The Badlands

Badlands National Park again reinforced for me the power of water. Out of the rolling hills is carved a canyon on a smaller scale than the Grand Canyon. A slight difference in elevation, a nearby river, thousands of years of rain, snow, and wind have carved this amazing landscape.

The layer cake of of sedimentary rocks (many created from runoff from the Rockies) has been carved into a striped family of forms; spires, towers, and valleys. The alternating white and rust horizontal bands from the ground show where the now individual pieces were once connected. As far as the eye can see these horizontal bands link undulating mounds. Looking down from above these alternating colors make the Badlands look like a topographic map.