July 25-29, 2009 Badlands Trip
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I had been wanting to do a big camping trip this summer to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone for two weeks. After buying a couple new lenses, a quality tripod, and bag to fit it all in, I was left with a smaller budget. I figured if I cut the trip in half in time and distance that would be enough. So I decided I'd stop at the badlands and black hills and that might be it, but if I got bored quick enough I could shoot south to southeastern Wyoming and check out the snowy range. I ended up doing all three in 5 days, and kept really close to my budget of $250 . Unless you count the ticket in eastern Wyoming lol. I knew gas would be close to $200 so I had to rough it for the most part, maybe thats not the right word but I didn't have fast food or stay in any campgrounds that cost money. The trip was basically $175 in gas and $75 for food, National park entrance fees and just a few things I had to pick up at the store (ice, bug spray, etc..). For the most part it was a sweet trip, although it did get a little boring at times being alone and all, but I'll probably do it again. Anyway, on to the badlands.
Going up I-29 I saw the first advertisement for wall drug, little did I know that over 1000 others awaited in the next 450 miles. That was pretty annoying. I get to the North Entrance of the park and pay the $15 fee to access the park for 7 days (unfortunately I didn't know how easy it was to get in without paying the fee, just don't enter through the North or Northeast entrance!). I drive around the park for a while just scouting spots, which I obviously didn't do a good job of. I make my way to the free campground I had looked up online called Sage Creek, you take Rim road just north of the pinnacles overlook 12 and its right on sage creek. This road is super dusty. I have a thick layer of dust in my car still after a week of being back. I had to have my windows down because my AC won't get cold.
I stop at a few of the overlooks along Rim Road, this one was called Prairie Dog town for Obvious reasons. This guy let me get within 5 feet of him.
The campground was full and I pondered just going back to wall and sleeping in my car, but eventually a spot opened up. Too bad it took too long because I missed the best "evening light" setting up my tent. I took a quick hike while waiting for a site to open up. There were two herds of buffalo on either side of the campground, here is the herd that was east of the campground. Each herd had probably 50 Buffalo, I read somewhere that there are about 800 that live in the park. You can see them left center with the badlands in the background.
Set up the tent and set off for the sunset. The only place I knew to go was the pinnacles overlook, so thats where I went.
The sunset wasn't anything spectacular. I shot twilit scenes for a while, same place.
For some reason I didn't want to have to go back to my tent in the dark, even though I had my headlamp with me. This sounds really stupid to me now and I wish I hadn't have done that. But when I did get back it was totally dark and the Milkyway was the brightest I have ever seen it. I wish I had shot it more this night, but for some reason I figured I'd do it more the next night, but what I wasn't thinking was if it would be clear the next night, I just expected it would be. Of course it's cloudy the next night and for the rest of the trip for that matter.
Now I'm thinking about this place to watch the Leonid Meteor shower in November, I had originally planned on going to Arizona with a few friends, but my semester doesn't end until the night before the shower! and I have a photography class that night, so It is possible that this will be the spot I go to shoot that shower.
Then I wanted to try some glowing tent star trails shots, which didn't work out too terribly well, but still look kinda cool. I am noticing more and more noise in my images lately and I'm not sure if its because I am more observant or my camera is getting screwed up. Could be that there is a life on the DSLR's and I'm sure I've shot well over twenty thousand shots in the 16 months of owning it. Might be time to upgrade.
After these I tried to sleep, but the buffalo were making weird noises and I couldn't tell how close they were, it was a little creepy. My fear was waking up to them surrounding my tent and being trapped lol. Only got about 3 hours of sleep and woke up at 4a.m. and went out for the sunrise.
Driving the Rim road during twilight can be a little distracting, lots of things to look at. So I was looking around at all the crazy views and once I get my eyes back on the road I'm about to go off it and theres a 200 foot drop on the right side, so I swerve and my entire back end fishtails for probably 50 feet and I'm facing the opposite way when I stopped. Lets just say that was enough to get me focused on getting there alive.
Now the bighorned sheep started to attack. They slowly arrived, at first maybe 4 of them were up there, soon it grew to 10, then 20, and eventually about 25 with a few babies. They were a little too close for comfort being up there by myself, so I was right by the car door. They crossed in front of where I was shooting (right in front of the sun, which provided some cool silhouette scenes.
The one thing that was sucked was that most of them had some really ugly looking tracking collars on that ruined most of these.
Some of the best light happens when the sun has to travel through thick atmosphere when it is at its lowest on the horizon.
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