Once I had some reasonable confidence that the weather was going to be decent, I booked us a camping spot for one night inside the Badlands park. We arrived there in the afternoon – it was already 90+ degrees, but there was a strong, constant wind that made being outside pleasant.

It did make setting up the tent take 3 times as long as our camping sessions in the Georgia forests. Between the three of us we were able to hold the tent poles down long enough to get everything staked into position.
The ground here was very loose compared to back at home – the stakes we have weren’t nearly long/big enough and we did have to go through and double or triple stake things down to keep the tent up and resistant to the wind.

Once we set up inside, Winston made it his new home. The three of us played “Uno” and lounged around trying to beat the heat by moving as little as possible.

We drove around the park a bit to see the sights. It was a bit crowded with other visitors and very hot. I have made plans to go back out early in the morning to get the right light. Brenda was scaring me here.. it’s a sheer drop off in all directions and the winds were very hard and unpredictable.

Later that afternoon an unwelcome visitor came to our area. We have some trees near to our tent that hosted some bird nests. This snake got up into one of the nests and was eating one of the babies. Not only the bird parents but other species of birds were all attempting to dive bomb the snake and chase him away to no avail. After his meal, he started working toward our tent, which got Brenda and Josie further agitated.

The snake is just off to the left in the gulch. Brenda chased the snake off by throwing dirt clods at it until he moved off into another direction. For the rest of our trip, Josie was in charge of keeping all of the zippers properly closed up and ensuring there were no entry paths for any type of curious critter.

Campground later that evening. We did get a great showing of starts – but the wind never let up. The phone weather app said we were having 30+ MPH winds and the constant whipping and berating of the tent kept us up for a good part of the night. I had to get out at 1am when the wind had lifted up some of the corner tent peg sections which would have, without immediate service, allow the entire tent to collapse. The wind died down around 2:30am and we then all got some peace to drift off. Politely put, camping makes memories.. but we’re ready for some boring Hilton hotel sessions over the next several nights.