Day 26: It’s Good in the Badlands! (Rapid City to Interior, SD)

Distance: 75.4 miles

Elevation: +1633/-2491 ft

Temperatures: 50s to 70s (lovely!)

We’ve had a few long distance days, and today was another one, but boy, was it a great ride! We started early (AGAIN) but not to beat the heat this time; we wanted to get to the Badlands with time to go to the visitor center and take a walk.

Nature blessed us with the best weather and wind today. We had an accommodating tailwind for most of the ride, and the temperature was pleasant throughout the day. We rolled out of Rapid City and into grasslands with a lot of gradual downhills and some easy uphills.

Around 9:30am, the topography began to change as we entered the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, an area protecting the native plants and animals that have adapted to a land that is too dry to support trees and too wet to be a desert. We saw mile-wide prairie dog towns (too fast to be captured on film...they just squeaked and disappeared down a hole).

Freeman Tilden, a conservation writer (and founding father of naturalist and historical interpretation!) described the Badlands as “peaks and valleys of delicately balanced colors - colors that shift in the sunshine,...and a thousand tints that color charts do not show.” What an apt description. Here are photos that barely do this beautiful land justice.

We’re staying in cabins in Cedar Pass before leaving tomorrow (early...shocker) for Cody, Nebraska. We may be without WiFi for a few days, so don’t worry about us if we fall behind in posts...we’ll catch you back up in Omaha!

Highlights:

The Badlands!

Lowlights:

None! Well, maybe getting up early but turns out, you can get use to just about anything!