A Ride Into the Badlands National Park & Wall Drugs 7/25/2010

This morning we headed south for a ride into the Badlands National Park as we really hadn't been to deep into the Badlands as yet. We had hit the edge of it a few times as we drove through the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands but hadn't been deep into it. We used our National Park Pass again for admittance and started our drive. Well it was a wonderful and beautiful drive as at the first turn we saw the beauty of the years of erosion.


For centuries humans have viewed South Dakota's celebrated Badlands with a mix of dread and fascination. The Lakota knew the place as "mako sica". Early French trappers called the area "les mauvaises terres a traverser". Both mean "bad lands." Conservation writer Freeman Tilden described the region as "peaks and valleys of delicately banded colors - colors that shift in the sunshine... and a thousand tints that color charts do not show. In the early morning and evening, when shadows are cast upon the infinite peaks or on a bright moonlit night when the whole region seems a part of another world, the Badlands will be an experience not easily forgotten." Paleontologist Thaddeus Culbertson has another reaction, "Fancy yourself on the hottest day in summer in the hottest spot of such a place without water - without an animal and scarce an insect astir - without a single flower to speak pleasant things to you and you will have some idea of the utter loneliness of the Bad Lands."
The peaks, gullies, buttes and wide prairies of the Badlands can be challenging to cross, yet they have long attracted the interest and praise of travelers. "I've been about the world a lot, and pretty much over our own country," wrote architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935, "but I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Bad Lands.... What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal..., an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it."
"Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are." Through seemingly inhospitable at first glance, the Badlands have supported humans for more than 11,000 years. The earliest people to come into this area were ancient mammoth hunters. Much later they were followed by nomadic tribes whose lives centered on bison hunting. The Arikara was the first tribe known to have inhabited the White River area. By the mid 18th century, they were replaced by the Sioux, or Lakota, who adopted the use of horses from the Spaniards and came to dominate the region.
Through the bison hunting Lakota flourished during the next one hundred years, their dominion on the prairie was short-lived. French fur trappers were the first of many European arrivals who, in time, would supplant the Lakota. Trappers were soon followed by soldiers, miners, cattle farmers and homesteaders who forever changed the fact of the prairie. After 40 years of struggle culminating in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, the Lakota were confined to reservations. Cattle replaced the bison; wheat fields replaced the prairies; and in time, gasoline powered vehicles replaced the horse.
White homesteaders and Lakota have shaped this land in terms of the impact that human beings have had here. Late 19th century photographers have captured on film the images of all these people as they created new lives for themselves and came into contact with one another, showing, unwittingly, the poignancy and hard work that typified the process. The bison that had played such a vital role in the Lakotas' way of life were eradicated with the arrival of the white hunters, leaving only the paintings and drawings that they had earlier made to continually remind them of long-gone patterns of life and of ways that they related to their environment.
Building a log house, cutting sod bricks from the prairie and collecting cow chips for fuel were just a few of the backbreaking tasks that the homesteaders faced as they worked to make the land their own. By contrast the Lakota touched the land differently, recording on a buffalo robe that was itself a product of the prairies, chronicling the nomadic way of life that the settlement of the land would end forever.


We drove out about 8 miles stopping at the scenic overlooks, reading the interpretive signs and taking pictures and then headed back. We did do one Earthcache on the way into the Badlands at one of the scenic overlooks. After we were done we headed for the coach to drop Muffy and Raggs off and take a ride over to Wall Drug Co to see what all the fuss was about. Well I'll tell you as far as I'm concerned all it was was a tourist trap like South of the Border. They had everything from soup to nuts there and if you couldn't find it there it wasn't made, at least that's what it seemed like. The had souvenir and gift shops, bakery, chapel, soda fountain, gold and jewelry shops, clothing stores, restaurant and just about anything else you wanted to buy. Well I left Mom after walking around for awhile and drove back to the coach as she wanted to look some more. She got back in about and hour and we spent the rest of the afternoon in the coach. We did go back over to the Badlands Saloon for dinner as I wanted to try a buffalo burger. Well it was OK as it seemed a little dry with not much fat in it. Mom had a Philly cheese steak and I finally got a chance to try a Flat Tire beer which was very good. Well that's about all from Wall for today so untilorrow we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick