Dec '24 Badlands and Devil's Tower Trip

Once upon a time, I used to post travel blogs onto my website. That more or less stopped once I left California and I got out of the habit of sharing the photos I took. I guess the other part is that all my trips have gotten way more … intimate … in the sense that my son appears in most photos and I felt a little hesitant to post them publicly. But, after all this time, I finally start feeling the call again.

The Badlands

It all started with an innocent request from my son, 15: “Dad, I know what I want for Christmas. I want to go to the Badlands.” I was in the middle of driving us home after I picked him up from school and I was caught off guard by the request, so I just stared for a moment or two while I thought it through. The weather had been particularly warm so far this year …

Long story short, I agreed and less than two weeks later we made the ~750 mile trip to Wall, SD as our base of operations for the short three day trip. The drive along I-90 was the most boring of any trip across the states I’ve taken so far, unfortunately. Once we got close to the Badlands we got to see our first ‘scenic overlook’ and my boy jumped out to take a Polaroid of it. That expansive South Dakota sky was welcome because we spent all of WI and MN trapped in a dense foggy soup.

The first scenic overlook stop along I-90.
The first scenic overlook stop along I-90.

Wall is a little town that has a lot of old-school tourist attraction vibes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking of blogging this at the time so I didn’t take any pictures Wall Drug, any of the ~80 or so billboards we saw en route or the dinosaur on the edge of town that advertises it. After buying some fudge and scented candles, we took a little rest at out hotel before striking out at about 7:30pm to take some night time shots.

I had no idea how this was gonna go because the only other time I attempted this was a cloudy night with my DSLR on a tripod which got me nothing. For this trip, all I had was my Pixel 9 Pro XL (which shot all the photos in this post) and I was going to try out its astrophotography mode. Honestly, I was pretty skeptical and had really low expectations. We drove straight south from Wall to enter Badlands from the west entrance under the cover of night … and found a few others doing the same thing. After pushing down any feelings rising up from annihilating their exposures with my headlights, we got out of the car, setup the little phone camera tripod I had and got to work at Pinnacles Overlook.

Our first astrophotography shot in the Badlands.
Our first astrophotography shot in the Badlands.

Holy shit! As a middle-aged guy, it’s hard to state just how miraculous it feels to capture such a shot with a ‘4 minute exposure time’ on a cell phone and have it turn out like this! As a bonus, it even makes a very short animated loop for fun:

A short animation of our first astrophotography shot.

It was dark enough that our little red LED light wasn’t going to illuminate our path out to the lookout point so I just took our night shots from the parking lot. The animation shows our silent friend working with his own gear. Overall, I was very impressed with the output!

By this point, it was already below freezing again and standing outside to do 4 minute exposures while not creating any light pollution was mildly difficult. Deciding it’d be best to be more alone, we took off just down the road to Ancient Hunters Overlook and grabbed a few more exposures.

The night sky over Wall to the north.
The night sky over Wall to the north.
The south-western view … and the back end of my car. Is that the Milky Way?
The south-western view … and the back end of my car. Is that the Milky Way?

For what would be the last stop of the night, we headed down to Yellow Mounds Overlook to take a few more shots.

The night sky south over the Yellow Mounds.
The night sky south over the Yellow Mounds.

At this point, both of us were pretty cold from standing outside. My son had already decided to stay in the car for the Yellow Mounds. Deciding we had enough fun we retreated to the warmth of the hotel 10 minutes away and resolved to get up early to make up for it.

It turns out that I miscalculated the ‘sunrise’ time for when the sun actually pokes over the horizon versus what you get on a website. We were a little late … however I know those shots are technically hard to expose. We did get a number of ‘golden hour’ shots though as we started the day. Instead of going right to Pinnacles Overlook, we headed west and got our first glimpse of the Badlands in broad daylight at the Hay Butte Overlook.

Hay Butte Overlook panorama at sunrise.
Hay Butte Overlook panorama at sunrise.

You could see for miles and the sunlight was just starting to hit the grasslands. Right up the road was Badlands Wilderness Overlook where we got to see our first, distant, view of bison.

