Badlands was the first National Park we stopped at in the RV on the road in 2015. We forgot how we originally heard about this place, but it's completely magical. Tucked away in South Dakota, this rugged place is guided (for the most part) by roads, taking you through quickly changing landscapes.

There were a lot of signs warning of rattlesnakes, flash floods and steep hikes. However, it’s just regulations for the most part and you’re in the outdoors after all. We started our Badlands adventure on the Notch Trail that started out easy, then up the wooden stairs it got decently high in elevation ending with a beautiful scenic overlook of South Dakota from above. Continuing on, that's when the landscapes started to change into different colors. We climbed the mounds and got really inspired by the land. The next morning, we got up before sunrise and saw some interesting wildlife. It was beautiful to watch the light casting shadows and gradually changing the colors of the landscape as the sun rose.

Mount Rushmore

What kind of American road trip would this be without stopping at Mount Rushmore? Viewing the president’s faces straight on as we always saw them in photos was pretty impressive, but the new selfie crowds of 2015 took away from the experience. We walked around to the sides of Mount Rushmore and the profile perspective was even more interesting and revealed the massive size in comparison to the surrounding trees. It’s pretty hard to get a sense of scale from photographs.

Exploring more throughout Black Hills, we found out about another carving in the mountains that is still in progress. 

Crazy Horse is the world's largest sculpture inside Black Hills Forrest, very close to Mount Rushmore. Korczak Ziolkowski began carving the mountain by himself in 1948, then had help from his family as it grew. He built a school on their land for his children and now the memorial also hosts The Indian University of North America. The project is still non-profit, as requested by the family to remain that way because the Lakota tribe considers the land to be very sacred. 

Devils Tower

Driving into Wyoming from Crazy Horse, Devils Tower rapidly revealed itself from the highway miles away, getting more confusing the closer we got. When we got to the base at sunset, we had to tilt our heads back to view this volcanic plug jolted 1,267' up in the sky.

We pulled into the campground, made our first Greetings campfire and sat under a sky full of stars. When we woke up the next morning, the camp host gave us some historical information about this odd formation. He told us that the volcanic plug used to be under water and in time, it will eventually erode completely. Devils Tower is very sacred to the American Indians, natives of the Black Hills land. Hiking around the base, we found prayer cloths tied to trees from those who still come to worship and carry on traditions from many generations ago. Devils Tower was the first US National Monument, declared by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Leaving out the apostrophe in Devils was a typo.

All travel & landscape photography above captured by Lisa Beggs.

Year: 2015