Maybe it’s just something about the name, but I’ve always wanted to see the Badlands of South Dakota, although without knowing all that much about them.  It’s listed as a National Park, but I’ll say here that I never saw a gate, a ranger, or a visitor’s center.  But it’s a big place, so it’s entirely possible that I just missed them.  Actually, it’s a huge place, and although I traveled the main drive for a while, I spent most of my time on dirt roads.  I didn’t need the four wheel drive, but I used it anyway because… just because.  But look at this view from the Sage Creek Rim Road.

And you can see here exactly why the area got the name Badlands.  Although it most definitely has a rugged beauty, from a pioneering perspective this would have been extremely difficult to travel across and useless as far as farming goes.  I did see some wildlife there, including these pronghorn sheep.  They’re the lumps that look like rocks on top of the ridge.

By far the most prevalent wildlife in the park is prairie dogs.  They’re adorable, extremely social and curious and, as it turns out, nearly impossible to photograph without a zoom lens.  In the photo below they’re the lumps that look like slightly larger rocks at the side of the road.  Imagine fat meerkats and you won’t be too far off.

I realized later that, although I already thought that the park was huge, I really only saw the northern end of it.  I did spend some time on the main drive though, and a lot of the most spectacular scenery was there.  I have an awesome vehicle.  It takes me great places.

And so I was soaking it all in, feeling honestly a bit amazed that this was me, doing this, and loving every minute of it.  Feeling that my day just couldn’t get any better.  And then it got better.  It seems that the park has a herd of about one thousand bison roaming wild, somewhere on the extensive grassland!  I had seen a couple of bison (also known as American buffalo) in zoos before, but never in the wild.  Now I was on a mission!  A bison finding mission!

I took every dirt road I could find, I scanned the horizon, and I found them.  Or some of them.  Not a thousand, but about thirty.  In that huge expanse of grassland there was no telling where the rest were.  But this’ll do, Kat, this’ll do.

I watched them for the longest time.  They’re so huge and powerful, with big manly beards and Viking horns, and yet most of the time they’re so relaxed.  It’s mesmerizing, like watching a powerful battleship riding at anchor in a gentle swell.  Then I gave up any thought of moving on, and just parked at the side of the road, opened the back door, and watched wild bison from my bed until the sun set.  I do have to note that bison are considered quite dangerous, and going near them is not a good idea.  Consider if you’d approach a bull in a paddock — so would you approach a herd of wild cattle with lots of bulls?

Just as the sun was going down, most of the herd wandered off over the next ridge line, but four of the biggest bulls stayed, and this guy, who was the biggest so perhaps the patriarch of the herd, was about thirty feet from Baby Blue.  Check out those horns, that mane!

It was a dark night, far from any light source except the milky way above me.  I could occasionally hear the snort or chewing of one of the bulls near me, the sturdy thump of each footfall as they walked past, the sweep of a breeze in the grass.  I drifted off to sleep with the rear window open.  Oops.  Twice during the night I was surrounded by a pack of coyotes, yipping and howling.  While I’m not particularly afraid of coyotes, which tend to be shy of humans, it’s rather another matter when you open your eyes to see a few looking in your back window.  I’m assuming that they can jump as well as dogs.  I didn’t wait to find out, I closed the window.  What a weird, wild, wonderful night.

I was up early the next morning, and after a cup of tea on the prairie, I ended up in a bison jam while trying to drive out of the park.  I had to laugh, thinking how much better this was than being in a traffic jam on the southeastern freeway while on my way to work just two months ago!  But it did become a bit of a road rage situation for a bit.  The big bull on the right in the picture below wouldn’t let me by, and kept scraping the dirt and lowering his horns every time I tried to creep forward.  He had his eye on another bull with a cow on the other side of the road, and wasn’t going to let me come between them.  Because, as it turned out, it was breeding season, and everyone was feeling a bit jumpy and aggressive.  So I just waited.

Then I heard a heavy thump from behind me.  Looking back, I saw two bulls fighting — head-butting — on the road immediately behind me!  Imagine suddenly finding yourself alone when a bar fight breaks out around you, and you’ll know how I felt.  These are big creatures who can look right into the FJ, and I had no idea what they were capable of, so did the only thing I could think of — I turned off the engine and tried to look as much like a big blue non-threatening rock as possible.  The fight behind me didn’t last long, and within ten minutes the big boys in front of me moved off as well, grunting and snorting as they went.  With only one more minor encounter I was able to drive out of the park.  Still… better than frustrated drivers on the southeastern freeway…