Next stop on our National Park Tour was Badlands National Park in South Dakota. We made this trip in October 2019 thinking it would be cool to mild and boy were we wrong. We were treated to a very early cold snap and with a ton of snow, what a great way to see the park.
Badlands National Park is located in southwestern South Dakota, it’s a big park around 380 sq. miles! The park has all sorts of really interesting geographical features, sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, (badlands), and the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. There is abundant wildlife in the park, we saw Bison, Long Horn Sheep, just about one million prairie dogs.
We flew into Minneapolis (not the closest choice) and took the long drive out to the badlands. If you want to fly somewhere close, Rapid City is the way to go. We stayed in Wall SD, a little town just outside of the park. The park is split into two sections, we spent almost all our time in the North Section of the park.
Wall is a neat little down, with good restaurants, hotels and a tiny bit of shopping. Most of the shopping is from the Wall Drug Store. A massive roadside attraction / tourist trap. Wall drug has a little bit of everything and is a fun place to walk around for a little while. This was particularly fun for my daughter as they had all manner of candy, toys, crystals etc.
Inside the park, the Badlands Loop Road (highway 240) goes through the entire Northern section of the park. This is the best (and only) way to get to many of the popular sites. The road is higher up on top of the Mesa so from many of the overlooks you are looking down into the badlands.
Since we stayed in Wall, we would come into the park via the Pinnacles Entrance. From there if you go west you enter a dirt road that leads to some amazing overlooks and Roberts Prairie Dog Down. We had a good time one snowy afternoon and evening photographing sunset from this area. However with either rain or snow the road becomes more of a 4×4 road and its easy to slip or get stuck.
Going east from the entrance you have a huge amount of overlooks and viewpoints to pick from. We explored just about all of them over our time in the park. The Fossil Exhibit Trail is super cool, the park is known for the large amount of fossils. Directly across from the fossil trail is the Castle Trail. We hiked most of that trail and while cold and super muddy in locations gives a very different view of the park then the elevated overlooks.
The Ben Reifel Visitors Center and Park Headquarters is a good stop. They have the normal NPS type visitors center, gift shop and food here. There is no gas anywhere in the park so many sure you fill up ahead of time. There is a Lodge and camping in the area as well.
We had some crazy weather while we were in the park. It snowed, it was insanely cold. A few of the mornings were bitterly cold with gusting wind, it made it hard to be outside for any length of time. However the snow made for amazing pictures so maybe it was worth it in the end. In the middle of the day and into the afternoons it warmed up enough that it was a nice time to be outside. As my limited understanding of South Dakota weather goes, this was very uncommon weather.
In the middle of our visit to the Badlands we took a day trip to Mount Rushmore. It was really interesting to see this impressive National Memorial. Though the site was under construction so our views were a bit limited. There is a visitors center and the Lincoln Borglum Museum. There are many nearby attractions, Cami was able to try her hand at panning for gold.
The last thing to note is just outside of the park is the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Here you can get tours of an old ICBM missile silo. We had some rotten luck and did not get tickets early enough to see the silo. I would recommend getting tickets very early and putting this on your list.
