Travelogue Part II

The Badlands

The next place that we visited which really made an impact on all of us was The Badlands, in South Dakota. If you had told me that one of my favorite places to the see in the entire country would be in South Dakota, surrounded by 500 miles or more on all sides by farmland, I would not have believed you. But when we first pulled our car up to the lookout point near the entrance, and looked out upon the hilly outcroppings and breathtaking colors at sunset, I could not even believe that what I was seeing was real. We set up camp at the marked camping area that they provided, and set out into the wilderness, weary of the signs that occasionally popped up warning of rattlesnakes. When we came back we met up with a group of college girls staying at the same campgrounds, who were on a road trip of their own, from Georgia to Montana. The next morning, after we packed up all of our things, we had to venture out one more time into the wilderness because one of my friends decided that he had to climb the hills, which upon closer inspection turned out to be enormous eroded mounds of clay and dirt. We were following one of the hiking trails, when one friend who had ventured ahead of us, shouted out loud and ran past us, towards the car. He said he heard what he thought was a rattlesnake really close by. That was when we decided to continue on with our road trip yet again.