June 4th - Badlands, South Dakota

Since the morning was supposed to be clear, we took advantage of the second walk in Pierre and walked the Lewis and Clark Volksmarch. I was expecting some overlap with our walk of the previous day, but there really wasn’t any. The Lewis and Clark walk route went directly out to Flamboise Island and circled the perimeter of the island, except for a portion where bald eagles are nesting.

Flamboise Island is a large, long island in the middle of the Missouri River, and 2/3 or even ¾ of the walk route was on natural trails that looped around the island. That was quite a nice change from the city streets and concrete sidewalks of the capital walk. This island was homesteaded at one time, and the ruins of an old windmill and a fallow field marked the far end of the walk. We skirted the eagle nesting area and came back along the other side of the island that is across from Fort Pierre, which seems to be a very small across-the-river suburb of Pierre. We were surprised and pleased at having such a nice woodsy walk in the middle of a capital city to choose from and would recommend this walk to folks who prefer the natural surface, natural environment type of walk.

We quickly returned to the hotel and checked out by 11, but the weather closed in and we drove south thru intermittent rain on route 83 and then west on Interstate 90 to the Badlands National Park. We were happy to get campsite number 52 for the evening; it didn’t have any electricity but was only $10—cheap! We set up the tent and had a quick meal, and while we ate a meadowlark serenaded us from the next campsite over. It was the first time either of us could recall having heard this bird’s sweet song and the lilting melody certainly provided a pleasant ambience for dinner. Afterwards we walked over to take a brief tour of the Visitor Center—the exhibits discussed the origin of the unique topography of the area, which we found quite interesting, and other areas of “Badlands” around the world were documented with beautiful pictures.

As the weather had cleared off by this time, w capped the day off by making a loop drive around the park. The loop drive followed the “wall” of rock formations sculpted by thousands of years of wind and water erosion, and these formations are really unique because unlike a typical soft-edged erosion the formations here are sharply defined, often with knife-like blades of exposed rock. The sculptured shapes were usually craggy but also curiously quite delicate, which made them very appealing. As a result we found ourselves stopping at every overlook both to see the best views and try to photograph them. With wide vistas like these it is remarkably hard to do them justice with an ordinary camera because the human eye is responding to the entire panorama of a landscape and the camera can only record part of it.

Other sections of the Badlands were spectacular because of the colors, which were somewhat similar to the Painted Desert area that lies many leagues to the south, but sometimes even more vivid. In particular there was one section that had layers of deep purple, and I just don’t think I’ve ever seen purple layers of rock before. Take my word for it, you should definitely stop and take a look at the scenery in the Badlands if you ever get a chance—we are glad we did.

The weather was nice enough that evening to have dinner in the curious little wooden half—shelter that had been provided at each campsite. This curious “shelter” had wood slats spaced a couple of inches apart, so it wouldn’t really have provided any protection from rain but it did dampen the wind a bit and that was useful while eating. We walked back to the Visitor Center to take pictures of the sunset—the colors change dramatically depending on the time of day and angle of the sun. Fortunately the rain politely held off until the middle of the night so we had a reasonably good night’s sleep.