8/26 Badlands, Prarie Dog Town, ICBM, & Wall Drug

 We slept in and had scrambled eggs for breakfast. Then we left the trailer and headed down the road to the Badlands visitor center passing some Bighorn sheep on the way. 

I showed the photo to a ranger at the visitors center and he explained that only old males have the big horns.

Summer and Ruth earned Junior Ranger badges. Carrie and Summer climbed some badlands buttes. Then we hiked the notch trail. 

On to Prarie Dog Town where the prarie dogs are obese and have little interest in more food. 

We stopped next at the Minute Man Missle National Historic Site where we learned about our ICBM system and Summer earned a patch. 12 miles down the freeway we viewed an actual, decommissioned ICBM in a silo through a window from above. 

Of course we made the obligatory stop at Wall Drug, which is much larger than at my last visit 25 years ago. I think it fills a whole city block now and the town of Wall has sprouted many other prosperous businesses around it. They claim up to 20k visitors/day. We enjoyed the free ice water and bought some fudge.

3 Bighorn sheep came to graze near our beautiful campsite as we sat outside playing "Just One."

This photo shows our trailer perched at the top of the Badlands cliff.

The other direction we were treated to a beautiful sunset over the grasslands.

And the site has 5G mobile data connectivity! Most sites have little or none, making it hard to upload photos to this blog.