We started the day on a grand scale, Mt Rushmore. It's well done, a short queue to get into the parking and a simple $11 annual parking fee was all it took. The whole place is well run and the carvings are impressive.
Leaving there we set off for the Badlands National Park. Our GPS was a bit cantankerous trying to take us around in circles but we worked it out once we stopped for a park map from the wrong entrance it took us to. Initially it's quite a few miles of unsealed road that takes us up and reveals a view of the time worn buttes and pinnacles below before it eventually is sealed.
In stark contrast to the barren landscape below the top where we drove is quite lush, green prairies with paddocks full of prairie dogs. There were hundreds if not thousands of the cute critters which got very vocal if they thought we got too close.
We saw the odd bison in the distance but not many and far from close. There were a few smallish herds of big horn sheep too.
There's a fossil walk at one point laying out some of the now extinct animals that that've found fossils of in the park.
Out of the park and it's all prairie; cattle properties and agriculture, mostly corn & bright yellow fields of sunflower and rape seed.
We drove across a long bridge crossing the Missouri River and arrived at Chamberlain, our sleep stop for the night.