from above you have a good view
checking out our car
in the afternoon we witness a performance by the locals
When you travel west on the I-90 past the Missouri River the flat prairy landscape sudddenly changes in a heavily eroded terrain
with peaks, gullies, buttes and strangely shaped pinnacles.
of Mako
Sica, the name the Lakota give it when they forcefully drove out the Arikara in the 18th century.
A
century later european homesteaders, supported by the US government, took most of the territory from the Lakota, who were
put in ever smaller reservations.
Around 1890 a religious movement grew that believed that the white men would disappear
and buffalo would return if every Indian practiced the Ghost Dance.
Long time ago the area was an inland sea as can be seen from several
colored layers of sediments. Over time water, wind and ash from volcanic eruptions in the Rocky Mountains sculpted
the Badlands into its present form. And the erosion continues.
We visited the Badlands National Park in August 1992.
we booked a helicopter to see the Badlands from above
this is how it looks like through a dirty windshield
you can take a hike to see the pinnacles up close
the different sediment layers are clearly visible