Mississippi River Trip: Doors and Windows

The Badlands is an awesome park.  Larisa and I spent the day hitting up most of the short hikes in the park.  Two of the shortest are Door and Window, both located right next to each other.  The involve small rock climbs and narrow trails to an overlook of the main section of BNP, and the view is truly breathtaking.  Heat baked rocks and shale that have withered down to skeletons over thousands of years, tough desert scrub, and raptors circling in the air.  Another nearby hike was Notch, which takes you along a streambed to a ladder climb of about 40 feet.  The trail then continues for another mile or so to the Notch, which overlooks most of the badlands valley.

After these hikes we explored a couple of small loop trails, including the Fossil trail – my one “must see” part of the park.  It’s only a quarter of a mile, and where I expected to see some fossils in living rock or something, the exhibit is instead just a few fossils in plastic boxes with sketchy information attached.  It was a disappointing hike that really wasn’t worth the effort – even though the effort was basically a small stroll.

We went back to camp and our bison pals came through again. It was supposed to rain. so we tarped the tent.  Larisa expressed happiness about this - she was scared the bison woudl come and look at her while she was sleeping.   Larisa and I decided to hit the bed early, because tomorrow we’re planning to do a 10-mile hike called Castle Trail.  The bird we saw yesterday was a sharp-tailed grouse – I knew it was too fat to be a roadrunner!