Hit the Wall

Today was a beautiful, sunny day bookmarked by clouds in the morning and evening. We started off with showers (for ourselves, not from the sky) and a delicious pancake breakfast at the KOA campground before we drove to Badlands National Park in time for a geology tour at 8:30. The tour certainly helped us understand why all these buttes, pinnacles, peaks and other formations are sitting in the middle of the South Dakota prairie. We then took some of the hiking trails (Door, Window and Notch trails) to cliffs and lookouts.



After a morning snack (bananas and cherries), we left to drive the Badlands loop road at lunchtime. We stopped at more scenic overlooks along the way and took mental pictures since the camera battery was charging in the car! Lisa got really excited when we drove by our first prairie dog village with the little pups sticking their heads out of their holes. There was also a big-horn sheep on the side of the road but Lisa was less excited about that...



The pavement led us into Wall, South Dakota, the home of Wall Drug, where billboards had been leading us for hundreds of miles (no seriously - they own every sign in the state methinks...). Wall Drug was a glorified knick-knack store with an animated T-Rex model but they did have a soda fountain so we enjoyed some root beer floats. (We also got our cups of free ice water for which Wall Drug is so famous).



We then stopped at the Buffalo Gap National Grassland office right down the street where Lisa got to read about the importance of prairie dogs. The prairie dog is the most important critter on the landscape; its healthy population allows predators to survive, as well as creating burrows for owls, ferrets and bunnies. Yes, Lisa made me explain WHY the prairie dog is important, not just fun to watch.



Armed with our newly attained Wall Drug sign and bumper sticker (they give them to any sucker willing to take them) we got on I-90 towards Interior. We found the Minuteman Missile National Monument on our way back and curiously went in. It turned out to be the office for a series of decommissioned nuclear warheads from the cold war. It looked interesting but tours were full and staffing seemed low. Maybe next time.

We got back to Cedar Pass Campground at Badlands National Park where we would be staying for the evening and cooked up some Hormel chili for supper. Afterwards we headed up to the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail where we saw a rabbit and a deer. Lisa was still less excited about them than the prairie dogs. But it didn’t stop her from taking 20 pictures.



We tried to sleep in the tent for the night but the wind got so fierce that we had to pack up the tent in the dark (comical...) and sleep in the car. It was cozy but worked fine. We woke up at the crack of dawn and took our last drive on the Badlands Loop Road with a stop at Roberts Prairie Dog Town. I had to tear Lisa away, but now we're in Rapid City, South Dakota on our way to Mount Rushmore and Wind Cave National Park.