The Dakota Bad Lands

Photo by John Blancato – 2018

We rode through the Bad Lands today and it is so strangely beautiful.  It’s about an hour east of where we are in Rapid City.

This is the spot where John wanted to try dry camping, on the rim of the canyon.  Dry camping means we’re not hooked up to any water or electricity, so if it’s too hot – no air conditioning.

We discovered a few other things that will make it challenging to dry camp here.  The road to the edge isn’t easy to navigate.  We ran into these lovely creatures who let us know they were in no hurry to go anywhere.

In addition to the live road block, the recent rain left a lot of mud and getting the RV through that is just too risky.  If conditions change we may still give it a try.  In the meantime we were still able to take a nice ride around the Bad Lands National Park and John got to do what he loves best :-).  We just made reservations to stay next week in an RV park in the Bad Lands area after we leave here on Sunday.  We’ll have a whole week of photography there – sunrises (many of which I will probably sleep through) and sunsets.

Here are some of John’s shots from a town called Wall that we visited just north of the Bad Lands:

And another of the Bad Lands: