We finally saw an amazing, memorable sunset, all together in a national park! It was worth the wait but it did cost us a delicious grilled dinner replaced by air-fried chicken nuggets at 9:30 at night, LOL. The spectacular sunset wasn’t the only memorable part of the day. This was a great national park. We hiked, drove the scenic drive, and saw TONS of wildlife!

1st stop: Ben Reifel Visitor Center and Park Headquarters for Jr. Ranger books and all the exhibits. Next stop: Window Trail, Notch Trail and Cliff Shelf Nature Trail. Notch Trail was AWESOME and satisfied our sense of adventure. Advertised as “moderate to strenuous, not recommended for anyone with a fear of heights, watch for drop offs, treacherous during or after heavy rains” Maddy was the first to insist we do this hike and also the first to try and call it quits when the trail looked like it was headed right off a cliff edge. She made it the whole 1.5 miles and it was a great way to see these unusual rock formations. We hiked into the notch, up a crazy ladder that doesn’t look that hard but is really scary to come down, followed the cliff edges and then meandered among the rocks until we got to an overlook. Very cool!!

This park is so unique. Sometimes you are on the ground looking up at these rock formations that look all folded onto each other and squished together, and sometimes you are above looking down over them and realizing how crazy steep they really are. We learned mountains are formed when the earth is shoved up while buttes are formed when the earth erodes away leaving peaks or flat tops. This park is made of buttes with tons of “peaks and gullies, mounds, suspended silt, sculpted spires,” and tons of prairie lands interspersed. This park actually has the largest amount of prairie land protected in the park system. It’s also one of the “richest fossil beds of mammals on the planet” according to the NPS. The contrast of the grasslands and rocks was awesome. The variations in the colors at every different lookout was awesome. The fact that you are invited to climb all over it is bizarre but awesome. We asked a ranger why we are allowed to climb on this soft looking rock that’s home to fossils millions of years old and protected in a national park, (up close it looks like dried mud – it is harder than it looks but still leaves you covered in a dusty powder that is slippery on every walkway) and the ranger said that it naturally erodes up to an inch every year and human activity doesn’t accelerate that so enjoy it. Cool.

Hungry for lunch we headed back to our nearby campground to eat, walk Murphy and enjoy a longer siesta. When we headed back to the park we did the scenic Badlands Loop Road which isn’t actually a loop unless you leave the park and loop around on the highways so silly name if you ask me. Mat loved the drive and all the lookouts. The kids loved the wildlife. We saw tons of big horned sheep, hundreds of prairie dogs, tons of deer, bison, even cattle as we drove in and out of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands each time we went in and out of the park. The prairie dogs were so entertaining, and Maddy thought the chubby little rodents were adorable despite Mat and the numerous posted signs reporting that they carry the plague. Seriously. Yuck. The only wildlife sighting we didn’t enjoy was watching dumb tourists way too close to a couple bison that took over a parking lot to use the posts for their scratching enjoyment. Don’t break the rules people. I don’t want to see you get gorged because it would be unpleasant, for me, you are an idiot so…

And finally we parked at Pinnacles Overlook and stayed for the beautiful sunset. It was the perfect spot to see the colors on the badlands change and the sun set on the grassland. Getting home in the dark proved to be an adventure – at least 3 deer ran right in front of Peggy, a herd of calves where playing in the road (is it “horse play” if you’re a cow?) and one started to charge at Peggy. Her cute honk got them off the road. It was a fun end to a great day.

Sunday, August 22, 2021