Good Times in the Badlands

At my second to last National Park, it was a little sad to realize that my trip was coming to a close. That didn't stop us from having a great time though. On our first day in Badlands National Park, we drove to many overlooks and saw some wildlife at the northwest end of the park. We also left the park to make a quick stop at Wall Drug, a gimmicky tourist trap that is basically just a collection of shops and restaurants. It's basically South of the Border in South Dakota. We also did a few short hikes and had fun sliding down the steep rocky hills because they were too steep to walk down normally.

The next day we woke up early to try and search for wildlife, but unfortunately couldn't find anything. Instead, we got an early start on some hiking trails, and were able to complete pretty much every maintained trail in the park by about 2:30 PM. I was surprised that Badlands only had those few trails, but it was nice to have a little downtime. We ended up doing a National Park puzzle that we had picked up the day before at the lodge.

The rock formations in the Badlands were so unique! I took a ton of photos so it was hard to choose what to post but check out some shots below.