Mississippi River Trip: Not just any lands. .

The Badlands!

We left Niobrara in a leisurely fashion, stopping at the visitor's center to recharge batteries, chat with the staff, and generally enjoying the AC after a warm night and what would prove to be a hot day.  Like Elk Rock, Niobrara featured clean well water, so we drank a lot of it and filled our water containers again.  Right now we're carrying ~5 days for normal weather, 3 days if it's really hot. 

The drive was a pleasant romp through the Nebraska and South Dakota countryside.  We stopped at the White river for a few pictures.  As we wandered out across the bridge a huge flock of some kind of small birds took off from the brush.  Apparently they nest there, because they were not happy with us.  No attacks or anything, but they were chattering and screeching and flying around us - I had a brief flashback to watching Hitchcock's The Birds as a kid. 

We continued on, watching the landscape change from flat farming country to low hills and small bluffs.  We hit the Badland's National Park in early afternoon, stopping first to take a series of photo and video of a prairie dog town outside of the park.  Cute little critters.  Larisa and I both got a good laugh at the momma prairie dogs, who throw both paws up into the air and let out a chirping cry to call the babies back to their side.

We slid into the park, deciding to get an all-parks pass for $80 given the future route of the trip (Black Hills, Wind Cave, Grand Canyon, and other national parks).  The place is stunningly beautiful.  The great part about it is that it sort of sneaks up on you.  Once second you're driving along looking at green prairie, the next you're greeted with multicolored rock bluffs rising out of the prairie floor.  Fantastic.

Getting to the backcountry campground was kind of neat because it required us to drive the entire loop road.  We saw more prairie dog towns, three coyotes, and a huge herd of bison roaming the park.  We also saw a bird that I thought might have been a roadrunner, but it looked too fat.  I'll have to check with the park staff today and find out what it was.

We set up camp and ate dinner, and as we were wrapping things up a smaller group of bison wandered unconcernedly into the camp to munch on grass.  Fantastic dessert to go with a wonderful meal made by Larisa.