Pennington County

On our way up to the Badlands we hit Wyoming and there was allegedly one if the biggest/best rodeos going on in Cheyenne. We were tempted to go see Fall Out Boy thar night, but instead waited for next day and took in Frontier Days, which is a 10 day rodeo and carnival. We'd seen one rodeo before in PA and assumed it was a bit of a token effort as it was so far away from the wild west coast, but although this one was bigger and better, I'm still glad we took mum and dad to it. One thing we didn't see in PA though was the wild horse race, where a team of 3 had to saddle and ride a wild horse once around the track - it sounds easy but it was hilarious watching them get tangled up and then the horse to run in the wrong direction. The Indian Village area was pretty cool, especially the little kid strutting around in his native dancing costume.

We left pretty late from the show and got to Guernsey State Park pretty late, which is a shame as it was a lovely camp site next to a decent sized lake. We went for a quick run and dip the next morning then spent most of the day driving through Nebraska and South Dakota on our way to the Badlands.

We saw a herd of buffalo (same thing as bison, FYI) when we hit the national park - these things are massive and a little intimidating, then set up at Sage Creek camp ground. There was a cool ranger talk that night where we got to throw an atlatle (spear throwing thing), although only at a fake bison called Bob (a cardboard box).

In the morning we drove through Badlands, stopping and gawping at every turn. The big multi coloured cliffs of soft stone machined into steep gorges and sharp ridges by the weather. Hard to believe this place was once bottom of a sea but they have found lots of ancient fossils of some scary looking creatures. That evening we headed back west and into the Black Hills of South Dakota. As we were nearing Wind Cave National Park, the sky went pretty black and starting hailing the size of marbles. We were held up for 15 minutes by a herd of bison dawdling in the road, and it was just as well as at the camp ground they had ice stones the size of golf balls and everyone's car ws dented plus one RV had its skylights smashed in. We silently thanked this bison later!Read more