The Badlands: Breathtaking

(I hope I haven't already used this title for an earlier post!)

Breathtaking: the views at every turn. Lunar landscapes, greens so intense they're almost blinding, flowers of every color. I took 88 photos today; 20 would be more typical for a full day of exploring. I've narrowed them down to just four for you; the first is of the lunar variety, as I followed the Notch Trail into a bowl surrounded by spires, ridges, teetering "hoodoos" as a Park Service naturalist later said the chimneys topped by rocks are called.

Breathtaking: my retreat from a Notch Trail ledge I had reached by the ladder you see here (looking down from the top), after I found the trail had become too narrow, tilted sideways toward the valley below, and covered by loose gravel. The final straw was a sign marking a detour onto a higher, equally insecure ledge due to further narrowing of the trail. I'll never know if the promised view of the White River Valley was just around the next turn. But all of a sudden I realized that getting back down the slope I had just ascended was just as scary - all I could see was emptiness just one slip away.

I managed to keep panic in control and creep on all fours back to the ledge and finally the ladder. The memory of similar predicaments in treetops when I was a kid helped, and so did the thought that the actual drop would probably not have been fatal - remember what I wrote last night about the small scale of these apparent mountains. Still, almost 12 hours later I get the shakes just writing about it.

Breathtaking: the wildlife in the park. On my hikes along the Notch and several tamer trails I photographed a rabbit, some chipmunks (all gray like the terrain, and so fast I think I missed them all), and even a large black beetle. By 11 a..m., after 3 1/2 hours on the trails, I was footsore and starting to feel the force of the sun, though the air seemed still to be no more than about 75°. I returned to the car and followed the loop road, Hwy. 240, the rest of the way through the park, stopping at every "viewpoint" turnoff to gasp in wonder and take more pictures, and occasionally to compare notes with other visitors.

Just inside the northwest exit I detoured down a gravel road 5 miles to a prairie dog town shown on the map. I found not only little rodents but bison including those you see here, roaming wild with no fence separating them from visitors. We'd been warned repeatedly to stay away from the prairie dogs (they have the plague, literally) and the bison (they're truly wild, large, and dangerous), so these are shot at my little camera's maximum zoom from the roadside about a quarter-mile away.

Finally I drove out of the park and up to Wall since it was lunchtime and I wanted to stop at more viewpoints on the way back to my cabin. I had wonderful and I'm sure unhealthy fried chicken at the Elkton House Restaurant (no website), stopped at Ace Hardware, and then went to the notorious Wall Drug, more like a schlocky shopping mall than a store. Not breathtaking. I bought nothing but took this photo with Penny the Prius in the foreground to prove we had been there.

Then I came back here to shower, get a room in Yellowstone for Sunday and Monday nights, and confirm my Tuesday arrival at Anita's home in Missoula. A deep breath - now I can relax.

From the small world department: My neighbors in the next cabin are a couple of guys from Foggy Bottom, a DC neighborhood not far from mine. We had a long neighborly visit on their stoop last night and shared a table in the lodge restaurant tonight. Maybe I'm learning to make friends.