Day 3 The Badlands

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We visited the Badlands National Park. The park consists of 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires. The terrain looks like the moon. It was once an ancient shallow seabed. As the continental plates pushed and shoved the land rose and the shallow sea drained. The old seabed now consists of hard compacted sand that has been eroded by wind and water. We drove the scenic Badlands Loop Road. The road is windy and steep in places. The whole route is breathtakingly beautiful. There are lots of places to stop to take pictures.

No trip to the Badlands would be complete without visiting Wall Drugs. It is the largest Drug store in the world and draws up to 20,000 people a day in the summer. In 1931 Dorothy and Ted Hustead bought the only drug store in the community of Wall on e edge of the Badlands. By 1936 the business had not grown much. Dorothy came up with a startling idea that folks heading to the Badlands would be thirsts and she proposed that they put up signs on the highway for free ice water. The rest is history. Wall drugs still offers free ice water. We saw at least 100 interesting road signs for Wall Drugs.

Minute Man Missile National Historic Sitenear the Badlands interprets the role that the area played during the cold war. During this period the US prairie states housed over 1,000 nuclear missiles in underground silos pointed at Russia. Today many have been decommissioned, the nuclear missiles removed and the silos destroyed. Now hundreds of missile sites remain active. Each underground missile site was manned 24hrs per day by 2 soldiers who waited orders to launch. This historic site contains a missile launch control chair which was once manned by the soldiers who waited orders to fire their missile.

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Photos

Badlands Loop Road
Joy stepped very cautiously on the trail..

Badlands Loop Road
Mountain Goat

Minute Man Missile National Historic Site
Chair and control panel for soldier to launch missle