Visiting the Badlands

As part of our getaway to South Dakota, we also spent a goodly amount of time in the Badlands National Park. Guys, I love our national parks so much! They're amazing, in case you didn't already know. The Badlands reminded me a lot of one of my favorite places in the world, the Valley of Fire in Nevada. (You can see one of our past visits on my old blog, here if you'd like.)

The terrain and inhabitants are rugged and will probably outlive the apocalypse. Or, in other words, it's pretty incredible:

It's definitely not the average beauty one expects from nature. I have to say I've been blessed with an affinity for loving relatively ugly things because I think everything deserves a chance to be looked at with eyes of love and wonder. Because my soul is made out of mountains and deserts, I've also been raised to find the beauty when others can find none. However, for all you by-nature ugly haters, I think it's a skill that can be learned, for sure, so don't worry.

Have you ever been? Do you usually find beauty in harsh or so-called ugly things?

And if you want to see some additional wonders South Dakota has to offer, you can see some previous excursion posts on the blog here, here, here, and here.