Ben and Laura Drive Each Other Crazy: The Badlands, SD

After leaving Detroit on Monday, Laura and I had every intention of trying to stop somewhere and drive to the Badlands on Tuesday morning. HOWEVER, since we're handsome adventurers, we decided to drive through the night and arrive at the Badlands in the morning, pitch camp, and get our butts on the trails!

This, however, is not recommended for the following reasons:
1. it is 18.5 hours from Detroit to the Badlands. (that's a lot of driving)
2. isn't that enough!?!

I can't sleep in the car, and Laura slept maybe 3 hours, so when we arrived at the Badlands at almost 7am, we were tired to say the least. But something about the mighty change in landscape between the east coast and everything west of the Mississippi sparked an air of excitement in us, in spite of our exhaustion. The change was made all the more dramatic when, as the sun slowly crept up, more and more of the prairie and hills were revealed to us.

Amazing. Words cannot describe.

Hiking through this place is the simplest way to placate my inner child. It is a never-ending source of visual stimuli.

Some strange line in the rocks.

Me at the lookout at the end of our hike.

Laura! South Dakota!

At this point, Laura and I had been awake for about 27 hours. The genius here is that we were really exhausted and hungry and our spirits were a little down. So to keep up the optimism, we decided to smack on a smile and feign incredible, kindergartenesque excitement.

We were excited in real life, but it was hard to express it. I think wide eyes gave it away

We're at our campsite!

The tent is up!

(Thanks, Rich Hoban for loaning us some of these fineries. They're treating us quite well.)

Rich's camp stove warmed us up some water for the tea that kept us awake and spiritually centered. Mostly awake, though.

Being in the Badlands is like being on the moon.

Desert vegetation.

It was pretty cold when we first got to SD. Not unpleasant, but crisp and windy enough to bundle up. There were rainclouds overhead when we first arrived, but they burned off at around noon. In this picture, I was convinced it was like 1:30pm since I was delirious. It was 9:45am. Here, I'm surprised.