Badlands National Park - Spring - Unnamed Adventures

Badlands National Park - Spring

5/20/2017

Visiting the Badlands National Park in the Spring is completely different than seeing it in the summer! This was actually my first time being at the park when all the grass was green with all of the wild flowers blooming. I HIGHLY recommend visiting the park at this time of year. It was not crazy hot, not too many people and there was so much more to see!

One of the things about the Badlands that I did not realize before is that the wind is pretty crazy there! We camped at the Cedar Pass Campground and the wind just never stopped blowing. This campground has sun shelters and is pretty nice. But there is nothing to stop the wind, it is just wide open space! There are no fire pits at the campgrounds because of how dry it is most of the year. Between the mixed-prairie grasses, the lack of moisture for most of the year and the constant wind, a fire pit would be pretty dangerous.

We were actually going to stay at the Sage Creek Campground but there was a lot of rain the week prior and we couldn't access the site. The campground is located on the west side of the park's North Unit and is only accessible by an unpaved road which sometimes closes temporarily after winter storms or spring rains (which was essentially what we ran into). Bison often wader through this campground, since it is pretty primitive, so we will have to stay there next time we visit!

There are quite a few hiking trails in the Badlands. We enjoyed a sunrise hike at the Window Trail and then enjoyed more views on the Notch Trail. After breakfast at the campground, we packed up and hiked the Medicine Root Trail, which I absolutely loved! We saw all sorts of wildlife and ton's of wildflowers. It was so peaceful out there and the formations look completely different when you are hiking by them in the open expanse. It is super hard to explain, you just have to take my word for it and go on this hike.