Badlands National Park | Unique Landscape

To wrap up our National Park tour, we finished our trip in Badlands National Park. Now Badlands is a very unique park, the park contains a variety of landscapes and has great hiking trails. For those of you who aren’t as into hiking, there are also a lot of roads that cut through the landscape allowing easy access to a variety of the views. If you want to check out the maps for the park follow the link to the parks map page.

Camping Badlands

Like the rest of this trip, we were going to camp at Badlands. One of the interesting elements while camping at this park is the landscape. Unlike the rest of the campgrounds we stayed at for the trip, this one has a lack of vegetation. Since the Badlands are a dryer landscape, large trees and plants have a harder time growing, luckily the Cedar Pass Lodge campground has shade covers over the picnic tables at each site. Since there was rain in the forecast for this stop, we opted to add tarps to the structure to create a little community area away from the weather. Check out the set-up below.

Just like the other National Parks in this trip, there are options to reserve campsites or take a chance that one is available when you arrive. If you would like to make a reservation head over to the Badlands Camping Page.

Hiking & Biking

Badlands National Park has multiple trails that are great for hiking all through the park. While staying at the Cedar Pass Lodge campground, I decided to bike up the road to a stop that had multiple trail heads in the same area. If you aren’t comfortable biking on the road, or going up steep inclines, I would recommend driving up the starting location. There is parking and bathrooms at this location. The three trails I am going to be talking about today at the Door Trail, Window Trail, and Notch Trail. On the map below you can see them in relation to the Cedar Pass Lodge.

These three hikes are some of the shorter hikes as you can see on the map above. The Door Trail and Window Trail are rated as easy with both being less than a mile round trip. The Door Trail starts with a 1/4 mile boardwalk that leads to a great view of the Badlands. The Window Trail is the shortest and has trail that leads to a view of an eroded canyon. Pictures of both trails can be seen below.

Lastly, the Notch trail is moderate to strenuous. This trail does require climbing a log ladder and following ledges. This trail was more work, but I think the view at the end was worth it. Due to the ledge and drop-offs, this trail is not recommended for anyone with a fear of heights.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit this National Park, I would recommend adding it to your adventure list. If you want to stay up to date on the next adventures be sure to subscribe to the email list on the right side of the page. Until next time be sure to keep seeking your own discoveries!