Badlands Wilderness Overlook at sunrise with bison in the distance.
Badlands Wilderness Overlook at sunrise with bison in the distance.
Badlands Wilderness Overlook at sunrise, zoomed in on bison.
Badlands Wilderness Overlook at sunrise, zoomed in on bison.

We started driving up the dirt road towards Roberts Prairie Dog Town when we were able to take our first roadside close-up shot of a bison from within the safety of our car.

Bison don’t respond to ‘pspspspspsps’ like cats do … Or ‘moooooooo’ …
Bison don’t respond to ‘pspspspspsps’ like cats do … Or ‘moooooooo’ …

The prairie dogs themselves were all absent at the dog town, either hibernating … or apparently sick with ’the plague’. There was a little trail extending south from there, however, so we walked a few feet on that before capturing some photos. This type of little path is something I could walk on forever and the drive to do just that was strong … but we were right at the start of our Badlands exploration and we didn’t want to spend too much time getting sidetracked since my son had proposed that we see Devils Tower too since we were so close. With that in mind, we only walked a few hundred feet before turning back around to the car.

No prairie dogs out, but this path looks inviting as it runs along the right side of this shot.
No prairie dogs out, but this path looks inviting as it runs along the right side of this shot.
Another roadside shot of a bison from within our car. All back and no face, sadly… Also didn’t respond to our calls.
Another roadside shot of a bison from within our car. All back and no face, sadly… Also didn’t respond to our calls.

After not finding any prairie dogs, we decided to turn back around and check out Pinnacles Overlook for the first time in daylight. Off the parking lot of the overlook, there is a trail that leads down to a lookout point and extended just to west giving an expansive view of the geography. A missed step at night with low light would have caused some problems for sure.

Pinnacles Overlook during daylight.
Pinnacles Overlook during daylight.

Once our revisiting of our first overlook was complete, we hopped back into the car and drove the short distance to the Yellow Mounds Overlook to catch a shot of that in daylight as well. The mounds were sure … yellow. Past that, not much to see there so we drove around the corner and got a nicer panorama at Conata Basin Overlook.

The Yellow Mounds were named appropriately.
The Yellow Mounds were named appropriately.
Side view of the Yellow Mounds from Conata Basin Overlook.
Side view of the Yellow Mounds from Conata Basin Overlook.

From there, the rest of the ride to the visitor center for the Badlands was mostly uneventful. The land flattened out considerably as this panorama from Homestead Overlook shows. Also, we sadly did not see any more wildlife from the road. The air was also still very brisk and my son and I would jump out of the car, read the signs and then jump back in - or just read the sign from the car as the park was still empty on the west side.

The flat lands of Homestead Overlook.
The flat lands of Homestead Overlook.

The visitor center stop was quick: we got my son’s passport stamp, picked up a cool little set of 12 postcards to do art studies of later as well as a few other small things. Breaking my tradition, I did not get a coffee mug.

With the requisite gift shopping done, we headed straight to the trail I was most looking forward to: Notch Trail. I had read some review of this online and had kept the nature of this ‘Moderate to Strenuous’ trail a secret so that finding the ladder was a surprise. It looks more intimidating in this wide angle than in real life, but it wasn’t completely vertical and was pretty easy to get up.

Notch Trail has a a ladder made of wood and steel cable.
Notch Trail has a a ladder made of wood and steel cable.
The view looking at the start of Notch Trail with the ladder visible on the left.
The view looking at the start of Notch Trail with the ladder visible on the left.

Once up the ladder, we followed the ’trail’, marked only by posts at intervals, to get to the overlook without any real difficulty. Maybe it’s way more taxing in 100 F heat, but the wind chill was close to freezing temperature for us. Either way, the view was real nice. My panorama is fairly distorted but it will give a sense of scale for the nicer shot after it.

Notch Trail overlook panorama at the end of the road.
Notch Trail overlook panorama at the end of the road.
Notch Trail overlook at the end of the road.
Notch Trail overlook at the end of the road.

The view looks to the south and you can see the Cliff Shelf trail. It’s a nice spot to sit and relax for a moment before returning back up the trail.

