Badlands NP

Didn't really want to move on this morning from our pretty site at Devils Tower, but our tour director had another exciting day planned, and so it was onward ever onward. Stopped to admire a field of prairie dogs on our way out of Devils Tower. Quite small, and pretty much a cross between squirrels and meerkats. They sit up like meerkats when they are sensing danger and, as they like making their burrows under the road, this is fairly often.

Some way down the road we stopped at Rapid City for some more supplies (and donuts) at Wal-Mart, then it was on to the town of Wall. We've seen a lot of Wall. For the last 100 miles there have been signs every couple of hundred metres extolling the virtue of the drug store (pharmacy) in town called Wall Drug which, according to the signs sells everything from coffee to souvenirs to meals to western gear, and which we thought we'd better stop at for all their effort. Seems that nobody used to stop in Wall after the end of the second world war (and why would you) so the owners started putting up billboards advertising free water. That got some people stopping. Then they started offering 5c coffees (and still do). Next was free donuts to veterans, and hundreds of billboards for hundreds of miles in every direction. Soon people were stopping in their droves to see what all the fuss was about. They now own the whole city block, employ half the town, and need their own carparks. Once Best Western, Econo Lodge, Super 8 and other motel chains built there, the tour buses started stopping. Then it was listed in Lonely Planet and other tour guides. Now it's an industry in it's own right.

Hard to categorise - kind of a cross between a town, a Disney theme park and a historic attraction. It's arcades are filled with eating options and the whole gamut of shops including cafes, donut shops, fudge stores, souvenir shops and western clothing shops. It boasts historical exhibitions about the area and it's history, and even a full chapel for tourists, but no wi-fi anywhere in the town. Sigh.

Drove out to the Badlands NP. It's hard to describe too. Think moonscape and Mad Max. It's been the setting of numbers of apocalyptic style movies, like Apocalypse, The End Of The World, and Dancing With Wolves (which for some reason caused most women to die of heart flutters, so it counts). There's only a single road through the park, so we worked our way west to east stopping at all the scenic views, eating lunch at one of them, until we ended up at the visitor's centre and campground.

It's quite a warm day, close to 100 in the old money, but the breeze is keeping it bearable. Our NP campground has power, which is unusual, so we were able to enlist the aircon to cool the van as there is no shade anywhere. Had a bit of a break late afternoon until the sun got a bit lower and we could head out on a walk around three of the trails. Whilst there is a lot of moonscape about, there is also lots of flat plains covered in very sweet smelling yellow flowers that we found out were called Sweet Yellow Clover. They were actually imported for rancher's cattle, and is now an out of control pest, but it looks lovely.

A lateish tea on our return, and we watched the sunset play with the rocks as we ate - very spectacular. About 10pm when it was quite dark, we went star gazing courtesy of the park rangers and their super big telescopes.