Our journey then continued south toward South Dakota’s Badlands, extending the geological and historical story that had begun in North Dakota. Thank goodness Annie was ready to rally. She drove the 6 hours to the South Dakota Badlands. On our way there a young man about 16 years old side-swiped my Ram 1500 in an 80 mph speed limit section on highway I-90. We exchanged insurance, registration, contact information as well as photos. I submitted the claim to insurance as the side swiping of my vehicle created damage on both passenger side doors and rear wheel well area. His vehicle didn’t even have a scratch. I will take it in to a repair shop in late November / early December as it does not impair the driving and I don’t wish to derail the itinerary.
The transition is remarkable. We had just spent several days exploring a landscape that helped transform Theodore Roosevelt from a grieving young man into one of America’s most consequential leaders. Now we were continuing into another extraordinary Badlands landscape. The geology changes. The scenery changes. The history changes. But the feeling remains remarkably consistent: vast skies, exposed rock, grasslands, wildlife and an enormous sense of space.
South Dakota Badlands — Where the Road Gets Weird and Beautiful
After three memorable days in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Annie and I crossed into South Dakota and the Badlands, trading the rugged North Dakota landscape for one of the most visually surreal places in America. We made Cedar Pass Campground our home for two nights, which turned out to be an excellent base for exploring the park. The Badlands immediately delivered what we had come to see: enormous eroded formations, sharply carved ridges, strange colors, and landscapes that look less like South Dakota and more like someone dropped pieces of another planet onto the Great Plains.
Our first serious hiking adventure took us onto three of the park’s signature trails: Notch, Door and Window. Each offered a completely different way of experiencing the Badlands. Notch provided the adventure, while Door and Window took us into the maze of erosion that makes this landscape so fascinating. And then there was the Badlands Loop Road.
Rather than simply driving through the park, we treated the road almost like a sightseeing trail, stopping repeatedly at overlooks including Panorama Point, Yellow Mounds and Pinnacles. The colors seemed to change every time the sun moved. The Yellow Mounds were particularly spectacular — layers of yellow, orange, red and gray stacked across the landscape, revealing millions of years of geological history in a surprisingly artistic package. We also tackled Castle Trail and Medicine Root Trail, which gave us a much closer look at the formations than we could get from the overlooks. Castle Trail, in particular, made it clear that the Badlands aren’t really something you can appreciate from a car window. You need to get out into them. And, of course, hiking has consequences. By the end of Day Two, we had earned a return to the truck. Enter: Wall, South Dakota
We took the Loop Road, this time heading toward Wall, a tiny South Dakota town that has achieved an almost legendary status because of one enormous roadside attraction: Wall Drug. Calling Wall Drug a drugstore is technically correct in roughly the same way that calling Yellowstone a pond would be technically correct. Wall Drug is part drugstore, part restaurant, part shopping mall, part museum, part roadside carnival and part wonderfully inexplicable American institution. There are gift shops everywhere. Strange displays. Western memorabilia. Tourist souvenirs. Museums. Food. A restaurant capable of handling roughly 550 diners. And enough things competing for your attention that you eventually begin wondering whether you accidentally walked into a small town that happens to be inside a drugstore. It was gloriously odd with very strange vibes. Fortunately, Wall itself offered us a much more peaceful refuge: a cute local coffee shop.
That became our office for a bit. I sat down with coffee and worked on the blog while Annie made phone calls and took care of her own business — including acquiring some wine, which I believe falls squarely under the category of essential expedition supplies.
The Badlands may be ancient, but our modern road-trip responsibilities continued unabated.
The Tire That Wanted Attention
Then the truck reminded us that every great expedition needs at least one mechanical subplot. We discovered a slow leak in the driver’s-side rear tire. Nothing dramatic. No roadside disaster. Just one of those little annoyances that has the potential to become a very large annoyance if ignored. We added air and kept an eye on it. And that turned out to be the right decision, because the next chapter of the day was one of those wonderful road-trip surprises that you simply can’t schedule.
Finding Camp
Somewhere between Wall and Sage Creek, we found a really cool campsite.
And this one was special. The location gave us an extraordinary view across the Badlands, and the timing couldn’t have been better. We arrived in time to watch the landscape transform under the setting sun. The formations that had looked rugged and almost hostile during the heat of the day suddenly became soft silhouettes against the evening sky. Then came sunrise.
This is one of the great gifts of traveling with a rooftop tent: you don’t just visit the landscape — you wake up inside it. We took a bunch of photographs, enjoyed the sunset and sunrise, and met some genuinely interesting fellow travelers around camp.
And, as happens so often on a road trip, the campground became a little information exchange. Several people we met had just come from Custer State Park — precisely where Annie and I were headed the following morning. They gave us tips, stories and a preview of what was waiting down the road.
Another Road-Trip Lesson
There was something particularly fitting about this stretch of the trip.
We had started the Badlands chapter with a carefully selected campground at Cedar Pass, a list of hikes and a plan for exploring the Loop Road. But some of the best moments happened after the plan ended: A strange roadside attraction. A coffee shop that became an impromptu office. A tire that developed a slow leak. A random campsite between Wall and Sage Creek. A spectacular sunset. A spectacular sunrise. And strangers around a campfire who happened to know something about tomorrow’s destination. That’s really becoming the rhythm of this 160-day journey: the itinerary gets you there, but the unexpected things are what make the story. And tomorrow, the story would move from the surreal landscape of the Badlands into the very different world of Custer State Park and the Black Hills.