As I mentioned in the posts A Wander About Downtown Rapid City, SD and Carhenge, in July we ventured on an ambitious and kind of epic roadtrip to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska, some of our neighboring (and sort of neighboring) states to Colorado.
Since John retired, we are trying to see as many of the U.S. National Parks as possible over the next couple of years (and who knows what kind of funding they will have in the future to host visitors, their have already been serious cuts to National Park staff); as we feel they are some of the best parts of the U.S.
So during our roadtrip while in South Dakota traveling from Rapid City, South Dakota we stopped briefly at Wind Caves National Park; and then spent a large part of the day at Badlands National Park.
Badlands National Park
Whatever images I share they will not do justice to the magnificence of this National Park.
As the park’s website states: “The rugged beauty of the Badlands draws visitors from around the world. These striking geologic deposits contain one of the world’s richest fossil beds. Ancient horses and rhinos once roamed here. The park’s 244,000 acres protect an expanse of mixed-grass prairie where bison, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, and black-footed ferrets live today.”
First we stopped at the Visitor Center so we could get our National Park Passport stamped for Badlands National Park and pick up some souveniers.
Here are some of the amazing rock formations outside the Visitor Center and a section that John was brave enough to climb up:
After this initial stop we got on the Badlands Loops Road (Highway 240) and drove through the park. Here are some of the zillion photos as we made our way along the road.
As I mentioned whatever images I share they will not do justice to the magnificence of this National Park. Checking my photos after I took them and already anticipating the disappointment (ha!) I decided to take a video at one of the many glorious viewpoints on our drive through the park.
As I was about to take my video I cleverly (not so cleverly perhaps) decided to narrate the video using the placards (? not sure if that is the right term) at the viewpoint describing the view. Here is an example of a “placard”:
They were rather weather worn and difficult to read but once I started my narration I was kind of committed to complete it.
So here is the video, which I uploaded to YouTube in order to post, with my very monotone voice as I attempted to take the video and read the whole line of different “placards” before other people showed up at the viewpoint and blocked my view or wondered what the heck the crazy lady speed reading the “placards” was doing!
By the way it is VERY WINDY in the Badlands and the wind provides a soundtrack to my monotone awkward narration – ha!
Perhaps my lame videography provided you with a tiny bit better sense of the awesomeness of the Badlands.
Wind Cave National Park
Not much to report on this National Park. Unless you take one of the Park Ranger guided tours of a section of the Wind Caves there isn’t much to see. The wait for the guided tours was a couple hours. So we just looked around the Visitor Center, got some souveniers and got our National Park Passport stamped. We were wondering why it was free to get into the park and that is because you pay when you sign up for one of the tours.
In the Visitor Center they did have a cool diagram of the cave system.
So that’s our South Dakota National Park adventure!
We were tempted to pop over the Theodore Roosevelt National Park but it was quite a bit away and we’d already been to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial on the trip so far (next post).
Postscript
After I posted this post I discovered that John had taken a video on his phone also at Badlands National Park at the same viewpoint but without the narration. His video shows more of the 180+ view so I uploaded it to YouTube if you’d like to see it also. (Sorry it only has the wind as soundtrack no monotonous voice!)
tierneycreates 