The green, gently rolling agricultural areas of North Dakota suddenly gave way to the stark erosional scenery of the badlands as we drove west. We saw a pronghorn at a distance and a few solitary bison. Our campsite in the National Park was visited during our first night there by a bison that left a large fresh “night deposit.”
Rocks in the park are almost exclusively sedimentary, with horizontal layers of tan sandstone, thick bands of gray bentonite clay (former volcanic ash), thin veins of lignite coal, and reddish rock above the lignite (baked by subterranean lignite fires smoldering for years at a time). These layers have all been exposed by deep valleys carved by the Little Missouri River.
We saw the Medora Musical, a western theme song and dance extravaganza held in a large amphitheater. Their feature act was the Chicago Boys, an amazing gymnastics act.
We hiked into a petrified forest that has numerous big cypress stumps from 60 million years ago.
