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Badlands - Memorial Day Weekend

First road trip of the summer to the Badlands of South Dakota.  We packed up the truck and the Yeti and headed out on a beautiful day excited to get out and escape for a couple of days. Our lunch stop was in the small town of Edgemont, SD.  Cute little city park with a covered bridge, a Canadian Geese family, young boys fishing from the bridge and two large guns flanking the entrance to the park...interesting. 

Camera: FujiFilm XT5, Lumix LX100




We had some weather on this trip once we got to Rapid City, which seems to be the norm anymore on our photo trips.  So, we made the best of it and decided t do some long exposure shots in the park and follow some really ominous clouds which resulted in a wicked hail storm.  After it was over it looked like it had snowed. Well, that is spring/summer in the mountains of the west. We were a bit discouraged since the sky just turned to gray, so we left the park and took the Sheep Table Mountain off road trail with a brief stop on Scenic.  The sun peaked out and we got some nice shots and an epic view!  










On this trip we hit a few ghost towns I obviously missed the other times we traveled to South Dakota.  We went to Buffalo Gap and took an off road trail through open range to the banks of the Cheyenne River.  Took a few infrared photos.  Buffalo Gap is not really a ghost town but it had some interesting abandoned buildings and we were all over it. 








The next town was Owanka, literally in the middle of nowhere South Dakota.  We actually had a hard time finding it, we went down the road Google recommended and well, that is not it.  So we turned around and when the other way and bingo, there it was! 







Scenic ghost town is on the way to the Badlands by way of the Wall Drug.  We have been to both before on our first trip to South Dakota and we figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to shoot them again.  The Wall Drug seems to have changed quite a bit, I don't; recall it being like a town.  What I remember is just the main building and I think there was a dirt parking lot.  Not that I remember everything exactly, I could be mistaken, after all I am getting older.  






Wall Drug is a roadside attraction that you cannot miss.  There are billboards all over South Dakota advertising it...and I mean a lot, definitely a ton more than the fireworks signs in Wyoming. 








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Location: Badlands National Park, South Dakota, USA

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