If John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, and Clint Eastwood could be neighbours this would be the place. This national park is so stunning I cried as I was driving through the twisting valley road. The pictures are real and being present in the dry gorges and between colorful sandy mounds was a humbling experience. There’s so much of nature and so little of me that I felt overwhelmed by the sight.
Don’t take my word for it, you have to be there to believe that this place exists. When I was 15 and watching The good, the bad, and the ugly I thought it was all filmed in a set until I realized that places like this actually exist. It’s straight out of a western film!
I thought I could do the drive in an hour or so, but boy was I wrong! Just stopping at the main viewpoints to soak in the devilish glory of the Badlands took nearly three hours. Three hours that extended into a beautiful sunset that completely changed the colors of the landscape.
The badlands are formed by erosion of soil so it is a narrow feature that has shifted over thousands of years. Right behind the features lie a wide open plain that is dozens of meters below the uneroded soil. Imagine wagon trains crossing this terrain!
