Thursday, July 6, 2006
Day 11
Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Today we left the tiny town of Kennebec (population 284) for an even more remote area of South Dakota: The Badlands. This place is very different from anyplace I have ever seen. Rising out of the slightly hilly, dry grasslands and farms are these vast rock spires. It reminds me of a sand castle that is getting dried in the sun. As we drove into the park I felt as if I had been miniaturized and put into one of my kids sand castle creations.

It is quite windy here and very hot during the day. Today was 94 degrees and the wind was about 30 mph, steady. We are staying in the National Park campground, a primitive type with no electric hookup or water hookup. Even the dump station happens to be closed so we need to “dump” at our next stop. Fortunately we dumped before leaving the KOA this morning.

After setting up camp in the wind and unhooking the truck, we drove to the Visitor’s Center which was closed all last year for renovations and is now brand new and quite nice. There we watched a movie about the badlands (about 20 minutes long) in a nice clean air-conditioned theater. We browsed through the modern exhibits and went to the gift store. We bought Brianna and Sheldon their own National Parks Passports which they then were able to stamp and they also purchased a sticker from the park. These Passports are cool because the kids can bring them to each National Park we go to and get a stamp and buy a sticker if they wish.

Next we hiked the Notch trail which included a high ladder type staircase. It was fine going up, but coming down was pretty scary especially for the kids. But they did it. We didn’t make it to the “notch” because one area of the top of the trail was extremely dangerous in our opinion and we wouldn’t chance having the kids fall down the 200 foot high cliff. So, we turned back.

I hope when I upload this to the blog that I will be able to get some photos up too. I can’t tell you how difficult it was yesterday and this morning trying to get the photos up on the blog. The first 3 or 4 were easy, albeit slow. After that, Blogger wouldn’t take my photos for some reason. The KOA Ethernet was even extremely slow. Oh well, hopefully at the next KOA it will be faster.

We had some trouble with the generator today, but we decided that it was just way too hot keeping it on the front of the car on the cargo carrier, so we took it off and let it cool and it seemed fine. It ran and all, it just kept bogging and was registering that it was “overloaded” while running just the A/C and refrigerator. Anyway, all is well now and the temperature is dropping rapidly.

The kids did a ranger program today and earned a badge. They might do another one tomorrow. I am going for a ranger-led hike at 8:30 in the morning which will discuss the geology of this area. Rod is going to take the kids to a ranger program which may include a hike at 10:30 in the morning. Later tomorrow we plan to drive the “Badlands Loop Road” which is a scenic drive. Then perhaps we’ll here a ranger talk about the Prairie Dogs at the Prairie Dog Town. (The largest town in the Bandlands!)

Bye for now.

P.S. - We had fun crossing into Mountain Time and watching our clocks reset on our cell phones. Mine won!