Badlands National Park

I feel confident that if Badlands National Park wasn’t way out in the middle of nowhere (hey, Walldrug!), it would be way higher than the #21 most visited National Park. This place is incredible. Teeming with bighorn sheep, bison, and prairie dogs, this rugged cornucopia of rock formations seems so out of place in the middle of the South Dakota prairie lands.

The first time I visited this place, I was driving down a backcountry road, washboarded to all heavens, to a campground. My headlights cast their beams across a massive herd of bison standing in and around the road, to which I slowly approached. I didn’t want to startle them, but wanted them to move. As I inched closer, they started to stampede across the road (plenty of space between us), and it must have taken 5 minutes for them to clear out. There were that many! No matter how many times I visit here, that will be my most vivid memory.

Due to the park’s small size and good road network, you can see most of the park in just a few hours. I’d recommend against visiting mid-day, due to the heat and also the incredible soft light of morning or evening that blesses this land and provides more colors than you knew existed in nature. One thing that I didn’t think about until I was leaving last time, that I’d definitely look at in a future visit, taking a helicopter ride over the Badlands! Just thinking out loud here…