May 15th: Into the Badlands

The next day I decided to stop by “Wall Drug,” South Dakota. I’ve been seeing billboards for this place for nearly 100 miles and my curiosity overcame me when I found out it was the same exit as the one I was taking to get to the Badlands.

Wall Drug is pretty much just a small, rustic mall located in Wall, South Dakota. A major tourist attraction, no doubt, but for someone with little use of novelty gifts it wasn’t that spectacular. I did, for whatever reason, get suckered into buying throwing knives and a throwing star. Awesome.

Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. The man in the bottom-right is very representative of the kinds of folks there.

I made it to the Badlands fairly early and had time to take drive around the “scenic loop.” The Badlands hold a myriad of geologically interesting formations, with the eroded buttes and spires being the most impressive. It reminded me a little of Moab, but instead of the hard sandstone and solitary giants of Utah’s desert, these were crumbling and all clustered together; societies of withering exiles.

Looking into the Badlands. Brule formations in the distance.

Even if you aren’t using the primitive camping lot, the Sage Creek road is worth going down just for some of the views it offers and some up-close-and-personal bison encounters.

I don’t think I’ll be stopping at this overlook.

The primitive campsite is situated in a valley pretty far from the fun desert-like formations I saw earlier. A few bison grazed fairly close to my car. I hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.

So off I went. Open trail policies are awesome, especially in this kind of habitat. The prairie is so wide and gentle you can see your destination off in the distance and beeline straight to it with minimal amount of meandering. I set out toward the center of the park.

I stopped a few miles in when I reached the “yellow hills.” I have no idea of their real name but my goal was to reach them and when I did I happily set up camp. The wind was constant and unforgiving. Every time I raised my tent even a little it would fly up in the air, mockingly waving goodbye to me as I gripped it tight before it flew away.

Noob mistake, I forgot the damn stakes. I loaded up all my stuff into the tent to keep it from blowing away and tried to get some sleep.

The tent violently shifted in the wind, sometimes getting blown so hard the side of it pushed firmly against my nose as I lay on my sleeping bag. Impossible to sleep; it was like being the star in a rebirth ceremony.

I decided to hike around camp a bit. I grabbed my knives and star and found a tree about a half mile away. It ran right next to a “creek.” I use the term loosely. All the water that I saw there is still-standing and impossible to drink due to its extremely high content of minerals. You can’t see an inch beneath the surface and that’s about as deep as the water gets anyway. Note that you have to pack in all of your own water, a concept I wasn’t familiar with and the 3 gallons I brought in weighed me down heavily. Down at the tree the wind was less intense and I was able to relax and bit and through around my new toys.

I lost my star, and the remaining hour or so before I had to go back to camp was desperately searching the grasses for it. Sucked.

There are quite a few animals out and about for a climate so harsh. Deer, antelope, jack rabbits, bison, and a myriad of birds of which I heard more than I saw. Bison shit everywhere. I reeked of it and so did my tent; it was impossible to get away from. In the fading light an antelope appeared on a nearby hill and made the weirdest noise I’ve heard coming from an animal. Grunting into a kazoo would probably make a similar noise.

Sleep came in spurts. In the middle of the night I walked out of my tent and saw the entire landscape illuminated by the moon, giving everything a light blue tint.