Badlands National Park


Today, we continued our journey east. We took a slight detour off of I90 to do the Badlands loop through the national park. First, I wanted to stop by Wall Drug. There are tons of billboards for the place along the interstate and when you look up must see’s in South Dakota, Wall Drug is on the list. They had a giant Jackalope that you can take your picture on. I really wanted our picture on it, but when we arrived, they had that part closed.

We headed on to the Badlands. As soon as we entered the park, we were greeted by big horn sheep! They were in the road and on the sides of the road.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather while we were there. Although it was cold, it was a nice clear day. We were both fascinated with the landscape. Such a cool park. I would have liked to do one of the longer hikes in the park, but we just walked a couple of the smaller loops.

There were also tons of prairie dogs in the park. Apparently, they have the plague which is sad.

We also got to see some deer on one of our walks.

On our way out of the park, Scott spotted a coyote. He payed us no attention and wouldn’t stay still long enough for a good picture.

There were lots of warning signs for rattlesnakes, but luckily we didn’t see any.

Here are a bunch of pictures from throughout the park. The pictures don’t really do the park justice.

Not long after leaving the park, we lost the blue sky and the sunshine. For a while, visibility was very bad and everything was frosty.

We crossed the Missouri River, and it was frozen.

We finally made it to Minnesota which is our stop for the night. Tomorrow we will hit the road again and make our way to Illinois to have a brief visit with family.