To Badlands National Park, South Dakota

After waking up early to get our windshield fixed, we headed out to Wall, South Dakota. The drive was boring with nothing but windmills and farmlands to look at. Thankfully there were some roadside attractions that caught our eyes.

We first stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell which was interesting for about half an hour. Every year, since 1892 , the Corn Palace has turned this small western town into a tourist attraction. The main attraction is pretty much the outside décor.

The palace itself has designed palettes made of real colored corn cobs; we were actually able to see the creation of one. As we arrived a group of men were creating a bald eagle with an American Flag behind it. This patriotic palette fit this year’s theme perfectly.

Each year the palace has a different theme. The theme for 2010 – 2011 is “Through the Ages.” Walking around the building, we viewed the rest of the finished palette’s (hot air balloons, an Oldsmobile, a cowboy riding a horse, and a soldier with a tank behind him). As a whole, the palace was a very impressive interpretation of America through the years.

Besides our visit to the palace and a few stops to stretch our legs, the trip to Wall took up the majority of our day. Wall Drug is a convenient store that is advertised over 200 miles away for it’s “free ice water”. It was a fun walking through most of the store however, it would have taken a whole day just to go through every department.

Conveniently, Wall Drug is only a few miles North of Badlands, so it didn’t take long to arrive at the rocky canon’s and prairie lands of our trips first National Park.

With such beautiful landscaped canon’s, taking photos took up the rest our sunlit hours and soon we were driving through the Park in the dark to the closest gas station.

Driving through the Badlands at night is very similar to walking through a haunted house as a child, jittering around every corner and jumping at every sound. Headlights can only show so much while driving through deep black canyons and empty dark lands. With just our radio to comfort us, Jason and I were all of a sudden startled as something flew right at our car. A dark grey figure shot out from the upper right side of our windshield. Stopping the car immediately, Jason and I caught our breathe and turned to the figure that was sitting on a branch of a tree. Looking into the dark, our eyes finally adjusted on a pretty large owl. It was incredible, neither of us have ever seen an owl with such a large wingspan. What was even more unbelievable, was when we were driving, not even five minutes later, a mountain lion sprinted out into the street, right in front of us! It was really awesome to have seen such a rare animal and it’s too bad I didn’t’ have my camera ready for either interaction.

After such an intense drive through the Badlands, we made it to the gas station and figured, with bright lights and another camper in the parking lot, it was a safe place to call it a night.