August 11, 2022
We took the "very" scenic route towards home after Wind Cave to visit the southern unit of Badlands NP. The visitor center had only been open for two weeks due to Covid and some visitor center repairs. The road there had about 40 miles of gravel road and no services for over 60 miles. Crazy remote. The southern unit of Badlands is 100% located within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There's a visitor center and like only one trail. It's remote and not very accessible. The one cool trail is up Sheep Mountain, which you can do most of via car. The overlook is breathtaking and a bit scary as you can see from the pics - the drop is very far down from an unprotected dirt edge.
As we continued our drive towards home the temps got hotter and hotter reaching a max of 109. Thankfully we were in the car and timed the weather on this trip perfectly -- cool when we were outside and hot when we had inside activities.