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Badlands National Park

A layer cake of eroded wonders

By Scott Richardson

November 28^th, 2020

I'm fascinated with badlands formations: the distinct bands of rock and ash constantly change color as the sun rises, shifts, and sets. Their irregular shapes are unpredictable, the product of constant erosion.

We experienced a small section of dramatic badlands earlier in our road trip at Hell's Half Acre in Wyoming, and I've seen other badlands such as Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. More of these formations are on my to-do list: Petrified Forest in Arizona, Bisti Badlands in New Mexico, Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, and the painted hills of Oregon just to name a few.

Badlands National Park has some of the most famous badlands... it's even in the name. We devoted several days of our September road trip to explore these unique formations. You can explore the other parts of our trip here: Westbound/eastbound travel | Grand Teton | Yellowstone | Wind Cave

The sun had just started to set as we drove into Badlands from the south. The tiny town of Interior, South Dakota offered little in the way of services, so we rushed to grab food from the park's takeout restaurant before they closed. With just a hint of sweet light still left in the sky, we walked across the road to explore some formations. As the sun hit them from the side, it accentuated their lines and shapes, making the colors of each layer pop into view.

The next morning I headed out early, hoping to catch the sunrise as it started to float across the valley, but was met with a hazy mess of a sky instead. Luckily, many formations in badlands are accessible from roadside lookouts, so it was easy to get a closeup view of the rocks unobscured, although, by the time the sunlight was diffused through the haze, it was a little too soft to accent the contours of the rocks as I had hoped.

Multicolored peaks as seen from Panorama Point.

Grand view of the many colors of the Badlands.

We spent the morning exploring some easy trails north of the cabin: The Notch, The Window and The Door. The Notch had us climbing up a ladder to area overlooking the park. The Window and Door gave us a short walk through beautiful formations along a boardwalk.

Climbing a steep, wooden ladder along The Notch trail.

We spent the afternoon weaving through the park's overlooks, watching as the types of formations changed from stacked layers of eroded rocks with distinct ridges, to rounded mounds that looked like they had been flattened out.

We detoured out of the park for lunch, making the short drive to the infamous Wall Drug. While giant gift shops don't generally excite me, giant gift shops full of donuts do tend to sway me. However, given the covid pandemic, we quickly found our treats and exited to try to limit contact with other travelers.

We reentered the park and headed towards its western end. The paved road turns into gravel as you drive along Sage Creek Rim Road. We soon found a prairie dog town and spent an hour watching the critters play, graze and burrow all around us. A bison approached from the distance, continually inching closer to where we parked our car. Once it was in charging distance, we got back in the car and watched from the window as it found what it was looking for: a parking barrier to scratch its belly on.

A bison approaches the road, on the way to scratch its belly on a parking barrier.

A prairie dog keeps watch as another actively burrows.

The western edge of the north unit of the park turns from rocky ridges into rolling grassland. We explored the area around Sage Creek, then headed back towards our cabin on the eastern end, hoping to catch good late afternoon light along the way.

The haze continued to block the direct light I was hoping to see, but the formations still took on interesting shapes and shadows, and the colors grew more saturated as the sun set lower in the sky.

We rounded a turn in the road and saw a coyote cross in front of us. It climbed down a ridge and we watched as it stalked a pair of bighorns nearby. The coyote crept along quietly before ultimately abandoning its pursuit and running away down the road.

We made our way back to our cabin at Cedar Pass as the sunset, cooked dinner, and watched as the sky grew dark. Haze has ruined most of our chances at stargazing throughout the trip, but that night the skies seemed to clear. I walked to the edge of the cabins, let my eyes adjust to the darkness, and could make out the hazy areas of the milky way in the sky.

I decided to head out in the darkness in hopes of finding an interesting photo to take. It was a new moon, so there was no ambient light to reflect off of any of the features around the park, making it very difficult to find a composition. Eventually, I found a small formation near the road and light-painted it with my headlamp with the core of the milky way resting behind it. Coyotes howled all around, and the temperatures dipped, so I headed back to the cabin to warm up and rest for the long drive back to Philadelphia.