On our way out West, we stopped in the Badlands of South Dakota. We found a cool off the grid campsite just outside the National Park. Not only were the views pretty wild, it was FREE!
Camping in the Badlands
The trip west has been pretty smooth so far. We traveled across Wisconsin, Minnesota, and now into South Dakota. At the western end of the state are the Badlands and Badlands National Park. We had found a dispersed camping location online, just outside the entrance to the park, and decided to see if we could get the motorhome in there. We knew it was a dirt road and some sections were a bit rough based on the online descriptions. The campsites were along a ridge overlooking a section of the Badlands.
I was hoping we could pull off the side of the paved road, unhook the Jeep, and go investigate before taking the coach down the dirt road. No such luck. When we arrived at the turnoff, there was no where to park the coach. The paved road had no shoulder either. Making a U-turn was not an option with a big rig like ours so, we headed in. I went very slow so as to not kick up a lot of dust but also to make sure we took any bumps as gently as possible. The view from the paved road towards the campsites in shown below left. You can see some RV’s parked on the ridge line. The drive in was pretty easy really if you took it slow. Once there the slow drive was worth it. We were right on the edge looking down into a several hundred foot section of the Badlands. You can see the view from the coach below right. Sorry for the iPhone photos. Note the crazy looking clouds in the picture on the left. We think it was from all the western wildfire smoke in the atmosphere.
A nice online resource for finding free campsites like this is found here. I’ll also add it to the resources page.
The Featured Image
The Badlands National Park covers 244,000 acres and has a North Unit and a South section called the Stronghold Unit. We were camped just North of the Pinnacles entrance of the North Unit. We only had one day to spend so we weren’t able explore very much of the park. We did find a couple overlooks that looked promising for sunset and sunrise so we decided to come back when the light wasn’t so harsh.
The image at the top of this post is from the Pinnacles Overlook. We hiked a bit away from where most of the tourists were and we found this section looking west towards the sunset. It had a nice leading line in the foreground before dropping off into the canyon below. The clouds were lighting up nicely after the sun went down and happened to be in the same direction as the leading line in the foreground. It’s nice when it all comes together.
I bracketed my shots to get an exposure for the sky and one for the foreground. I merged the two together in Photoshop and did a bit of other image adjusting to bring out the color and contrast from the RAW files.
Western Wildfires
As we got into South Dakota we started to encounter smoke from the many wildfires in Montana and Oregon. The smoke is making it’s way east and in some cases casting a gray haze to the entire sky. The sun comes through as just a red ball like at sunset. It’s very dependent on wind direction obviously as some days are clear. This could be an issue as we move further west. It’ll make photography a challenge. There are a number of online sources for smoke maps to see where the fires are and where the smoke plume is going. It’s pretty extensive this year.
South Dakota Residency
Well the process for becoming residents of South Dakota was extremely easy. Karen and I both were in and out with new licenses in hand in less than 15 minutes. Unheard of back in Michigan. There was no waiting and the staff was very friendly. The vehicle plates took a little longer but not much. This is handled at a separate location at the county treasurer. Still it went very smoothly.
So onward west we go…
Featured image: Nikon D810 with Nikkor 16-35mm @ 16mm. f/8.0 at 1/20 & 1/5 seconds. ISO 64.
