The badlands is an interesting place as it is deposited material from millions of years of build up from the original baseline bottom of an inland sea almost 80 million years ago.

 

 

The sand, volcanic, and mud have spread out into this area so the action of wind and water eroded this geologic beauty as to what we see today. 

 

I got to bad pretty late and ended up getting blown around a bit inside the tent from a charge of wind that came out of nowhere and sustained itself for hours into the middle of the night. 

 

 This forced me to sleep on the bench of the park and I woke up early to get some sunrise photos of the park itself.

 

I did not have that much time to hang around so I ended up taking some photos from some popular trails and hiked in about a half mile on another trail to catch a glimpse of the sunrise over these cream colored formations.

 

Afterwards I took a drive up the scenic trail which was rather interesting and nice to follow which took me to some beautiful vista overlooks. 

 

 

 I was quite impressed with these overlooks and it was quite the view into the grasslands and into the buffalo national grassland. This is a place I want to come back to and spend more time hiking through the grasslands a bit and the trails.  

 The Badlands does not appear to be too big but the grasslands and the vista overviews make this badland environment unique to other badland locations like the Bisti, Cathedral, and Death Valley