Badlands

An hour east of Rapid City along Interstate 90 you come across one of the most puzzling landforms we encountered on the entire trip. Miles and miles of undulating but otherwise uninteresting prairie are suddenly disturbed by what appear to be mountains in the distance. As you approach, however, you see that we're not dealing with mountains, at least in the traditional sense. Once you enter Badlands National Park and pull off at the initial overlook, you see the ground suddenly drop away beneath you in favor of, well, hills of multi-colored stratified sand. The Badlands were once the floor of a large inland sea. Now that the ocean is gone and the ever-present forces of erosion have been doing their work, you can see the results.

Going on a hike across the park allowed us to explore these formations up close. You can grab a hunk of the Badlands in you hand -- it just tears straight off the rest of the mound. When you squeeze lightly, it crumbles. It most closely resembles caked mud, but yet, it has somehow managed to survive centuries of torrential rainfalls. The erosion patterns are downright mind-boggling in places. We hiked the Castle Trail, which cut across the western part of the park. There is virtually zero shade. Thankfully we started early in the morning and completed our 10.2 mile hike by the early afternoon, though the last hour or two was pretty brutal.

For my Badlands photo album, click here.