Badlands National Park, South Dakota - June 27th to 29th, 2021
Sometimes you have to pick and choose what you want to see in an area because you can’t always see everything. We only stayed two nights near Badlands National Park. That meant we only had one full day in the park. We didn’t see everything, but we felt we got a good sampling of everything.
On Sunday, we traveled from Wind Cave National Park to Badlands National Park. Living up to our name of Backroad Buddies, we avoided I-90 to get there. We took highway 87 south through the rest of Wind Cave and into Hot Springs. From there we headed north on 79 and then east on highway 44. That brought us to the Interior Entrance to Badlands National Park, near the Ben Reifel Visitor Center near the east end of the park.
After getting a park map and a list of hiking trails, we walked through the fossil lab in the Visitor Center. There were fossils on display and a paleontologist was working on removing the skull of a small mammal from the dirt, rock, and plaster it was encased in. She was using a microscope and small delicate tools. She estimated it will take about a month of tedious work to complete it. We know we wouldn’t have the patience to do that work.
From there we drove through the park to the Pinnacles Entrance in the northwest to get a feel for the place and plan our visit for the following day. As we headed north towards Wall for ice cream at the Wall Drug, we pulled into the boon docking area along highway 240. Our plan was to camp there for the night so we wanted to see what it was like. It was about 2 pm in the afternoon and the area was already about half full of campers. As we spotted a nice site along the rim, we decided to take it and skip Wall Drug. We still had ice cream. A day or two earlier we had stashed an ice cream sandwich and an ice cream bar in our small freezer. The ice cream was a little soft, but not melted. It will do.
We hung out in the boondocking area for the rest of the day. It overlooks the Badlands and is located in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. There are no facilities, not even trash cans, so you need to be fully contained. We put our camping toilet to good use. (Preparing Our Camper Van for Season Three 2021 - Item #4) This type of situation is exactly why we carry a camping toilet. The camping area is all worth it for the wonderful view at a wonderful price, free! And from the evidence of the number of people camping here, the secret is out.
Just after we got set up, a dark cloud rolled in and dumped rain on us for about half an hour. The rest of the evening there were just sprinkles off and on. We managed to cook our dinner outside before the wind started picking up again. We slept pretty well, but did notice that it rained a couple more times during the night.
As we took our evening stroll along the rim, we spotted a big horn sheep hanging out on the ridge of one of the rock formations below us. A neighboring camping couple from near St. Louis pointed out another big horn sheep for us. Thank you!
Monday was our grand tour of Badlands National Park. Instead of taking a long hike, we walked all of the short trails in the park. Since we were camped just outside the Pinnacles Entrance at the northwest end, we drove all the way to the Northeast Entrance and worked our way back.
We left camp before 8 am. Since it was early in the morning, there wasn’t much traffic yet and there was plenty of wildlife. There was a bison along the side of the road and a group of mountain goats who were laying on the rim and along the ridges of the rock formations. It looked like the goats were just waking up. Being Monday, the road construction crews were back. There were two construction zones along the park road. We made it through the one zone before the workers got started, but had to wait a few minutes at the second zone for our turn to pass through.
The first group of short hikes was at the second parking area from the Northeast Entrance. It is the trailhead for four different hiking trails, the Door Trail, the Window Trail, the Notch Trail, and the Castle Trail. We took all the trails except for the Castle Trail. The Castle Trail is ten miles round trip which was farther than we wanted to go.
The Notch Trail is 1.5 miles round trip. It follows along the bottom of a small canyon, then ascends a 50 rung ladder to follow a ledge along the canyon wall out to a viewpoint. We met a nice family from Wisconsin on the trail. The crowds of people were starting to show up and we thought we’d have a bottleneck back at the ladder. The family decided to try walking back out along the canyon floor, so we followed them. It didn’t take long to reach an impassible thirty foot drop off. So we all scrambled back up to the ledge and over to the ladder. It was not a long wait for our turn to descend the ladder.
