The Badlands National Park Collected | Longread w/ 18 Pics

Goats of the Badlands

Within minutes of entering the Badlands on the West end there were incredible views and wildlife grazing on the side of the road. Honestly, the entirety of western South Dakota is quite photogenic.

Incredible! Very much recommend visiting this park.

Look for this series of pics to be released over the following days as I process them and write about visiting the park.

The Landscapes of The Badlands

[Striated Mountains w/single tree]

The Badlands are an epic landscape, vibrant and alive for the right types of eyes. While there are more than 240k acres in the boundaries of the park, many features are accessible from the main road that passes through the park. You can deter off I-90 for a drive through the park and connect back up to the highway on the other end.

There is color in the hills and valleys that is so rich, I barely had to edit these photos to bring out the depth of the various shades.

Deeper into The Badlands

There are landscapes so dynamic that capturing them properly requires photos of multiple orientations. The Badlands are in that category. There are incredible views within incredible views. Bring your lenses.

Here are a few new scenes that needed to be photographed vertically to really illustrate the depth and distances. I think the park feels distinctly alive, at least while I was there in the summer. This is not a desert, it is the great plains. While they can seem desolate from behind the eyes of a passing glance, the park was full of animals the day I visited.

Resilient Terrain

I have additional views of The Badlands to show you over the next few days. I'm always surprised by the numbers of photos I've taken in one location as I head down the road to the next stop.

My photos catalog the views along the main road through the park. There are plenty of features I’m sure I missed the day I went but that just leaves images to capture on the next visit. There are a few parks that I have been fortunate to make a return visit and familiarity really helps to evaluate what sort of activities you'd like to accomplish while in the park.

Prairie Dogs of The Badlands

The wildlife in The Badlands was more prevalent than I would have assumed, though the gatekeeper told me that prairie dogs were a feature attraction in one section. I suppose that I was thinking they would be averse to interacting with humans.

These first few pictures are actually from a managed site where visitors can feed them and get some very close-up pics.

As it turned out, even the rabbit I photographed really wasn’t afraid of the people on the trails.

Rounding Out the Visit

Badlands National Park in South Dakota is a vast area with a few different predominant terrain types.

Like texture packs of a high budget video game, they are detailed and intricately woven together across the landscape.

These are the last two static pictures I’ll be posting from the park. However, I do have one more remaining to post to share tomorrow from the Badlands that is a new experiment for me regarding this platform and content type.

Down in the Valley

These canyons and the valley shown in the opening of the panoramic shot were my last stop within The Badlands.

If you squint really hard, you’ll see a herd of bison in the valley in the upper right quadrant of the shot.

Thanks for reading!