Last year, my daughter said she’d like to go on vacation with my wife and me — but not together, because she craved some alone time with each of us. I relished the idea and suggested we go to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, a state I had never been to, and part of my ongoing plan to get as much use out of my National Parks Senior Lifetime Pass as possible.
Each time I’ve done a trip like this, I’m amazed at the wonders of geology and topography, how parts of the US don’t look like anything I’ve experienced before. That’s been true at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Acadia, and other remarkable place I’ve visited. Now I can add Badlands to that list.
The striations of the rock formations, tens of millions of years old, are stunning to see up close, and each trail we hiked offered new perspectives. There are spires and pinnacles and caverns and valleys and what look like folds in the rock face formed by eons of evolution, as well as vast grass prairies.
We also spotted several animals free-ranging through their days, including bison, pronghorns, rabbits, and prairie dogs. We were saddened to see a sign telling us that much of the prairie dog population has been decimated by the plague, so we should stay clear of them and their droppings. Yes, I said the plague, as if we’d been transported back to the 14th century.
I’m pretty sure it’s the fault of RFK Jr.
When we first pulled into Badlands National Park, I asked a ranger if staffing had been affected by all the cutbacks imposed by The Trump/Musk Regime. He said that yes, several people had been fired, but were then re-hired a few days later, only to be told after another week that their positions had been eliminated. He said just opening his email every morning brings more uncertainty and stress.
Fortunately, he and his colleagues — like every other ranger I’ve encountered at National Parks — were a font of information, directing us to the best places to hike and explaining that Badlands is an open-trail park. That means visitors don’t have to stick to the trails. “You can walk anywhere you like,” he said, adding with a smirk, “And we haven’t had to do an emergency rescue in months!”
Fortunately, we were there before tourist season kicks in around the middle of May, so the park wasn’t crowded. And because we weren’t around people, we were able to hear lots of birdsong everywhere we walked. My daughter used the Merlin Bird ID app to identify several of them: western meadowlarks, common grackles, black-billed magpies, robins, mourning doves, song sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, and Swainson’s hawks.
In addition to seeing the natural beauty during the day, nighttime brought an eye-popping display of more stars than I’ve ever seen. Looking up at all those twinkling lights — and thus back through the history of our galaxy — was awe-inspiring.
The only downside to our Badlands experience was the lack of decent food. There’s only one restaurant in the park, operated by Aramark, which is an old Lakota Sioux word meaning “barely edible.” Its choices were very limited, with nothing for my daughter, who is vegan, except snack food. To make matters worse, that part of South Dakota is essentially a food desert. We had to leave the park and drive quite a ways to find a local bar/restaurant, where the menu consisted of less-than-mediocre burgers, deep fried chicken tenders, and french fries.
There’s a reason South Dakota’s license plates don’t identify it as The Salad State.
One of the places also had individual pizzas on the menu. You can call me a pizza snob if you like, but I’d rather wrap my arms around a plague-riddled prairie dog than eat one of those bland, no-doubt-recently-defrosted dough disks.
We were so desperate for more food options that we drove forty-five minutes to the town of Wall, where the central attraction is Wall Drug, a giant tourist trap that sells keychains with pictures of bison, magnets with picture of bison, t-shirts with pictures of bison, hats with pictures of bison, jewelry in the shape of bison — and, of course, fudge.
Not being much of a fudge fan, I don’t even know where I would go to buy it anywhere near my house, yet every tourist town I’ve been to has a place that sells the stuff. I suppose some folks consider it a special vacation treat. Those are the same folks attracted by Wall Drug’s 80-foot plastic dinosaur.
Which, surprisingly, does not look like a bison.