Badlands

Despite the bleak weather, we drove the loop through the Badlands. It's still a neat landscape, even if the colors and the relief are a bit muted by the gray backdrop and the lack of shadows. My first memory of a trip through here - when I was a kid - was of an electrical storm. And every time I come back, that's what I'm hoping for.

We didn't stop at Wall Drug. D enjoyed his first visit, when he was very young, but since then he's sort of resented the stop - something about touristy and stupid (Wall Drug 2011). So we had to forego the free ice water and the chance to perch our child on a the back of a dinosaur (or was it a jackalope?), but I could rest easy knowing that I had a "Wall Drug" bumper sticker above the map above my desk at home - right next to "Sea Lion Caves" and "This Car Climbed Mt. Washington."