By: Kinsey
When we first got to the Badlands I was shocked. When Mom and Dad had said we were going to the Badlands I imagined lots of black hills, dead grass, and a few trees.
But Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!! Way more exiting!!! BIG buttes!! They looked like very fragile sand castles. They had stripes on them. Not any ordinary stripes though, they were different colors. It's like millions, and millions of years stacked on top of each other.
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| Years, and years,and years |
It's a good place to find fossils. The oldest fossil they found was a sea creature that could grow up to be as tall as a full grown man! Swamp animals (like alligators) are second in line for the oldest type of fossil they found. Ground animals like the ancestors of horses, little dogs, and HUGE cats are the youngest animal fossils.
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| An ammonite fossil |
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| Huge |
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| A bronze casting of the big cat fossil. Here you can see the bite mark in it's skull |
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| A drawing of how they think the cat died |
After the short walk looking at fossils, we drove a little bit with several stops to look at the view. The mountains were yellow, red and purple, it used to be an ocean and then jungle and somehow that made the colors.
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| Pretty buttes |
After awhile we entered a dirt road and at that moment I was working on my postcards. I could not write anything because it was so bumpy. On that dirt road we stopped to look at the prairie dogs at Rogers Prairie Dog Town. They were very, very cute. Some of them were very shy, but some of them of are not shy and would stay out of their hole and look at us. A really friendly one let Zoë interview him.
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| SO cute! |
A few minutes later we saw baby sheep crossing the road.
Finally we got to our campground. It was beautiful and extremely hot. We set up our camp. Zoë was standing there rubbing ice cubes on herself when I was helping Mom and Dad by putting the chucks under the tires of the trailer.
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| At Sage Creek Campground |
Once we were settled and we had the screen tent up we started painting with water colors. It was hard. Zoë painted a buffalo wearing an orange fedora.
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Zoë's painting |
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| This my painting...buffalo, buffalo, buffalo |
Mom painted a picture of the scenery and I was painting pictures of animals. Unfortunately I only got one done. As the sun set we took a hike up the nearest hill to look at the beautiful sun set. On the way there we saw stone towers built by other hikers.
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| The campground seen from the hill |
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| fossil Zoë found |
Zoë found a fossil and Mom and I saw a rock that looked like it was a fossil from an alligator. When we were up there we heard the coyotes and the prairie dogs.
I thought the prairie dogs sounded like windshield wipers going across a soapy windshield. The coyotes sounded like a bunch of yippy chihuahuas. As it got dark Mom used her star app to see which star was what. We saw Venus, Saturn, and lots of constellations. Kings, queens, warriors, and animals and they all have their own story. Dad and Zoë visited with one of neighbors, Eric, who had a powerful computerized telescope. They got to see the rings around Saturn. I was too sleepy to go.
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| Me looking at the bison |
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| He may look small here but that's because he was pretty far away, which is ok with me. |
The next morning Mom got me out of the truck by telling me there were bison on the hill. We looked through the telescope and we saw how big and hairy they were. There were two of them and then a third joined in after awhile. We packed up and Dad said thank you to Eric. We drove off toward Wall Drug.
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| This is the little prairie dog I got from Wall Drug, his name is Punk. |
*Editor's Note (Kat)
As we head west internet access has become increasingly rare and poor, as a result our blog posts are likely to be a bit behind. Stay tuned and eventually we'll get around to getting it all up there. Thanks!
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