We explored an area today that 75 million years ago was a shallow sea. Today, it is the largest protected mixed grass prairie in the United States. The Lakota Indians gave this land the name “mako sica which translated means “land bad”. Today the 244,000 acres are known as Badlands National Park.
Since we were so close to the park from Wall and patches of blue sky were peeking through we figured it was a good time to get our first visit in.
It’s a beautiful national park! I don’t think anyone could come here and spend even just a few hours and not be affected in some way by the sheer beauty of it.
The rock formations, which form a 90 mile wall, are stunning.
Beaten for years and years by wind and water this land of canyons, and pyramids and gullies and razor sharp ridges has actually become very beautiful.
Freeman Tilden, a conservation writer, describes it best. He wrote, “peaks and valleys of delicately banded colors – colors that shift in the sunshine,…..and a thousand tints that color charts do not show”. As we drove through the park the sun and clouds played those colors to the maximum for us. Pale pink changed to deep mauve, the lightest of yellow changed to the richest gold and barely tan transformed to dark chocolate right before our eyes. It all depended on where you stood and what the sun and clouds were doing. I would imagine if you sat in one place from sun up to sun set it would be like living in your own personal kaleidoscope.
Some areas looked like castles.
Frank Lloyd Wright said about this area….”I’ve been about the world a lot, pretty much over our own country, but I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Bad Lands….What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere – a distant architecture, ethereal. . . .an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it.” When you stand on one of the lookouts and you gaze out the spires and mounds and green valleys and the puffy white clouds on a blue background you feel what he meant. Those words come to life for you. It’s like looking through a keyhole at a world of which you are not part but you want to be because of a sense of peace, and beauty and you can’t help but marvel at God’s creation.
Badlands National Park is also a paleontologist’s idea of heaven on earth. This park is home to the world’s largest fossil beds of animals from the Oligocene Epoch of the Age of Mammals. This area is chock full of skeletons of saber toothed cats, three toed horses, ancient camels and large rhino-like creatures. Even today bones are being found by park officials.
As we drove through the park we noticed that the formations went from sharp and jagged to a more round, “softer” formation.
We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Badlands National Park and I’m hoping we get back there for a sunset, I’ve heard they are spectacular.,m +++++++++++++++
On our way out of the park we came up on a traffic jam. All the cars were pulled over to the side of the road and we soon found out why.
All too soon it our time here had come to an end for this trip. It was just as well as it was starting to drizzle.
We decided to go back to Wall for dinner and we had a delicious meal here at the Red Rock Restaurant. If you are ever in Wall, South Dakota we highly recommend this place.
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