Badlands and Wind Cave National Park

Badlands National Park is in South Dakota, and it has the second coolest name behind Death Valley National Park (my opinion).

Imagine trying to cross this land by foot, or worse, with your Oregon trail style covered wagon. The Lakota called this area "mako sica" which means bad lands. The French-Canadian fur trappers who travelled this region called it "les mauvaises terres pour traverser". (Sourced from wikipedia because I couldn't remember what it was called.)

Badlands is the first National Park that we have visited with an open hike policy. The ranger at the visitor center specifically told us we were allowed to hike off-trail.

Few wildlife call the Badlands home due to lack of water.

I was not able to get any pictures of Wind Cave. I didn't even take my phone into the cave due to the amount of crawling and the possibility of wet conditions.

Entering the cave is by guided tour only, and there are 6 types of tours offered. We took the Wild Cave Tour so we could explore as much of the cave as possible.

The cave is 300 million years old and is one of the rare caves that contain something called boxwork. Boxwork is caused when gypsum fills in cracks in limestone and then water erodes away the limestone, leaving a box shaped formation of gypsum.

(This info sourced from the Wind Cave National Park website.)

https://www.nps.gov/wica/learn/nature/wind-cave-geology.htm

https://www.nps.gov/wica/learn/historyculture/cave-exploration.htm