Wednesday, Aug. 13th, we headed out to see the Badlands of South Dakota. We stopped at Wall to visit the Wall Drug Store, the #1 roadside attraction in America with a frontier town, 26 retail departments, arcade, animated T-Rex, gem panning and lots more. It was too much to take in all at once so we continued on to the Badlands.
We took the Sage Creek Road and traveled on a gravel road for a few miles, we were told that this area was good for wildlife sightings. We stopped at the Sage Creek Basin Overlook to view the sculpted spires rising above the vast prairies. The wild flowers were plentiful along the sides of the roads because of all the rain we have had, it gave the stark grassland some color. We did see some bison along the Sage Creek Rim Road, one in the distance and another lying down to get what shade he could find. We continued on the Badlands Loop Road, a well paved road, and pulled over at all the lookouts to capture the vastness and color of these lands. The colorful banding of the buttes are shaped by the fossilized soils that make up much of the Badlands rocks.
The Badlands are a place of extremes, and we experienced the extreme heat today at 98 degrees, too hot to explore on foot. We had lunch at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center, and learned some of the history. The Badlands have supported humans for more than 11,000 years, by the mid-18th century the Lakota flourished hunting bison and harvesting wheat, and homesteaders arrived in the late 19th century, who forever changed the face of the prairie. Over time cattle replaced bison; wheat fields replaced prairies; and, gasoline-powered vehicles replaced horses.
