South Dakota Badlands ~ II: Photograph by JL Gardner. It was quite a fascinating day that I passed through the Badlands of South Dakota. It was in April of 2007, the night before a light snow had fallen over the region and while I was driving through the park, the sun was breaking through rather menacing clouds at various times making for an even more dramatic landscape.

Here's something more about the South Dakota Badlands from the internet: "For centuries humans have viewed South Dakota's celebrated Badlands with a mix of dread and fascination. The Lakota knew the place as "mako sica". Early French trappers called the area "les mauvaises terres a traverser". Both mean "bad lands." conservation writer Freeman Tilden described the region as "peaks and valleys of delicately banded colors - colors that shift in the sunshine... and a thousand tints that color charts do not show. In the early morning and evening, when shadows are cast upon the infinite peaks or on a bright moonlit night when the whole region seems a part of another world, the Badlands will be an experience not easily forgotten." Paleontologist Thaddeus Culbertson has another reaction, "Fancy yourself on the hottest day in summer in the hottest spot of such a place without water - without an animal and scarce an insect astir - without a single flower to speak pleasant things to you and you will have some idea of the utter loneliness of the Bad Lands."