Relaxing a bit before returning up the trail.
Relaxing a bit before returning up the trail.

The last trail we were going to look at for the day was the Castle trail. We only walked along it for 20 minutes and ran out of time to confidently loop it into the Medicine Root trail because we still needed to drive to Devil’s Tower which was almost three hours away. Also it kinda looked like it might start storming soon…

The Castle trail.
The Castle trail.

After jumping back in the car, we headed up the road a short bit to Big Badlands Overlook which is in sight of the north east entry gate. This is probably the coolest overlook of all of them, but our lighting had taken a turn for the worse as the clouds came in. The cold air was blowing hard on us at this point too! Either way, the selfie we took here is my favorite shot of the trip.

The Big Badlands Overlook as clouds start ganging up on us.
The Big Badlands Overlook as clouds start ganging up on us.
My son and I along the Big Badlands Overlook. Wearing this LA Beast shirt is now a vacation tradition.
My son and I along the Big Badlands Overlook. Wearing this LA Beast shirt is now a vacation tradition.

The Devil’s Tower

Just like that, our morning trip through the Badlands was over. I think we could have spent the whole day there if we took things at a more leisurely pace, but we had close to a three hour drive to Devil’s Tower and it was getting late in the day. The addition of Devil’s Tower, in Wyoming, was a spontaneous decision and it came after I already booked our hotel in Wall for two nights, so I wanted to get there and back again without it being too late - and we wanted some sunlight to walk around a bit too!

The drive to our Wyoming destination was pleasant enough. We had to resist the urge to visit Rushmore due to the previously mentioned time constraints. Deadwood, SD, is also close to the route out there, which would have been interesting to see. While on the interstate, we had a bald eagle fly just in front of our car and we almost hit it! The memory card in my dash cam failed on our way out, so I wasn’t able to record it, which is absolutely tragic.

The temperatures dove below freezing and snow cover started to appear once in Wyoming. When we got to Devil’s Tower, the gift shop was closed for the holidays so the only thing left to do was hike and take some photos. The parking lot is surprisingly small for this place and I can only imagine that it’s impossible to deal with in the summertime instead of our almost-new-years-eve visit.

Landed at Devil’s Tower, which looks quite striking from a distance.
Landed at Devil’s Tower, which looks quite striking from a distance.
Boulder field in front of Devil’s Tower.
Boulder field in front of Devil’s Tower.

The boulders along the other side were much more impressive but it’s harder to take photos of those from the trail without getting prayer bundles in the frame, which signs around the area ask you not to photograph. Why photographs, a modern invention, are problematic isn’t understood by this traveller, but I did my best to honor the request.

Added an old man to the picture for scale.
Added an old man to the picture for scale.

The walk around the trail was paved and would have been otherwise super easy … except for the patches of ice. Since the weather was oscillating around the freezing point, this ice was pretty slippery and on the more angled parts of the trail, the only thing we could do was slide down in as controlled of a way as possible.

Overall, it was a relaxing and enjoyable short hike around the Tower. There’s a longer trail that looks like it goes through the surrounding land in a pleasing route, but the sun was setting and I had hours to drive back along the path we came, so we stuck only to the trail around the Tower itself.

Found a deer hanging out near the walking path.
Found a deer hanging out near the walking path.
Hard not to think of Ark’s ‘The Island’ map while walking along the path.
Hard not to think of Ark’s ‘The Island’ map while walking along the path.
Lots of downed or burned up trees along the path, but sunset was almost upon us.
Lots of downed or burned up trees along the path, but sunset was almost upon us.
The view of the surrounding geography was so nice…
The view of the surrounding geography was so nice…
One last look at Devil’s Tower before we finish up the trail.
One last look at Devil’s Tower before we finish up the trail.

After finishing the trail, we headed back to Wall, SD for the night and then made an uneventful return on the ride home. Hopefully this was an enjoyable read. I wasn’t thinking of doing a travel blog at the time or else I’d have taken a few more pictures to tie everything together. Even still, I think it was nice for me to write all of this down, even if it’s only to remind myself of the trip in the future.