Dutchman Campground, Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota --> Cedar Pass Campground in Badlands National Park, South Dakota

July 14, 2004

	<-- Morning in the bus. Another reason to why we were in the area was that David wanted to see the Badlands. We drove back through Rapid City, made a short stop at a small co-op and headed towards the bad lands.
	The badlands started before the actual park. The idea of the badlands is that the land is different and not suitable for farming and such, essentially that the land is so bad that it can not support living on it.
	We entered the park on a small gravel road and even though I had read that they ask a fee for coming into the park, there was nobody there.
	The first interesting animals we saw there were prairie dogs. Unfortunately this digital camera does not let you get close enough to take a good picture... (by the way, on one of the pictures above is a small black blob that is really a bison).
	The scenery was awe-inspiring.
	Picnic table at Badlands
	At one point there was a fossil trail by the side of the road so we stopped to go and see the fossils. Well, it turned out that they displayed replicas only, the real fossils were somewhere else (we did see some of them next day at the visitor center). Instead I took some pictures of the scenery and a rabbit.
	We got to the Cedar Pass area and had dinner in a small restaurant in a lodge there. Then we proceeded to the campground. It turned out that the ground was all sloping.  We picked a spot and realized that it would be more level if we turned the bus around (make it face the opposite direction). The campground traffic was supposed to go only one way but since it was the first spot on the loop we figured it would be fine. Well, as soon as we had the bus set up a ranger drove by and started complaining. We politely ignored his complaints and wished him a good evening.  He took off to bug some other innocent campers parked in a way he didn't like. A little while later as we were going on a walk he drove by again and observed the bus but we were far enough and he couldn´t do anything. Its as if he wanted everyone facing the exact same direction so they could flow in and out of the campground like a nice efficient military camp.
	The overall impression of the campground was poor - there were no showers, no shade from the sun, there were thousands of nasty little bugs everywhere, the camp host was obsessed with the direction you parked in your campsite, and it was like a parking lot.. But the sunset was really beautiful and there were some nice resident grasshopper mice (really small mice who jump almost like kangaroos).