The Fellowship: Enter the Badlands

Sorting and repacking all our gear. We are not minimalist style campers. I think the Pilgrims brought less stuff.



















Craig and Dave share a moment on the White Table. I was right, the view was great from up there. Too bad we had to walk up, what was I thinking?



















We are lost as I take this Picture. We just don't know it yet.




Interior City Jail. Craig was very excited to find out where he'd be sleeping that night.



















The locals in the Sage Creek area. If they raise their tails straight up in the air it means they are getting ready to either attack you or defecate. Run either way.

When the sun reached its highest point on the first day, the ascendant king arrived in South Dakota. We welcomed him with hugs ad ritual shoe tossing. Then we drove for a long time though a whole lot of not much. We passed Scenic (Pop. 74) which has a real nice jungle gym. We stopped in Interior (Pop. 62) for gas, but they were out. Fortunately the Wagon Wheel bar down the street had some. Craig took time for a visit to the City Jail. We left full of gas and hungry for the last meal before the trail.

After a long time spent repacking and parceling out food we were ready for the big adventure. A nice drive out along the Badlands park loop got us all in the mood. Amazing terrain, like a technicolor moonscape. Fortunately there are pictures because I can’t describe it well. Particularly after absinthe. It’s big, and deep and very scary in parts. It’s easy to imagine why it’s called the badlands. Everything looked baked, the dirt, the grass, the buildings, the Buffalo chips, all of it. Even the river looked anemic.

We began our hike late in the afternoon and promptly got lost. The GPS that I had seemed a lot simpler to read in my kitchen. Out on the range it was tough. Fortunately we had a map and a compass. I fell back on my Boy Scout skills and got us headed in the right direction. It’s all backcountry so there aren’t trails, you just have to walk along wherever. We hiked beside the river and crossed it in a huge mud patch. The first goal was the white Table, the highest point around. I remember thinking that it’ll be cool to see the view, forgetting how much I hate climbing with a pack. It was high but we made it with about an hour to sundown and 3 miles to our campsite. We changed the plans and camped on the shanks of the white table on a ridge. That night brought a great sunset and more stars that I’d ever seen. With no trees and no city lights there was nothing but us and the heavens.

The morning of the second day, found us strong and ready for hiking. The planned hikes would take us over meandering prairie with lots of grass and rolling hills. Over breakfast we decided that we wanted to tackle the real tough parts. The naked cliffs of red and yellow, the sun blasted parched canyons, the baddest parts of the Badlands. We hiked back to the car and headed for Deer Haven. That was good because the GPS had erased our plotted course overnight somehow. It was map orienteering from now on.

At this point we’ve established that I haven’t seen any current movies or read any current books, so Craig and Dave filled me in on what I’m missing. Anchorman (seen that) is the touchstone for all conversation, there is no occurrence that a quote from that movie can not be applied to! We think we managed to quote over 30 movies while in the backcountry, including Evening at Harlow. Craig is putting that list together.

At 1:00 we walked out into the backcountry again. We ran into Shannon the Park Ranger before we headed out. She gave us an official mission to GPS the location of any fossils or animal skulls that we may find. She was hot. She was impressed with our goal to reach the Deer Havens. We are mighty manly men! Had we been thinking we would have had her show us on the map how to get there. At least she could have warned us about the fences!

This day turned out to be a lot longer than we thought. It was full of fits and starts as we wandered up and down the finger canyons looking for the path out to Deer Haven. Oh Deer Haven! It came to be a mythical place where the deer frolicked and the antelope played, and a discouraging word seldom is heard. Limpid pools of clear water await us, and Park Rangers will be there with dinner ready for us! The thing about the Badlands is that there is no shade anywhere from about 10 to 3. It’s just hot, real hot, with a breeze that sucks the life from your very skin.

We stopped for lunch around 2 and Dave ate half the Jelly.

We finally found the right trail and it ended in a cow pasture. A fence was built right through the trek! How does this happen? It’s not on the map! We climbed over it an kept going. We each independently decided there were bulls in the field but only mentioned it after we came through alive on the other side. We celebrated with a rest in some shade and granola bars.

Now we had to find a way up to the Deer haven. It is a raised plateau about 150 ft above the plain. I had a rough time going up but finally we found the way. The whole way up was crisscrossed with deep ravines and gullys. It made for slow going with our giant packs. At the top we were separated from the green fields by a deep ravine. Gollum found that way and led us into the sweet shady coolness of the Haven! A natural bridge over that let us past to the fabled land.

We were exhausted but excited. We enjoyed dinner very much that night. We also realized that we were short of water. Oops! There had been some leakage at lunch and we lost about half of our big container. Hopefully in the morning we could find a way out over the hills that would be easier. We had hiked around the whole mountain chain to get here. We didn’t like the idea of going back that way again. That evening there were more stars and lots of Guy talk.