The Badlands are Good!?!? Who knew?

After our 3 day stint in the car with our brand new (to us) rig, and our brand new (for real) dual dvd players, and waaaaay too many Dora movies, we finally made it to the Badlands.  And wow!  This is one area where I wasn't all that excited about visiting, admittedly, but Chad insisted we go.  So go, we went.  And here we are.  The views are breathtaking. 

For the drive here everything had a very familiar mid-western feel all through Iowa and half-way through South Dakota.  The towns just got fewer and further between, the winds got stronger, and the roads got less lanes to them.  

My favorite part of the 3 day car ride?  The often talked-about-but-seldom-seen simultaneous nap-time.  

While in Iowa, Chadly insisted we pay a visit to the Antique Archaeology store (American Pickers).  So we did.  Not a highlight for me, but I have pictures to prove we were there.  No one 'famous' was present, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.

On the way here we stopped at the WORLD'S LARGEST TRUCK stop in IOWA.  Yes, be jealous.  It must be true.  It said so on their sign.

South Dakota has been a very interesting state to drive through.  Chad and I were discussing on the way out here how good it is to not see so much 'civilization'.  Makes me feel like we aren't totally destroying our earth.  There are huge stretches of absolutely nothing except green, green, and more green.  And not really trees.  Just land.  Big, beautiful open land.  After we crossed the Missouri River on 90W, it got REALLY interesting.  The terrain took on this wild, hilly transformation.  I've never seen anything like it.  It didn't last long...maybe 20 miles, but it was breathtaking.  And then a whole lot of nothing again.  Pretty nothing, but nothing all the same.  

We had a stop-over in Mitchell, SD, which is home to the Corn Palace and visited my first ever Cabela's.  Neat place!

Then we arrived at the Badlands.  Again, my expectations were low.  Boy, was I wrong. 

It's also very welcoming to see friendly, smiling faces from the locals.  

Emmy went to her very first Junior Park Ranger talk today.  She earned a pin AND a badge!

 I can't tell you how proud of herself she was (and how proud of her I was).  She was BEAMING!!!  She took the Junior Ranger Oath, and it's official!  She's a Junior Park Ranger!  It's a wonderful, beautiful thing. 

Then we took the Loop Drive around the park.  It was really breathtakingly beautiful (if not a little scary for those of us that are afraid of heights), but we were really hoping to see some wildlife.  We drove to this dirt road section, which I (again with the whole fear of heights thing) wanted to have NO part of meandering down, but much to my dismay my husband, once again, insisted, and I'm glad he did.  We saw buffalo.  And I lived to tell about it.  It was a good day. 

The buffalo that we really saw (there were some so very far away that they really could have been any very enormously large land mammal..or a big, dark rock...we'll never know), we REALLY saw.  Up close.  REALLY, up close.  We admired it for quite a while from about 100 yards away, and it crossed the road right in front of us...or maybe we pulled our car up so it was right in front of us, either way, it was CLOSE.  We all really enjoyed it.  I think Maggie even stopped whining for a minute or two.  

Prairie dogs are cool.  We saw a bazillion of them out here (mostly on the hold-on-for-dear-life-dirt road)...(for the record Mom, for what it's worth I'm exaggerating...no need to fret...it wasn't THAT bad...I just really don't like heights. Or falling.  Or falling from high heights).  

Yes, it's been a good couple of days.  I even ate my first bison burger on the same day I saw my (kind of) first wild, bison.  A good day, indeed.