Badlands NP

No trip to the Black Hills would be complete without some time well spent at Badlands National Park. This park is filled with some amazing formations, stunning colors, and views that will flood your heart with wonder. We visited on the tail-end of an electrical storm and the multi-layered rocks and hills set against the dark, foreboding sky to the east and the bright blue sky to the west had our cameras clicking away.

Sadly you can not capture he beauty of this place with a mere 35mm digital camera set on autofocus! But you can get a few glimpses of the touch of the Master's hand here. We enjoyed driving in the midst of the beauty, climbing on the strange rocks (they were a bit muddy!), doing the junior ranger program and watching the film on life in the Badlands. It is hard to imagine that not so long ago sodbusters tried to make a life of farming here in this land.

The human desire to live and have a few acres of land gives so many the will to take on some pretty amazing elements.

Hope you enjoy some of these photos. We saw a few bighorn sheep here with their babies, as well as some new bird species like the rock wren and loggerhead shrike. We again saw a large prairie dog town. They had signs posted saying prairie dogs carry the plague! Hmm, makes you think twice about feeding the critters.