Badlands South Dakota

On Saturday, September 2nd, we leave the Black Hills and head east on an easy two hour drive to the Badlands. We have two nights at the White River KOA, which is just about ten minutes outside the southern entrance to the park.

Pickings are pretty slim for campgrounds in the area. We knew we were looking at a couple of days in the 90's, so we opted for the KOA and the electric hookups. This meant we could retreat to the RV and the air conditioning during the heat of the afternoon.
I don't have a lot of wonderful things to say about the KOA, except it's located in a rather harsh environment, and it WAS late summer, so it wasn't going to be lush.

Once we got to our site, we were a little bit taken aback by what we thought were large bugs all over one of the trees at our site. It turns out that they were Cicada exoskeletons. After staying underground for a period of between 2 to 17 years, the Cicadas emerge from the ground, climb the nearest tree and shed their nymph exoskeleton. I had heard about Cicadas before, but never seen one... I guess I still haven't but now at least I've seen a Cicada shell.

I'm not sure how best to describe the Badlands, but 'stark,' 'striking,' 'unforgiving,' or 'other worldly' seem to fit. It's a fun place to visit because it is just so different from anything you are used to seeing. I would have to say, however, the saying: "It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there," seems meant for the Badlands.

On Monday (Labor Day), we drive thru the park and head to the north entrance. On our way, we make a few stops and were luck to finally get a chance to see and photograph a Bighorn Sheep.

We camp for the day at a dispersed camping spot, just a couple of miles north of the Pinnacles entrance. We found a great spot on a prairie, perched right on the edge overlooking miles of the badlands. 

As night fell, we watched the sun go down on one side of us, over the prairie...

just as the moon was coming up over the badlands.