Badlands National Park

Ryne and I had a nice week relaxing, cooking out, and watching movies. Friday night was saw Angels & Demons. We had both read the book years ago but neither of us could remember too much about it. I had heard mixed reviews and thought the movie was good. As it went on parts of the book came back to me. But as is the case with any book to movie deal, I think the book was way better.

Saturday morning we got up at o'dark thirty to head to the Badlands in SD. The alarm went off at 4:45am!! UGH!! Ryne didn't think I was going to be able to get up and be out the door by 6am. I surprised him (and myself) and was ready to go at 5:40am!! On our way up to the Badlands we drove through the Indian reservation. What a sad, pathetic site. The reservations is huge and it is also the poorest county in the entire US. The Indians are known to have a drinking problem and I was able to see that even at 7am. There were several stumbling around drunk drinking 40 oz beers at 7am! I even got to witness several digging through the trash in dumpsters. All of their housing was provided by the govt and each and ever house is on the verge of collapsing. They just don't care and they don't take care of their property. I thought it was intersting to see that every house had satellite TV though.


We arrived in the Badlands around 9am. Thankfully it wasn't raining but it was rather chilly and the skies were gray. When we first got there it was pretty quiet but more and more people showed up as the day went on. THe best way I can describe the Badlands is to think of the Grand Canyon minus the giant canyon. It was very beautiful... I don't think any of our pictures do it justice.

After the Badlands we drove to Rapid and stayed with Ryne's friend Tito. We went out for Mexican and then watched the Hurricanes game (yet anoher tough game to stomach!). All in all it was a great day!!