10 March 2010

What planet?

badlands
Jen hiking the badlands
badlands clay
badlands

Despite Jen's injured knee, we set off for a short hike through the wilderness of baked-hard mud. Shadows and colors were almost eliminated by the high mid-afternoon sun. For all the austere beauty that the prairie holds surrounding this serrated 100-mile interruption, here it is the beauty of martian dreams.

Great Plains scavenger hunt item #8: Badlands of South Dakota

For half a million years, water and wind have sculpted fantastic rock art in southwestern South Dakota, mesmerizing visitors to Badlands National Park. Life is scarce in these stark buttes. But a surrounding ocean of grasslands includes healthy numbers of buffalo, coyotes, pronghorn, and birds of prey. Here the prairie endures.

-National Geographic

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