Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Dayside hiking across the Badlands



On Thursday, we set out across the Badlands on Castle Trail. The day started cloudy, but it cleared up to be rather warm. It was the kind of day you started out in your long underwear and fleece, but wound up in a T-shirt. The entire trail would have been around 10 miles, butwe decided to double back on Medicine Root Trail which meant our hike was 7.7 miles.





The trail varied from flat grassland to canyons and ravines. You'd go up and down terrain on a small dirt trail. Stakes with numbers map out the path.





It's interesting to see cactus out here on the prairie. We saw several deer from a distance, but no rattlesnakes.

















Someone from work told me that when you get to the Badlands, it seems like you've landed on another planet. When you are in the middle of a group of formations, you can understand that. It looks like you've landed on the moon. The sand is bright white and the land so rugged.


In a way, it looks like God made sandcastles and let the water wash over them once, and then left them. That's exactly how they look to me.

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