Badlands, Grasslands, and Land of 10,000 Lakes

Got up and headed back west. Seemed strange to be heading the wrong direction to Maryland, but we missed seeing the Badlands yesterday. Tried to pack to much into one day without regard to any potential consequences...like starting further away then I thought, starting later than I wanted, the hail storm... The fun of traveling! It's always an adventure.


So we headed to west to the Badlands. It was only thirty miles of ground we had to cover again. There is a fantastic loop that takes a couple of hours to get through, without stopping to hike, climb, or dine. I would recommend camping in the Badlands, seeing the evening and morning light on the Badlands, and breathing it all in.

"I've been about the world a lot, and pretty much over our own country," wrote architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935, "but I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Bad Lands.... What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal..., an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it."

Gorgeous. Badlands National Park has the eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires and the largest protected mixed-grass prairie in the USA. Up to waist-high grasses, over 50 species, and over a hundred varieties of wildflowers. Beautiful!


Finally headed east around 11. Only stopped for gas and road side attractions...10 cent soda fountain, Lewis & Clark camp site area (not known exactly where), Corn Palace.





If I get up early in the morning, I'll go swimming. Tomorrow night...Chicago.


Loyola.Ly