Enter the Badlands
A little adventure with big views, stunning colors, and amazing wildlife was waiting for me in southwestern South Dakota, home of Badlands National Park. The buttes and spires extending out of this mixed-grass prairie ecosystem is the result of tens of millions of years of deposition and erosion. How can a place of such stark beauty get a name like “Badlands”? The Oglala Lakota called this land mako sica, meaning “land bad”. Along the same lines French trappers and traders named this rugged area Les Mauvaises terres a traverser, meaning “bad lands to cross”.
Early morning and setting sun was the call for this visit. I’ll have a separate post dedicated to the wildlife I encountered (thankfully not rattlesnakes) but I’ll try to walk through some of the different stops taken along the Badlands Loop Road as I travelled east to west. The photos don’t do this magnificent place justice but hopefully they convey some of the stunning contrasts between light and shadow, incredible colors, and vastness of this incredible place. These are just some of the highlights… plenty of other overlooks and views to take in.
Clicking on a photo will open that set up in a light box for better viewing.
Big Badlands Overlook
This is the first stop from the Northeast Entrance and where things started as the sun began to spread it’s morning light across the Badlands. This place will give you the taste of the typical topography and geologic features found throughout the park.
Door and Window Trails
The Door Trail is a small break that allows you to hike into the extremely rugged Badlands. To keep you from getting lost there are numbered posts that keep you in eyesight as you wander throughout. You can explore but this is listed as one of the more common areas where visitors become lost. The Window Trail leads to an opening carved by water and wind.
Cliff Shelf Nature Trail
This is a small 1/2 mile trail but has several stairs and boardwalks that take you up to a big overlook. Over the years a “slump”, large portions of the high ridge that gave way in massive landslides, created the shelf effect which hindered the draining of water. The created enough moisture to allow for a grove of trees and other vegetation and increased wildlife.
Panorama Point
This tends to be one of the more windy points in the Badlands but certainly beautiful.
Conata Basin Overlook
This landscape change here as eroded buttes have turned into low, softly carved hills. Looking out you can se the transition from steep, sharp pinnacles to a softer, more rounded grayish layer. You can also se the brightly colored Yellow Mounds (next set). The color variations are due to the chemical make-up of the layers as well as the processes of heat, pressure, and time.
Yellow Mounds Overlook
The yellow mounds seen here consist of fossil soils that were created from the exposed sea floor. When the Western Interior Seaway receded, the top layer of sediment that remained was weathered, and chemically altered over time into these yellow mounds. The colors are striking here!!
Pinnacles Overlook
Bighorn sheep were here (will be in the wildlife post) but this look across the White River Badlands was incredible. Was here in the afternoon, had dinner in Wall, and then came back for sunset with spectacular color across the terrain.
