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day three

In the morning we awoke to the glory that was Badlands National Park. The temperature was perfect, probably about 70 with cool breezes, and the soft grassy patches made perfect for camping. We saw bunnies, mountain sheep (which look more like deer), and many many many cute little prairie dogs. There are foxes, ferrets, and buffalo, too. But we didn't see any of them.
This was our camp site. I had already taken down my tent (which is totally awesome, I just got it right before the Gorge trip, and hence very proud of its bran-new-ness.)



The thing that I really loved about the Badlands was that it looked exactly like the Painted Desert, which I visited last summer, but it has these cute little tufts of grass on top of the buttes. Observe the benefits for meditation:

After we left the Badlands we drove on to our next destination, Butte, Montana. We were all set to camp in Butte, making sure that we wouldn't have another repeat of Monday night. But, as our luck and ill-planing would have it, this is what greeted us as we drove in to town:

In case you are confused by this picture, that's about 2 inches of snow on the ground. Butte was conveniently located at the very foot of a giant god-mountain. We got to the KOA, and after a little bit of consideration, checked into Eddy's Motel. In the comfort of our motel bed with cable television (oh, luxuries) we watched South Park until we fell asleep.