This is Part 3 of my North and South Dakota road trip. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

After seeing the Black Hills, Felix and I stayed the night in Wall, SD, which is right outside of Badlands National Park. We headed into the park the following morning and were immediately greeted with impressive views of the badlands. 

We started with the Door trail, which is a 1-mile hike into the badlands. The landscape is absolutely desolate and there’s no clear trail. There are some markers showing where the trail is intended to go but you can hike anywhere you want. The park has an open-hiking policy because there’s not much life around that you could tread on. 

We walked the Window trail, which is an extremely short boardwalk, and then headed to the visitor center because I was already overheating. The sun was relentless and there’s virtually no shade among the badlands. I cooled off watching the park’s movie and then we headed back out to do a little loop hike in the hills. The badlands are the transition between the upper and lower prairie, and from the hill we could see the grassy prairie below. 

There aren’t actually a lot of trails in Badlands National Park, and the few they have are all concentrated in one region near the visitor center in the south. The rest of the park can be seen via pullouts on the scenic drive. And thank god because I could not survive another hike in the heat. 

The stripes of the badlands are mainly a very washed-out looking pink, but in some areas, yellow mounds are visible, and I thought they were really pretty. 

At the end of the scenic drive, at the park’s high point, there’s a vista with a super wide view of the badlands and the prairie below. 

We headed back to Wall to have lunch and decided to check out Wall Drug. It started out as just a drug store but it became an attraction large enough to warrant a map. The building has little stores selling various touristy stuff, an arcade, a chapel, and an actual drug store. We bought some stuff from the drug store, which was adorned with as much taxidermy as a hunting lodge.

There’s a courtyard with a jackalope you can sit on and an animatronic gorilla that plays piano. There’s also an animatronic t-rex. It’s pretty wild. 

I love my cowboy hat but I wished it had strings so I wouldn’t have to worry about it blowing away in the wind. Well, Wall Drug’s cowboy store had strings I could attach to my hat! I was very pleased with this development. 

We headed back into the park to drive around the Sage Creek area. This region has more prairie and it’s where we saw a lot of prairie dog towns and a herd of bison. The bison were too far away to be worth photographing. Twice, coyotes ran across the road in front of us.

As we neared the Sage Creek campground, our frequency of bison sightings increased. One guy was sitting in the middle of a prairie dog down. 

When we headed back, some of the far-away bison had moved closer to the road. Some of them were scratching themselves on wooden posts, which was funny to see. 

We waited around for a while to watch the sunset, which didn’t end up being as spectacular as I had hoped. Turns out you can’t see the badlands when the sun is behind it. 

We headed back to Wall for dinner and went to a steakhouse where Felix and I split a bison ribeye. I thought it was a really good steak and was completely indiscernible from beef. We learned that the parks that have bison round up their herds once a year and sell some off to keep the population healthy. Felix and I were just being part of the ecosystem. 

The next morning we met up with my friend and coworker, Beth! Beth also loves National Parks and by complete coincidence, her trip to Badlands happened to overlap with mine for one day. We had planned to do the Notch trail together, which is the most famous hike in the park, but it was unfortunately closed for maintenance. We opted instead to do that Castle Trail, which is usually a 10-mile out and back, but we took advantage of the fact that we had two cars so we only had to do a 5-mile hike one-way. 

A storm had just blown through and it was cloudy which was a welcome relief. The trail is pretty flat so it’s an easy five miles. It has some fun views of the badlands against the prairie but the views aren’t better than what you can see from the scenic drive. Beth volunteered to be our photographer and encouraged Felix and I to do acro stuff. 

The afore-mentioned thunderstorm was not completely done with us and it rained on and off for some portions of the hike. There was also ominous thunder that made us pretty nervous, but if you asked me if I’d rather hike in intense heat or a light thunder storm, I’d pick the thunder storm. 

The thunder storm did eventually give way to heat. We passed a lot of rock formations but I was never sure which one was supposed to be the castle that the hike is named for.

Near the end of the hike, we could see the parking lot through a little valley of badlands. The trail went around it but we opted to take advantage of that hike-wherever-you-want policy and go straight through the badlands.

We also took this opportunity to get a hand-to-hand photo—thanks Beth!

After the hike, we stopped for lunch at the park’s cafeteria where I got a bison burger. Felix and I weren’t sure what to do with our remaining time in the park. I’ve come to the conclusion that you only need one day in Badlands to get the full experience. Beth’s travel companion, her mom, couldn’t be there for her first day so we opted to accompany Beth on her park adventure. It was pretty fun to re-see the sights with Beth’s newfound excitement.  

We drove to most of the viewpoints and then to the sage creek area to see the prairie dogs and the bison. As we were driving back, we saw a bighorn sheep. This completed my checklist of Badlands animals.

Beth had to head back to Rapid City to pick up her mom from the airport, but Felix and I just kept driving around the park, enjoying how it looked in the late afternoon light.

We saw another bighorn sheep who was hanging out in a parking lot. check out those big horns!

Finally, we headed up to a high spot to watch the sunset. It was a pretty perfect end to our time in Badlands.

We stayed one more night in Wall and flew back to Boston the following day. That’s all for our Dakota’s adventure! I’m glad I got to see Theodore Roosevelt, the Black Hills, and Badlands. Each area was fun and beautiful in its own way. Who knew the Dakota’s were so spectacular? This was a great trip, and my National Parks count is now up to 26!

Thanks for reading!