April 13, 2012

Yet another amazing day. Wow. The highlight was visiting the south unit again with Ryan. He came over around 11 and we packed water and snacks for a day out on his ATV. Drove it over to the area where we ended the day last friday, and spent 6 hours driving around on the “roads” in the south unit. A little background on the south unit for those who aren't familiar with it. It is immense (122,000 acres), remote, and difficult to access with only primitive, HCV roads. It was used as a bombing range during WWII, so there is also unexploded ordnance around, as well as some other interesting remnants of the past. The land is owned by the Oglala Lakota Nation, and due to the nature of the agreement with the NPS, some ranchers are allowed to maintain livestock on the park lands. There is no cell signal, even the park radios sometimes may not work. Few visitors to the Badlands venture into the south unit beyond Sheep Mountain.

The weather looked great until we were out there, and the rain/storm clouds started moving in. Amazingly, we were only sprinkled on briefly, but dark clouds were all around and we could see the rain pouring down. I got a very good overview of that part of the park, which I could never have managed on my own. Some areas look similar to the north unit, or main area of the park, but many are completely different. Most of the time the tire tracks do look like a primitive, gravel style road. But there are plenty of places where I couldn't even tell where one is supposed to be driving. Lots of bouncing off the seat, and in the beginning, my camera stayed tucked away and I held on to the grab bars with both hands, building calluses. First time on an ATV, I wasn't so sure about the speed and bumps, and figured I'd end up head first in the dirt at least once. By the end of the day though, I had both hands on my camera, bouncing all over, and twisting around snapping photos as if on safari. It was so much fun. Ryan took me to a couple places where the roads are particularly interesting. One is called “the slide,” and it is aptly named. Looks impossible to drive. The other he has named foxtrot charlie, and it almost claimed his work truck. He and another law enforcement ranger were driving it earlier this week, and we all heard the story of how they ended up on this crazy road with a steep rocky hill, and one turn had the truck sliding sideways into the rocks, Ryan barely managing to keep the truck from crashing. The sideways skid marks in the rock were still visible. Ryan wanted to find that road, but missed the turn off and we ended up going further than he intended. I need to write a separate post for the extreme adventure that resulted. A brief summary is that we stumbled upon a young foal firmly wedged into a deep hole in the ground, mother and two other horses accompanying. It was a risky endeavor on many levels to rescue that foal, but we couldn't leave him there. The coyotes were calling to each other on all sides of us, circling in. In the end, we did manage to rescue the foal and not get trampled by the mother. Full details to come later. As we drove back out of the south unit, the rain clouds lifted, sun came in, and a rainbow stretched down above Sheep Mountain Table. What a day.