Explore Badlands National Park South Dakota

“I’d highly recommend it! The experience of staying at Sage Creek Campground alone is worth it, in my opinion. It’s a primitive first-come first-serve campground in the far west side of the park. No water, no electric. Just two pit toilets and a trash receptacle. Only tents and rvs/campers 18ft or under are allowed, no generators are allowed to run at any time. There was a herd of about 60 bison that routinely hung around the campground just grazing and doing their thing. It’s surreal to just be cooking dinner and there’s just bison hanging out literally right across the road. At night, we saw the Milky Way and so many stars. Because of the campground rules, as soon as the sun went down it was dead silent. You could hear everything in the park so clear and the coyotes were howling like crazy each night.”

“When I arrived at Badlands NP, it was in the middle of a cold, late-spring storm, so when I was driving in from the northern entrance, the landscape was hard to see and only came into view when I got close enough to break through the mist. It was so creepy and fascinating. When I left two mornings later, the weather broke and I got to drive out with clear blue skies and sunshine. The yellow mounds were my favorite part. I remember not believing they were real, like they were big pieces of candy corn embedded in the ground.”

“The hills and their markings were so beautiful and mesmerizing. We followed worn skinny paths that went out on the very tips of the hills where we were surrounded by their grandeur. It was peacefully quiet with the new day's light hitting the hills perfectly and I could have stood there in awe for the whole day. As we moved on we stopped at other overlooks but the day took a more exciting turn when I noticed little prairie dogs in a field on my side of the car. Tommy slowed the car immediately upon hearing my squeals of excitement, and I jumped out before the car had fully stopped with camera in hand. I bet I looked like the biggest goofball as I went running back and forth on the side of the road going from hole to hole recording their little squeaky barks with my phone.”