A brief visit to the Badlands national park.

As with most of our national parks, the Badlands is rife with amazing things to see. The Badlands, unlike Yellowstone or Grand Tetons, is fairly repetive. The mudstone formations are incredible, but there isn't too much variety between them. For this reason, and the fact we entered the park on the wrong side (the eastern entrance!) and we were simply tired of being tourists, we left early. But we did photograph some stunning formations.

This 270° panorama gives you a fairly good idea of what the formations and their surroundings are like. As you enter the park from the east, this is the first big pulloff.

A look down a typical Badlands canyon.

It took half a million years for water to carve the Badlands from the surrounding prairie. In a similar time, all of the upper prairie will have washed away. The Badlands are an ephemeral formation, compared to the granite of the Tetons, for instance.

Note how straight the sedimentary layers are in this and other Badlands photographs, despite the varied erosion patterns.

This photo tried to catch how steep the cliff from which it was taken was.

Note the difference in erosion between the soft and hard sediments.

More so than most places in the national parks, you are discouraged from climbing these peaks. They erode fast enough without human help!

Red (presumably iron rich) and white sediments.

Kathie captures another view from the same spot as the previous photo.

A panorama of the more distant hills, again from the same spot.

Another look at some Badlands formations.

The grass atop the eroding prairie.

A panorama of a particularly spiky formation.