Good people enjoy Badlands.  Or - Happy Trails in the Badlands.