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Badlands - South Dakota
Descriptive:
Rising like a vast city skyline, the craggy cliffs of Badlands National Parks stretches for a hundred miles. The stark pinnacles of this severe landscape made it a placed to be feared by early colonists headed west. The paintbrushed sandstone rock blushes red in the sun, standing surreal and lunar amid lush meadows of emerald grasses. On a moonlit night, the vistas are exceptionally wondrous where the land opens up for miles under the eerie glow, and black shadows lay in pockets in the canyons. In winter, the craggy fingers of rock reaching skyward are even more breathtaking when freshly kissed with first snow. Named inadvertantly by French trappers, the region was referred to as "les mauvaises terres a traverser," which simply means a bad land to travel through.
Vegetation:
Junipers
Cottonwood
Yucca
Wild roses
Bluestem grasses.
Wildlife:
Bison
Bighorn
Pronghorn
Coyote
Prairie dogs
Badgers
Jackrabbits
Porcupines
Golden Eagles
Swifts
Swallows
Rock wrens
Bats
Key locations:
The Windows Overlook is the starting point of three short trails into the "Wall", the craggy rocks of the Badlands.
Sage Creek Wilderness Area is an excellent place to view wildlife. It is well-advised to take a longer hike into this area.
The Sheep Mounatain table is a spot often overlooked by visitors. The isolated beauty of the South Unit is unsurpassed, offering stunning vistas and truly remote wilderness. At a small finger of land at the primitive road's end, the landscape opens below you in a valley of white Badlands' spires; this vantage point from above is sublime.
The site of the inglorious massacre at Wounded Knee lies about 25 miles south of the White River Visitor Center. Wounded Knee marks the spot where 150 Lakota Sioux Indians were wantonly slaughtered.
Activities:
Backcountry camping
Bicycling
Trails:
Door Trail
Fossil Exhibit Trail
Notch Trail
Window Trail
