One minute you’re driving along an arrow-straight road through a sea of shimmering grass towards a featureless horizon the next you’re assaulted by a Willy Wonka-ish eruption of candy-coloured hills, snaking gullies and striped cliff faces. The other half is the Badlands, a geological wonderland of soaring buttes, plunging canyons and piercing spires.Īnd it’s this incongruity that is so startling. Around half of its 99,000 hectares is the US’ largest mixed-grass prairie – vast, windswept plains that, despite their bleakness, support a remarkable array of fauna, including bison, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs and over 200 species of birds. The park itself is a lesson in contrasts. Not because the road is choked with traffic or is particularly challenging to drive, but for the simple reason that it meanders through an otherworldly landscape of such arresting beauty that you’ll be repeatedly compelled to pull over just to gawp at its majesty. In reality, I suspect few people manage it in less than five. Sunset in the Badlands National Park, South Dakota.
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