#27 Badlands National Park SD

I knew absolutely nothing about Badlands and was almost tempted to say who cares and we'll just ride by and say what heck. Let me tell you that would have been a mistake. Badlands is absolutely beautiful and I learned a lot and I'm so glad we stay we stayed two days. i t was just as nice as it could be. We saw prairie dogs and Bighorn sheep and I have videos here of our prairie dog encounter which was hilarious.

and here are our pictures and videos I'll be prairie dogs in the Rams. When we got to Badlands we cranked the generator and we found that we could only run one AC unit at a time. We turned on the one in our master bedroom and all three of us, and the cat lay down under the air conditioner trying to cool off. I think that went on for a couple of hours with us just napping and trying to get cool and at some point where you left the bedroom the living room was 90 degrees. It seemed like it might never actually cool off the RV entirely and the wind blowing so hard it felt pretty good outside. I looked at the weather forecast and they were predicting it to be 69 to 70 degrees overnight so I the just opened all the windows and let some of their fresh air in. It wasn't cool but it was moving. I went out riding the bike some and I found it there was a little Ranger show with the amphitheater so I thought that would be fun. Although India had taken a shower and was in the bath robe and Savannah was in her pajamas I asked him if they would be willing to gather up and go to the amphitheater and watch the show. They went along with it so we all went up to the amphitheater. We watched about a 30-40 minute show about park ranger stuff and the fact that the Buffalo and the Swift Fox and the Blackfoot ferret and the Big Horn sheep had been hunted to extinction in the Badlands area. These four species had been read introduced and the populations have recovered and all four are doing well today. We did the big Badlands loop we went to a place called Wall drug which was advertised it at least 500 billboards so we had to eat some lunch there. When we got back to the house and it was really time to leave so we went down a very scenic yet very bumpy road to Rapid City. Our next stop would be Badlands National Park. I knew absolutely nothing about it and was almost tempted to say who cares and we'll just ride near it or ride by it but let me tell you Badlands is absolutely beautiful.

The Big Horn sheep was absolutely a treat because at first we thought we would get no closer than a half a mile. We went down a dirt road to the prairie dog town and the sheep were just kind of was right in front us.

The sheep started hanging out with us and then they just started becoming a bunch of photo hogs they were like posing for the photos and being a bunch of hams and I loved it. We just had the best time photographing them. A number of Bighorns started following me rather closely like they were running after me. I thought that was just absolutely cool and I could not figure out why and then it occurred to me that the reason they were running after me catching up with me was because I was driving I Ram 3500 Dodge truck. They wanted to be with the biggest Dodge Ram that they had ever seen and so I was just thrilled to be there fearless leader in my big ol Dodge Ram truck. It was just a wonderful encountered we were 1 foot away from them for like 20 minutes and it was just so cool

We had a lot of fun with the prairie dogs as well

The Baby Ram was about the coolest thing ever.

Badlands 360 view