One Day in Badlands National Park

A drive-and-hike itinerary along the Badlands Loop Road

By Chris Hayworth, Nestward

Badlands is one of those parks you can genuinely "do" in a day, because the main attraction (the Badlands Loop Road, Highway 240) strings together the best overlooks and short trails into one ribbon of pavement. You won't see everything, but a single well-paced day hits the geology, the wildlife, and a couple of real walks without anyone melting down. Here's how to spend it.

Start at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center

Enter from the northeast (Interstate 90, Exit 131) and make the Ben Reifel Visitor Center your first stop. It's the park's main hub, with restrooms, water, the day's ranger program schedule, and a fossil prep lab where you can sometimes watch paleontologists working on real specimens through the glass. This is the place to fill water bottles. The rest of the park is dry, exposed, and short on shade.

• Grab a Junior Ranger booklet here if you've got kids. It gives them a job for the day and a badge at the end.
• Check the posted times for any Badlands Ranger Programs; a short fossil talk or guided walk is an easy add to a one-day plan.
• Top off the gas tank before you arrive. Services inside and just outside the park are limited.

Drive the Loop Road, stop at the overlooks

From the visitor center, head northwest on the Loop Road. The overlooks come fast, and they don't all look the same. It's worth pulling over more than once. Good ones to prioritize: Door and Window, Big Badlands Overlook near the northeast entrance, Panorama Point, and Pinnacles Overlook toward the west end. The whole road is about 31 miles one-way and takes a couple of hours with stops.

Most overlooks are short walks from the car, so they're low effort for the view you get. If you only stop at three, you'll still leave with a real sense of the place.

Pick a short hike (or two)

Hiking the Badlands is unusual: there's an open-terrain policy, so you can walk off-trail across the formations. But for one day with limited time, the marked trails near Ben Reifel are the smart move. They cluster together off the Loop Road, so you can do more than one without much driving.

• Door Trail: about 0.75 mile round trip on a boardwalk that ends at a gap in the Badlands Wall, opening onto a moonscape of eroded rock. Flat, fast, and the best payoff-per-effort walk in the park.
• Window Trail: a very short, accessible walk to a natural "window" framing the formations. Good for little legs or a quick stretch.
• Notch Trail: about 1.5 miles round trip, more adventurous, with a log-and-cable ladder to climb and a ledge that drops off at the end. Skip it with small kids or if anyone's uneasy about heights.

Family pacing: do Door and Window early while it's cooler, then save the air-conditioned visitor center and an overlook drive for the hot middle of the afternoon.

Watch for wildlife (and prairie dogs)

The park protects a big stretch of mixed-grass prairie, and the animals are part of the draw. Keep an eye out for bison, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn, especially along the western half of the Loop Road and out toward Sage Creek. Prairie dog towns are easy crowd-pleasers for kids, loud, busy, and impossible to miss. Stay in the car or well back; bison are far faster than they look and will not be negotiated with.

Time it right, and pack for exposure

The Badlands are hot, sun-blasted, and shadeless in summer. Plan your walking for early morning or the last few hours before sunset, when the low light turns the rock pink and gold and the temperature is survivable. Midday is for the car, the visitor center, and overlooks.

• Bring more water than you think you need, plus sunscreen, hats, and real shoes. The rock crumbles and gets slick.
• Summer afternoons can bring sudden thunderstorms. If you hear thunder, get off exposed formations and back to the car.
• If you can stay past dusk, the night sky here is excellent. The park runs night-sky and astronomy programs, and it's one of the darker places you'll drive through in South Dakota.