West trip 2019 #25 Badlands National Park

Sept 19-21st

    We will have a short travel day through Custer state park 107 miles to Badlands National park.  We arrived at Nomad dispersed camping on the cliffs overlooking the Badlands.  This is a free boondocking site on BLM land.  The road is a little rough on the way in but manageable with 2 wheel drive high clearance.  We could have stayed right on the edge but sometimes storms come up quick and a couple months earlier a trailer was blown over the cliff by a freak storm.  We decided to play it safe and stay away from edge by 30 or 40 yards.

Looking south from camper
Our view from Camper door


Up early to head to the Windows trail before it gets hot.  We take the park road towards the visitor center and stop at several pull offs for a photos along the way.  Windows trail is a short .25 mile walk and easy.  Afterwards we take in the Cliff shelf Nature trail another short hike (.5 mile).











Yellow mounds





After hiking for the day we headed into the town of Wall, SD.  Went to the wounded knee museum which was pretty sad.  Next was the infamous Wall Drugs.  This place reminded of South of the Border on I95.  Well after some dinner and an ice cream we head back to camp.

Wall drugs



    This will be our last day here and we are looking for wildlife.  We are heading towards a prairie dog town along Sagecreek road and find Bighorn sheep along the way as well.  Lots of sheep and prairie dogs.

Smile for the camera!











    Back in Lake Powell we decided to take a northern route back across country and head for New Hampshire to meet up with our daughter Bethany.  She is a travel nurse that was working in Boston at that time.  So tomorrow we will start heading east.  Our next multi-day stop will be Watkins Glen, NY and will take 4 days to get there.  This will be our last stop in the West desert areas and the views will change significantly.  I will miss the mountains and deserts.

See Ya then,
Tom, Pat and Kira

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