My sister Gail and I take a trip together just the two of us every five or six years. She lives in Oakland, California and we only get to see each other a couple of times a year during hurried family events. We’ve been to Hawaii, climbed Mt. Whistler in Vancouver and went to Yosemite National Park. This year we decided to go out West, since she wanted to go to a friend’s wedding in Rapid City, South Dakota. We flew into Denver airport and met up to fly to Rapid City. We got there early enough in the day to go ahead and start our adventure. 
This is the 100 year Anniversary of the The National Parks system. The Badlands National Park is south of Rapid City, so we started there. If you’re 62 years old or older you can get a pass for all the National Parks for the rest of your life for $10! So you young people take along a senior and the whole car gets in for that price. I had no idea what the Badlands were (sounded kinda bad) but they are magnificent — covering 244,000 acres. Some 80 millions years ago this part of South Dakota was an inland sea. Then for the next few million years the land built up with layers of sediment and volcanic ash and then rivers and wind started eroding the land. The combination carved out this wonderland of canyons and ragged ridges. 
My sister (an architect now) used to teach photography at Ball State and had just bought a new camera for the trip — she has worn out and ruined many cameras (she warns not to carry ripe bananas in your camera bag). I have helped drag around all kinds of camera equipment over the years, but luckily she didn’t bring the 4×5 camera with her (huge with cover that goes over the photographer’s head). I have an easy to use, inexpensive Nikon Coolpix that has a great lens — Gail was impressed (her super expensive Nikon has the same lens as mine). We took more photos than you can imagine — I took 2,101! The rest of the family gets irritated with our picture taking.
At one overlook we met a young couple, Emma and Sven in a really cool renovated vintage Volkswagen bus all painted red, yellow and white. Emma is writing a blog as they travel across country — all the way up to Alaska — www.gobigemma.com My sister had the same VW bus in the early 70s.
The richest fossil beds in the world are in the Badlands and along the boardwalk pictured here were fossils and storyboards describing creatures like the Mesohippus, an ancestor of the horse that was the size of a dog. Remains of hundreds of prehistoric animals like the ancestor of the camel; a sheeplike creature with 3 horns called the proroceras; and the saber-toothed tiger were here.
We stopped at every site until sunset and the lighting was dramatic and no pesky tourists in the photos we took. We made it back to our motel in Rapid City by 10:30 p.m. Day 1 of a 9 day adventure. Next time (next month) “Crazy Horse & Needles”.
