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1996 |
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| My friend Jon, Kent, Aaron, and myself entered the Badlands during the early afternoon hours and we drove to the Prairie Dog Town. We got our gear on and we headed south towards a ridge of badlands. It was warm and sunny. The terrain was up and down, and sometimes involved crossing muddy rivers. At one point we came up over a hill and we saw a buffalo and we all froze. He was only about a 100 yards away and he started to huff and puff and run in a circle. We started to walk backwards when he decided to run in the opposite direction. After that incident we continued on and realized that we could not get to the area we thought we could. The path was divided by a 30 foot canyon. As a result we hiked over to another area which was a grassy area that was between two badland ridges. |
| After we set up camp we explored the area a little and made some dinner. Later as we hiked around we saw 8-10 bighorn sheep up on top of one of the buttes, unfortunately none of us had our cameras with us so we did not get any pictures. We laid out and watched the stars and we could see many constellations (we even made up a few). We woke up the next morning and the weather was cool and overcast. During the early morning hours it sprinkled a little but other than that it was just a bit cloudy. During the day we took several short trips around the buttes and badlands and even saw a few more buffalo. One actually was close to our camp till he saw us and ran away. We had dinner and it began to clear up. We took a hike to an area where there was water and it almost looked like a swampy area. It had birds, cattails, and the typical swamp like things. This was an ecosystem within and ecosystem. |
| That night we laid out and watched the stars come out and we went to bed. The next morning it was sunny again. We packed up our gear and we started heading back to the suburban. We were about half way back when we took a break on a hill only to see 4-5 buffalo come running towards us. We took off. We ran down a gully and up to another side of a hill. The buffalo did not follow us, but they were standing where we were on the hill before we ran. as a result we had to go the long way around the buffalo and finally made it back to the car. It was late morning and we packed up our things into the suburban and we headed towards Wall for some real lunch. |
