What to Wear in Badlands National Park, Season by Season

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

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

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

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

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

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 […]

Hiking the Castle Trail in Badlands National Park

Castle Trail is 5.2 miles point to point and the only trail in Badlands National Park longer than a mile. Distances, trailheads, wildlife and the shuttle problem most hikers hit at mile three.

Badlands National Park at Night: What to Expect After Dark

Badlands National Park stays open around the clock, and night is when it becomes a different park entirely: temperatures drop fast, the formations turn to silver silhouettes, coyotes call across the prairie, and overhead, in South Dakota’s first certified International Dark Sky Park, more than 7,500 stars come out under Bortle Class 2 skies. If […]

Milky Way Photography in Badlands National Park: A Practical Guide

Badlands National Park is one of the best places in the United States to photograph the Milky Way: a certified International Dark Sky Park with Bortle Class 2 skies, more than 7,500 visible stars on a clear night, and jagged rock formations that give your night shots a foreground almost no other dark-sky location can […]

The Best Stargazing Spots in Badlands National Park: A Dark Sky Park Guide

The best stargazing spots in Badlands National Park are the overlooks along the Badlands Wall, places far from the visitor center and campground lighting, where the park’s Bortle Class 2 skies reveal more than 7,500 stars on a clear night. Since July 17, 2026, the Badlands has been an official International Dark Sky Park, the […]