2012-09-07 Wall SD & Badlands Nat Park

On Interstate 90 at Chamberlain SD we crossed the Missouri River

It sure looks different than it does in Kansas City where I crossed it every day

going to work.  This is one of several places the river is dammed for recreational lakes and ranching.

The river is wide but very shallow with many sand bars visible

Just south of Wall SD we entered the Badlands National Park

The landscape immediately changes from gently rolling hills to carved out canyons

The roads traversing the park have many side roads and pull offs to give distinctive views

The first side road led us to see a group of Big Horn Rams lounging at the precipice of a panoramic view

Although the park is beautiful in itself, it was made more enjoyable with the company of friends

I traveled with Bryan & Lee Richardson, Miss Susy and Stan & Connie Browning

The structures are marked by many colors that formed during ancient times periods

dating as far back as 36 million years covering glaciers, floods and desert times

I had only seen prairie dogs in books and movies. They reminded me of the 'Whack a mole' arcade games I played many times as a kid at carnivals and state fairs

To Dakota Indians the area was known as Mako Sica, "bad lands to travel through."

The Badlands have an erosion rate of 1 inch per year  causing the Badlands to constantly change thru millions of years of tearing away the soft sedimentary rocks

This land is like a moonscape ravaged by wind and water, filled with sharp ridges, deep gorges, steep walled canyons, colorful spires, gullies, sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles

Erosion in the Badlands caused layers of different colors: purple and yellow (shale), tan and gray (sand and gravel), red and orange (iron oxides) and white (volcanic ash).

We saw several large tour groups. One of the most eye catching was a group of PT Cruisers that traveled and even parked in formation

About 75 million years ago a shallow sea covered the Great Plains region.

Today the bottom of that sea appears as a grayish-black sedimentary rock called Pierre (peer) shale

As they died, Sea creatures sank to the bottom of the sea forming fossils including the cephalopod (squid-like creature), clams, crabs, snails, ancient fish, mosasaurs (giant marine lizards), pterosaurs (flying reptiles), Archelon (giant sea turtles) and Hesperonis (diving bird similar to a modern loon)

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During the Gold Rush days of the late 1800s the valley floors were packed with make shift cities from all the miners laying claim to land for gold stakes

About 38 million years ago this region was a marshy jungle filled with saber-toothed cats, camels no bigger than dogs, turtles the size of Volkswagons, three-toed horses, saber-toothed cats and giant rhinoceros-like creatures

Their bones buried in the mud, washed down from the Black Hills and were covered by gray and white ash from volcanoes later. 

Deer, rattlesnakes, coyotes, bighorn sheep, and a large herd of buffalo now live here

The climate was warm and humid with lots of rain. The Badlands were a subtropical forest, which flourished for millions of years.

Eventually the continental plates shifted, pushing up the land under the sea and causing the water to retreat.

The climate cooled and dried and the Badlands became grasslands like we see today

  

From the top of the Badlands Rim, the Indians could watch for enemies and wandering herds

The next great change came toward the end of the 19th century as people streamed in to homestead

The normal homestead was 160 acres, later it became 640 acres because the land did not produce much

During the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the waves of grasshoppers that came with it,

the houses built from sod blocks were soon abandoned

We are headed next to Custer Gulch RV Campground in Custer SD

Cya