The Badlands

I've fantasized about traveling to the moon.  Someday there will be monthly shuttles and a Holiday Inn built smack dab in the middle of a huge crater.   We will watch the earth rise and set and go hiking in spacesuits.  But until that day comes, a trip to Badlands National Park in South Dakota is as close as I'm going to get to seeing a moonscape up close.

The Badlands are a geologist's laboratory.  Deposition of sediments began here millions of years ago when an ancient sea once covered the Great Plains.  Now erosion is carving these sediments into buttes, pinnacles and spires.  Fossils of rhino, horse and the saber-toothed cat have been found here.  Hiking is difficult, but driving through this incredible place provided enough fuel for my imagination to last decades!