The Window Trail is a really short trail over to an overlook. You can see the end of the trail from the start.
The Door Trail was a little longer. It was a boardwalk around the rock formations to a viewing platform, then numbered posts marked the way over the rock formations to another overlook. Many people were wandering around this area, making their own paths. It was a great way for people to get up close and personal with the rock formations, getting a feel for what the surface is like. From a distance, the rock formations look soft. Up close you learn that they are hard yet crumbly in places.
At the next parking area is the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail. It is a short loop of boardwalks and stairs that take you up to a viewpoint. Amazingly, it is among a clump of cedar trees which provide some shade during the hike.
We tried stopping at the Saddle Pass Trailhead, but the parking lot was full. We moved on to the Fossil Exhibit Trail. Another short trail with exhibit signs along the trail that held some fossils. Then we went back to the Saddle Pass Trailhead and were able to get a parking spot.
The Saddle Pass Trail is only a quarter of a mile long, but it is strenuous. The trail is steep. We normally don’t mind steep trails. How hard can it be? The hard part was that the trail was loose gravel and dirt, so your feet would slip. Not the type of trail we like to hike, but we continued anyway. Going up is not so bad. It was going back down that was difficult. There were rocks along the side of the trail to steady yourself with your hands, but they were low, especially for us tall people. Right Buddy (RB) crouched down low to keep her balance and keep the rocks within hand’s reach. Left Buddy (LB) eventually resorted to “skiing” down on one foot with his other leg stretched out in front of him and his behind almost touching the ground. We saw other people sliding down on their bottoms. We hope their pants held up to the rough ground.
Saddle Pass was the last trail we hiked for the day. We stopped at a few more overlooks on our way out of the park. RB had to negotiate with LB for what viewpoints we stopped at because LB had reached his limit. He was done and ready for a milkshake. We stopped at Panorama Point, Conata Basin Overlook, and Yellow Mounds Overlook.
We counted all of our hiking on Monday as hike #23 of our 52 Hike Challenge and as hike #19 of our National Park Series. The total mileage for the day was 4.5 miles with an elevation gain of 509 feet in a total hiking time of two hours and 39 minutes.
At this point, we were both more than ready for ice cream. The handmade ice cream of Wall Drug was calling our name. We walked into the Wall Drug Cafe. Our first disappointment was reading that the milkshakes were made with soft serve. The second disappointment was that they were out of soft serve ice cream. Then the final straw was learning the only two flavors of hand dipped ice cream they had left were coconut and s’mores. We both hate coconut and s’mores did not sound appealing to us. No thanks. We walked right back out of Wall Drug in frustration. We had been looking forward to ice cream at Wall Drug since we decided to skip it the day before. Wall Drug, you let us down big time! In our desperate search for ice cream, Google claimed the only other place for ice cream in town was the Dairy Queen a few blocks away. Normally we don’t go to Dairy Queen as it is not our favorite ice cream. Usually, if the choice is DQ or no ice cream, we normally choose no ice cream. Not this time. We had our mind set on ice cream and, by golly, we’re having ice cream. We walked the several blocks over to DQ. LB had his vanilla shake and RB had a Blizzard with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It was ice cream, but not very satisfying.
We headed back to the boon docking area to find a camping spot for the night. Even though it was 4 pm, we had no trouble finding a spot. During our evening stroll, we didn’t see any bighorn sheep this time, but we could hear coyotes yipping in the distance. It sounded like there were coyote pups. We tried searching for the coyotes with our binoculars, but could not find them.
Choosing not to go on a long hike allowed us to see most of the overlooks and sights within the Badlands without killing ourselves in the process. There was even time left over for us to relax and enjoy the view at the wonderful dispersed camping area just outside the Badlands. As we were relaxing at the camping area the first evening, we were treated with a beautiful rainbow. Sometimes you just have to slow down and let things come to you instead of rushing around trying to find those great moments.
Check out our related video: Badlands National Park, South Dakota
(RB)