The Badlands? Well it must have Bad Men? Why else have such a name?

So keen to find about these bad men in the Badlands we set off on the start of our 550km easterly drive cross country on Interstate 90.

On reaching the town of Wall we missed the exit to the Badlands National Park and had to drive an extra 6km to the next exit turn around.

What a stroke of luck!

By missing the Wall exit we stumbled upon a sign to the Minuteman Missile Historic Site. Greg, being an amateur historian was beside himself. So a quick two minute drive down a dusty dirt track and we arrived at Site 9 Minuteman Missile Silo, a relic from the Cold War.

Fortunately a volunteer guide was on duty who was a retired USA Air Force Missilier who could answer all questions thrown at him.

An hour later with our curiosity sated we returned to Wall to find the exit to the Badlands.

But wait!

On reaching Wall we couldn't help but notice the numerous large billboard signs to the "Wall Drug". What? We just have to check it out.

Wall is a small town with a tourist frontier theme. We found that the Wall Drug is a massive store selling everything from ice-cream to souveniers to boots and stetson hats as well as Black Hills Gold jewellery. Better leave before Kerrie looks too closely at the jewellery!

We finally got to the entrance of the Badlands National Park about 12:30pm paid our $25 entry fee and drove through.

With eager eyes we looked for information about the bad men we imaged to be here. Instead we were greeted with herds of grazing buffalo and brilliant scenery - stark, bare rocky hills of varying colours and shapes.

This area would be a geologist"s dream as the layers of rock were really easy to see. We could only imagine that in another million years or so, this area could rival the Grand Canyon for beauty.

After an hour driving through the Badlands and not finding any bad men it was back on Interstate 90 for the rest of our drive.

Or so we thought!

As we got closer to Souix Falls, our destination for the night, we noticed billboards advertising The Corn Palace. We had forgotten about this tourist site that we had visited in 2009, so once again we took the exit to Mitchell so that we could check out the Corn Palace.

Last time we were in Mitchell we only took photos of the exterior of the Corn Palace - a huge building with murals on the walls that are made of different types of plants - including corn.

Well today we were not satisfied with just exterior photographs. This time we visited the interior of the building and were quite surprised to find that it was actually a sport stadium with tiered seating and the floor area drawn up as a basketball court. No sport today as the floor area was covered with a variety of shelves selling souveniers. Who would have known!

After a long 550km drive we finally arrived in Souix Falls just before 7pm, pleased that the Badlands National Park was more beautiful than we had anticipated and very glad it was devoid of any bad men!

*Blog of the Day - 14