We were up early again today to catch the sunrise.
The managers of the park really miss the boat here. There's no official "sunset viewing area" or "sunrise viewing area". You're just supposed to drive around and look for the best photo-op.
Sunrise and sunset were the most pleasant times of day. There are no mosquitoes to bother you. The heat is much less. And the buttes appear to glow.
The main road (SD-240) which passes through the park is called "Badlands Loop Road". It is not actually a loop. It passes through the Badlands National Park like a backwards "J" and meets up with I-90 on each end. If you enter the park at the east end (via Cactus Flat) and go west (well, south), you hit the Visitor Center and the southern overlooks. That's where you'll find lodging and ranger programs. We'd spent all our time here. However, the best leg of the "loop" was yet to come. We were leaving the park today via the western entrance (Wall). That took us past one of the most interesting overlooks in the entire park: Yellow Mounds.
Several posts ago, I described the layers that make up the buttes. But you can only see the top layers at the eastern and southern ends of the park. The Yellow Mounds overlook on the northwest side is really your first chance to see the lower layers.
The Black Hills uplift caused the inland sea to drain away, and the black ocean mud was exposed to the air. It turned yellow. BRIGHT yellow.
This was probably my favorite area of the park.
