Day 34

Badlands Outing

Badlands National Park is an odd park. Surrounding the park is the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. The most popular part, the North Unit, is a very narrow strip, one to two miles wide. Then it extends out into the Sage Creek Wilderness Area and down into the Stronghold Unit and the exclaved Palmer Creek Unit. Both of these are surrounded by the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which extends all the way south to the border with Nebraska.

Cliff Shelf Nature Trail

We entered at the Northeast Entrance, and our first stop was the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail. We walked around the short loop trail but didn’t stay on it too long. We walked through Juniper groves where there was a little moisture left from last night, but we saw no critters. We joined other people and ventured off the trails. We just walked around on the firm, dried dirt and up the odd shaped mounds of earth that characterize this park. It was too hot for any animals to be out.

Geology

We drove to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center and got checked out on the history and the park’s features. What makes this place so special? First, this park is one of the richest fossil beds in the United States. Thirty-four million years ago, at the end of the Eocene, this entire area was a broad marshy plain through which streams from the western highlands flowed. As the Oligocene period ended 23 million years ago, volcanic ash had rained down on the area from volcanoes in the west and southwest. This is the white layer of rock seen in the top of the formations. Slowly, the climate changed, rains diminished, and dry winds from the north allowed grass to take hold. The mammals that existed during this period are alienlike compared to the mammals of today.

Saddle Pass

We left heading west toward the other features in the park. We stopped at Saddle Pass Trail, a trail that goes over the wind-, rain-, and frost-sculpted canyons, ridges, spires, and knobs. We walked over the ridge to find more grass and dirt, big surprise! We didn’t see any snakes, but this looks like the perfect place for them. The little water that’s left from last night’s downpour is now beige, and is changing from liquid water to mud. We walked back to the car, which was below us from this vantage point, and continued on.

Overlooks

We stopped at many overlooks. The first was the Prairie Winds Overlook, which described the wild weather and how it affects the landscape. Next was the Homesteads & Ranches Overlook, which pointed out how and where settlers of the past tried unsuccessfully to take up living here. Rainbow and the Seabed Jungle Overlook demonstrated the red and yellow rock layers from the Oligocene jungle. Next was the Ancient Hunters Overlook, where the mass killing of mammals is described. It is thought that the ancient peoples of the area drove herds of mammals over cliffs instead of hunting them singly. Today all we see are the massive fossil beds beneath these cliffs. Pinnacles is the last overlook, no story here, just scenery.

Fossil hunting: the big pig dig

We decided to see the Fossil Exhibit at the Fossil Exhibit Trail at 2:30. We got there around 2:00, and the ranger giving this talk was not far behind. We first did the trail, which displays fossils or plaster casts of the actual fossils of the exotic animals of long ago. We then sat in on the talk by Ranger Rick, yes, his name was Rick.

The talk was about all the types of fossils found in the area and was very interesting. Rick told us of the Big Pig Dig going on in the park near Conata. This is one of those strange animals that someone found one day. Some guy was walking along this road and below his feet he saw what looked like part of a backbone. In the park, people have found this pig-like mammal, ancient rhinoceroses, and horses, all of them very well preserved. After the talk we went to see the Big Pig Dig.

Driving out dirt road 509, we came upon a trailer with a ranger ready to answer questions and archeologists working on the dig. After this, we drove up the road and then decided to do a little fossil hunting of our own. Since you could walk anywhere in this park, we just pulled over and started climbing up the narrow ridges.

We walked around for about and hour and a half, looking at the ground. Sometimes there would be a piece of earth that is raised, looking like a miniature mesa. The surrounding ground may be ten feet below, but these somewhat large, flat-topped features seem to have escaped erosion. I climbed up to the top of one of these and on top I found little six inch high cactus along its edges. I couldn’t believe there were cacti in South Dakota. We found many fossils, something that looked like a foot long backbone—we could see the core of each vertebrae. After growing tired, we left, and headed back to camp.

We took showers, relaxed, and watched the annoying kids next to us. We cooked dinner tonight and planned the long drive home. We were thinking of going back to the park tonight and catching the 8:30 hike or, if it’s clear, a night sky show, but we bagged that. We were too relaxed.