Day 5. From buffalo to ... more buffalo?

Today’s journey would take us to some place I was really looking forward to, Badlands National Park. It was only 5 hours down the road so we slept in a little and went out to breakfast at the Coffey Haus in Luverne, MN. Good food and good wireless internet so that all you good people could get pictures.

The drive took us across South Dakota on I-90. This stretch of road has to be littered with dozens of odd roadside attractions and at least 10 billboards to advertise them. Most of there were centered around the old west and Indians, but a few strayed from the norm. The one with countless signs and notoriety is Wall Drug. Heather and I had never been and decided to stop there since it was only 7 miles from the park.

I have to say that I’m not sure what I expected, but fighting hundreds of other travelers to get through what basically amounts to the worlds largest gift shop was not it. Kymera had fun though. Raiden got scared by the roaring T-Rex display (think Jurassic Park ) and wanted nothing more to do with the place.

After loading up at Wall Food ( where the person who bagged my groceries also helped me get them out to the car, very cool ) we headed to Badlands National Park. Heather and I chose to camp at the “rustic” campground. As far as I can tell, rustic means no running water and natural landscaping. What rustic also means is that buffalo may roam through your camp at will ( see pics ). Just after getting our tent set up the dog started barking and Kymera, who is my official buffalo spotter, started going nuts. I popped my head out of the tent and there it was, strolling strait towards the campground. It wandered past a couple of people’s tents and then off it went. Pretty cool animals to see.

We drove up into the park before dinner so that I could take some pictures and Heather could get a good look. We were impressed, the kids were bored.

We cooked a little dinner and headed to bed.