The Badlands
Wednesday we took the day to explore The Badlands. The plan was to drive through the park, visit Wall, SD, and see as many buffalo as we could. And we saw all the Buffalo.
The only deadline we had was 10am at the Badlands observatory for some star gazing, so we didn’t need to get up early for anything. We started the day around 9:30am and stopped in Custer for some breakfast. We went to Baker’s Bakery Café where they make their own rolls. I had a breakfast sandwich on said roll and James had an omelet. Both were very good. They actually had an iced latte so I had delicious iced coffee with caramel flavor for the first time in days. It was so good. Then it was about a 2 hour drive over to the entrance of the park. We made good time and were in around noon. The first few stops were riddled with people but as we got further into the park people started to spread out a little bit. It is a big place; like 244,000 acres big and you can technically go anywhere you want. Obviously there are roads and a specific scenic drive through but you can park and get out where ever you want to.
We started at the visitor center like good little tourists and started in the scenic loop. There were a lot of scenic overlooks. Some were more crowed than others but all of them had something interesting to look at as far as the land formations. I was just reading about how this formed and you can go here if you want to know. It’s kind of interesting. I think my favorite spot was the Bigfoot Pass Overlook. There was this little boardwalk out to a bench that no one was sitting at so we walked out and just sat there for a little while. It was peaceful. There is also a picnic area at this one with wind shields which seemed nice even though we didn’t eat there. It was super windy at a lot of these spots. I think it was a combination of the weather changing and being on essentially cliffs to see the sights.
We were kind of picking and choosing which stops to take a this point. In our typical fashion we started off stopping everywhere possible which takes a lot of time. Anyway, we came upon the Pinnacle Overlook spot and stopped. It had a large parking lot and bathrooms (which aren’t the best but it’s better than nothing) and a bunch of people were stopped there too. We get out and wonder down the steps to the sight seeing point and I hear James go “Shit!” and I had no idea why. Then he points out long horn sheep! Now you have to understand, I’ve been a “little” bitter since Colorado in 2020 about missing the sheep there so this was a big deal for us to finally find some. There were 2 adults and 2 babies which was adorable. I took about 1,000 pictures of them.
While we were standing there James pointed out this awesome blue bird too. I’ve never seen a bird this blue before. I have a few pictures of it but I think this is the best.
Speaking of the best picture… I think this one of the sheep leaping is pretty awesome
It was about 3 by now and we thought we were pretty cool for seeing the sheep. I mentioned I wanted a drink other than water at this point so we decided since we were about to the end of the paved road through the park we would head to Wall and grab some food and explore the town. As we headed out of the park we found what seemed like a bunch of buffalo all in one place. Everyone was stopped along the side of the road and there was this one couple that got out of their car and decided to walk over to the animals. People are nuts. Anyway, they didn’t get into any trouble but man it was weird to see people just wondering up to these huge animals to get a picture with them. Meanwhile, I’m leaning out the car window with my giant zoom lens taking every picture I can.
Moving right along we get to Wall and Wall Drug in about 10 minutes outside the park. As (overly) advertised, there was free ice water and 5c coffee. We opted for the buffalo burgers, soda, and fries. We wondered through the place for a while and got a few things to take home with us, along with donuts for Thursday morning. We got some ice cream and headed back to the park.
There is an unpaved road after the main overlook drive that James wanted to take and it turned out so cool. We come around the corner and see a few more buffalo in the grassland area so we stopped at the next pull off. We hop out of the car and walk down the road a little way to catch them in their element. James talked me out of going into the field (good idea). We stand there taking some pictures and then one comes up over a hill and James says we better get back to the car. We start walking back and he is following us the whole way. I stopped to take a few pictures but we kept moving until he stopped and just stood there. I took a few more pictures of him until I realized he’s just staring me down and it was a little uncomfortable. So I finally get back into the car and it turns out he just wanted to be in the parking lot where we were standing.
We drive down the road a little further and at this point it’s about 5:30pm. We come around a turn and a bunch of cars are stopped then we see the biggest herd of buffalo I’ve ever seen. I think it was all the buffalo. There was a sign earlier in the park saying there were like 900 buffalo in the park total and there were so many in this specific herd that there couldn’t have been any left for anyone else to see. I couldn’t get back far enough to see the whole thing in one picture. There were little baby buffalo in the crowd too and they were super cute.
The other thing I find kind of nuts is the prairie dogs just hanging out with the buffalo. Like you would think those little rugrats would scatter when the big scary animals come to town but it just isn’t true. They were right there in the mix with their houses and babies and no one seemed to mind the other.
After this we were almost through the gravel road and the weather was turning. The observatory place let us know earlier in the day they were canceling our tickets for the evening because of cloud cover so we didn’t need to stick around. We started heading back home around 6:30 and the sky was crazy. The storms out here seem different but I think it’s just because you can see so far away so we saw it coming for a while. Actually, in the park there were a few people setting up cameras to record the clouds and lighting rolling in and I bet they got some really good footage. We made it home dodging rain drops (we ended up scooting right between 2 bigger storms). I got right into looking at the pictures we had taken through the day. I can’t believe the amount of animal life we saw and how cool it was.
Tomorrow will be a relaxing day of driving through Custer state park. Much closer to home and a more leisurely day.
