What to Wear in Badlands National Park, Season by Season

Family at the ben reifel visitor center

Two things decide what you should wear in Badlands National Park, and neither is the season. There is no shade anywhere, not on the overlooks, not on the trails, not in the parking lots, and the wind is close to constant. Closed shoes, sun cover and a windproof layer will serve you better in any […]

Where to See Bighorn Sheep in Badlands National Park

Bighorn sheep in the badlands at golden hour

The three most reliable places to see bighorn sheep in Badlands National Park are Pinnacles Overlook, Big Badlands Overlook and Castle Trail, the three the National Park Service names, and the three our guides check first. Go at dawn or dusk, when sheep come down to feed. Through the heat of the day they climb […]

Fossils in Badlands National Park: What You Can See

Badlands strata layers

People arrive in the Badlands looking for dinosaurs and leave slightly confused. Here is the honest answer: there are no dinosaurs here, because when the dinosaurs were alive this place was underwater. What the Badlands has instead is three completely different worlds stacked on top of each other, a Cretaceous sea, a subtropical swamp, and […]

Rapid City to Badlands National Park: Which Entrance and Which Way Round

Golden-hour sunlight illuminates layered rock formations and sparse shrubs in badlands national park, south dakota.

Badlands National Park is about 75 miles east of Rapid City, roughly an hour and fifteen minutes on I-90. The driving is easy. The two decisions that shape your day are which entrance you use and whether you take the gravel road, and most visitors make both by accident. The two entrances The Badlands Loop […]

Is Badlands National Park Worth Visiting? An Honest Answer

Badlands national park at yellow mounds

Yes, but almost everyone who says it was not worth it made the same mistake. They drove the 31-mile Loop Road in about an hour, stopped at two overlooks and left. Done that way, the Badlands is an hour of interesting rock. Give it half a day and it becomes one of the strangest landscapes […]

Badlands National Park With Kids: An Honest Guide

Family at badlands national park

Badlands National Park is one of the better national parks to visit with children, for a reason most families never find out about: at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center you can watch real paleontologists cleaning real fossils, through a window, up close. It is the only national park in the country where you can do […]