Sleeping in this open campground in a field in the Badlands of South Dakota was pretty interesting. At some point in the night, Ethan and I awoke to the sound of something howling off in the distance. I think all of us eventually heard it, too.
They were coyotes and the pack was moving quickly because, a minute later, we heard them on the other side of the campground. It was both fascinating and frightening. I guess that's why they have you park around the campground and set up your tents inside the loop.
Still, it was a really cool place to spend the night. And this is what we woke up to in the morning:
There were also some prairie dogs moving around in the campground in the morning. Actually, there are prairie dogs everywhere in this park. They're definitely the cutest animal we saw this trip.
Also during the night, we heard park rangers come into the campground. Apparently two hikers from Vermont, who were staying in the Sage Creek Campground, went off the trails and were hiking around the Badlands and got lost. The rangers were looking for them last night, and we continued to see a variety of search and rescue, rangers, and other officers assisting in the search as we drove and hiked around the park. In case you were wondering, they were eventually found.
We had a roughly 6 hour drive to our next place, so we knew we could spend some time in the park.
Because we stayed on the western side, our travels this day would have us drive through the park from west to east, stopping at any viewpoint we wanted to before doing a small hike toward the east entrance.
And if you recall from my last post, there were some storms in the distance as we entered the park and campground. The lingering clouds made for a cooler day, which is always nice when you're hiking.
The landscape is pretty interesting because it's a mix of grasslands in the west and rocky hills in the west. Along the way, you can start to see the blend between the two. Here are a few shots of the windblown grasslands.
I'm not sure if these photos show you anything, but there were, as the sign suggests, quite literally a prairie dog town. They seem to like the shorter grass areas. We didn't see them once we entered the rocky section of the park.
Eventually we started making our way into that rocky section of the park, and it seems like a completely different planet. The lines on the rocks are a mix of white, grey, red, and yellow, and give you an idea of how long it took for these rocks to form. Upwards of millions of years for some of them.
It was also cool to see entire pools of green trees and shrubs nestled in the valleys of the rocks. Birds were aplenty in these areas.
The drive into this section of the park also meant the goodbye to prairie dogs and the welcomed sight of goats, rams, and other mountain animals.
We could also see the yellow and orange colors start to mix with the green grass and grey rock at times.
As we continued on, we pulled up a park map and found a nice 2-3 mile hike toward the entrance that we'd like to do. Before doing so, we made a quick stop at the Fossil Walk, a short pathway around some of the rocks that provide interesting information about the formation of the park (volcanic ash that settled over time) and what kinds of animals lived there (some died out, some adapted, and others moved completely).
There were also some bunnies! Look at him just chowing down and doing his thing!
Eventually we made it to the Notch Trail. Like I said earlier, it's about 1-1.5 miles in to a lookout and then the same 1-1.5 miles back to the start. The sign below isn't kidding. It's not an easy hike. You scale some of the rocky mountains, walk along ledges, and climb up some wooden stairs (which I just realized I didn't get a picture of).
Oh, yeah, and there are some of those pesky rattlesnakes in this park. Fortunately, we didn't hear or see any on our trip.
The trail, while grueling, was well worth it. Here are a couple shot from our trip to the lookout.
Still, it was a rewarding finish when you do finally get there.
And before leaving, I took another short video from one of the ledges to give you an idea of what we were looking at and experiencing.
By the time we got back to our car, it was time for a quick lunch before leaving.
The next stop on our trip was Minnesota at the Minneopa State Park outside of Mankato. It was a random pick, chosen mainly because it was on the way home. However, if our stay and hiking at Montana de Oro in California taught us anything, it's to never count out the beauty of a state park.
But that story is for another post.
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