Day 34: Badlands

Friday July 15

Friday July 15 and it is time to move a little bit east.  We have a 2 hour ride to the Badlands ahead of us but we only have the one night in the area to explore both the park and Wall Drug (which we have heard is a must for the area).  It is amazing how quickly the scenery changes on our 2 hour ride.  Before long the hills and mountains are behind us and we are in farming country.  Again the city signs tell population and we are amazed at the small size of towns.  Interior, SD, where we are spending the night at Badlands KOA has a population of only 67!  Interior has a convenience store on the corner where we have to turn to go to the KOA and that is all the town offers.  We feel like we are heading nowhere on the 4 mile ride to the KOA but it is pretty, passing the White River.  The river is flooded and very light colored.  We arrive at the campground at noon, an hour before check in but they are able to let us check in.  We quickly unhook and drive to Wall. 

Badlands

Wall is a town in South Dakota that boasts the best drug store in the world.  Basically it is a large drug store with other stores connected.  We have lunch at the drug café which turns out to be a huge disappointment.  Expensive and not very tasty food.  Scott tried a bison hot dog and did not care for it.  We do a little shopping and then head to the “new” backyard area.  This area has small water fountains and areas to take pictures of the girls pretending to ride stage coach, jackalope, bison, etc.  The girls each get a bag of “sand” to sieve through and look for gemstones.  They each get to pick a stone to put in a necklace and they have a blast doing this.  Last time they did this, was at Polar Caves and after they finished sorting the gemstones out, they dumped everything back in together.  Thankfully they don’t do that this time.  Isabella is so excited to show Grampie her new rocks.

We catch a quick free ice water (which made Wall Drug famous back in the day) and an ice cream (which is the only thing reasonably priced in Wall, $10 for 4 ice creams) and head to Badlands National Park.  We had stopped at the Visitor’s Center on our way to Wall and knew where we wanted to go.  We pull off onto this dirt road and immediately spot what we assume to be mountain goats.  They look like goats and are living high in the plateau areas of Badlands.  They are very friendly and a few hang out near the road for our photo taking advantage.  Later we find out they are actually bighorn sheep.  The females do not have the curly horns but look just like what we saw.  At last we saw bighorn sheep (although it would have been cool to see a male).  We had seen mountain goats at Mt Rushmore the night before and they looked very different from these animals- very white and smaller.

We stop at the Pinnacles and walk around awhile.  It is hot and humid and nearing dinner time so we do not stay long.  The Badlands are almost just mountains of sand in some areas.  They were carved out by the ocean 37 million years ago and continue to erode at a rate of an inch a year.  Hard to believe that if I return to the area in my lifetime, the park would look noticeably different and eventually will not be there.  There are lots of signs warning about rattlesnakes and that really makes us stay on the paths.  But there are people heading into the high grass everywhere.  Badlands reminds me a lot of Bryce except there is green grass on the plateaus and valleys.  It got its name from the French people who were first crossing the area on horseback and how hard it was to get over the landscape.