She beat me to posting a couple of pictures which I'm going to duplicate here, but I'll try to be better about not doing that in the future.
We left Madison early in the morning, and made it to the Badlands in time to set up the tent and get in a quick hike. The light is very interesting against the textures of the rocks around sundown, and it's difficult to capture with a camera.
There was a crew from Minnesota working on the roads there. (Our stimulus funding at work, and in my opinion, well spent) It was difficult to get around because of it, but they were certainly working hard... down to the end of daylight.
Don't let Susan's expression fool you. This ladder was strung along two cables that were driven into the rock, and she was not particularly happy about the near-vertical incline. What a good sport though!
Our campsite... tent borrowed from Susan's cousin Katie. Thanks Katie!
The sun was so hot that we pretty much got baked out of the tent by 7am. After packing up the tent we got an early start and took about a 2.5 hour hike which started with a climb from the lower elevation in the picture to where I'm sitting. We overheard a child that couldn't have been much more than 9 or 10 years old call it "strenuous."
After the climb, the rest of the hike wound through a prairie. It was hot, a (thankfully) dry 90 degrees by the time we stopped. Here are some particularly striking flowers from that part of the trail.
Susan took this picture because a weird cloud made this mountain look like it was smoking. It also gives a bit of a perspective of the flatter, grassier portion of the hike. You can also see some clouds rolling in which prompted our last minute decision to leave around noon and get some more driving under our belts.
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