30th Stop - Badlands (SD)

Blog Post #40 - Written November 2, 2025

Stay: July 19-20, 2025

We learned a lesson about Google Maps and big national parks at this stay. We picked a campground that appeared close to the Badlands National Park on the map, only to find when we got here that it was about 45 minutes away from an entrance, and then of course you have to drive all the way through the park, which is probably another hour or so (at least) of driving. Good thing we're getting used to driving and learning to love it!  ;)

We stayed at the SOBOS Campground, southwest of the park. It was a nice enough campground and the kids made some more grandparent-friends haha. The star-gazing probably would've been pretty good, but for the awesome lightning storm! We like storms, and this one was pretty neat. Unfortunately, our phone cameras aren't cool enough to capture all the lightning in all its glory, but here's a video. 

Our first morning, we went for a little walk down in the valley, beneath our campground. The hosts own a couple hunting cabins down there. It was pretty pretty.

The first day, we drove through the Badlands with the trailer on our way to our campground (to avoid the extra 30 minutes of driving it would've been to drive around the park). Then after our morning walk, we drove back to the Badlands for a hot day of hiking. We stopped at the Visitor Center and learned that many visitors find dinosaur fossils while here. They had a whole room full of some of the fossils that had been found there, including a Nimravid skull (ancient saber-toothed cat) that a 7-yr old girl had found a few years ago! So of course we (especially Z) kept our eyes peeled for bones and sought out the areas most famous for fossils while we were there.

The Badlands are absolutely beautiful. Crazy awesome rock formations. And also very, very hot in July! We took advantage of every patch of shade we could find for frequent water breaks to stay hydrated!

We started with the easy Door Trail and Window Trail. Mostly just climbing and scrambling over the rocks (one of the cool things about Badlands NP is that allow you to climb on basically everything, compared to most other NPs that are very strict about staying on the trails).  We then hiked the longer Notch Trail, which was pretty fun. The two picture above are at the midway point of the hike where we left our stroller. The boys and I scrambled up a steep little hill to this cool hole in the rock, then Q and I climbed even higher (views from above looking down are the 2 pics below).  We climbed up a fun log ladder (pictured above) to the rim for the rest of the hike.

The 2nd half of the Notch Trail, along the rim of the White River Valley.

Taking another water break in a shady, shallow cave along the trail.

I loved seeing these vertical, green "fissure" lines running through the rocks. Still not sure how they were formed, but they're pretty cool.

Made it to the end of the Notch Trail! ...And promptly laid down for a rest in a patch of shade haha. Did I mention it was HOT?!?

We loved the beautiful, colorful layers in the rocks and hills. We stopped to take pictures (and pick flowers) several times haha. 

While walking through a wash hunting for fossils, D and I instead found these Armored Mudballs! Not what I was hoping for, but a fun surprise nonetheless. They form like snowballs, as rock/mud tumbles and rolls down the washes when it rains.

The boys convinced Megan to let them climb straight up the ridge of this hill haha, love their sense of adventure!

We were surprised at how much wildlife we found in the Badlands. We didn't catch pictures of all of them, but at least got this Bison and several Burrowing Owls (below)! In addition, we saw hundreds of prairie dogs, Z saw a rattlesnake slither down a prairie dog hole, and we saw four huge wild turkeys (not the little females we often see, but big flashy males)!

I had read in the Visitor's Center about other animals (like burrowing owls, weasels, and rattlesnakes) using old prairie dog holes), but didn't hold much hope of finding any of them. So when I saw a tiny owl standing on a hole, it took me a second to register what I'd seen, then another 50-yards to stop our truck and throw it in reverse to race back and see these adorable, rare birds! I'd first heard about them when I read Hoot as a kid. I'd always thought it was funny for a bird to live underground. I never thought I'd actually see one in real life! And we saw like 5 of them!  They were difficult to photograph, but we did our best :)

A few more pretty views:

Megan and Z found this fossil embedded in the rock. Unfortunately we forgot to send our pics to the rangers, so we'll never know what new dinosaur they discovered!

And to finish off our time here, we caught a mouse in the trap under our sink :)