Badlands National Park is a strange and wonderful place. Maybe even more so than nearby Wall Drug. If you have been to both you understand this statement. If you’ve been to one but not the other then you are either a road warrior or a National Park hound as I am cruising through the area […]
The National Park service gives this explanation: The Lakota people were the first to call this place “mako sica” or “land bad.” Extreme temperatures, lack of water, and the exposed rugged terrain led to this name. In the early 1900’s, French-Canadian fur trappers called it “les mauvais terres pour traverse,” or “bad lands to travel […]
The definition of mesmerize is -to hold the attention of (someone) entirely : to interest or amaze (someone) so much that nothing else is seen or noticed-. That was me in making this image! Almost to the point of being dizzy, the striations in the landscape in front of me were almost blinding and perfectly […]
It’s passion that drives me. I’m always attuned to what I see when out in the field and want to understand the emotions they evoke while trying to align them into a coherent thought. Often the landscape will offer its story or theme without too much consternation on my part. Sometimes though it is very […]
This is where the prairie grasslands suddenly end and the eroded cliffs that have become known as badlands just as suddenly begin! This land has been so ruthlessly ravaged by wind and water that it has become picturesque at a minimum and breathtaking at its best. The Badlands are a wonderland of bizarre, colorful spires […]
The Yampa River is formed from the confluence of the Bear River and Phillips Creek just east of the town of Yampa in northwestern Colorado. From Yampa, Colorado, the river flows north through Steamboat Springs, where it turns abruptly west. Near the small town of Milner the Elk River joins the Yampa which continues west […]
It’s the landmark. You can see it from most places along the rim if you are touring the area. There are overlooks that feature it. Steamboat rock and the confluence of the Yampa and Green rivers, where it rests, can be reached by road from the rim in about an hour’s time if the roads […]
Echo Park where the Yampa and the Green River join is a very remote area today. That wasn’t to be when prospecting began on a dam site there that would have drowned the area for hundreds of miles up stream and would have made a reservoir hundreds of feet deep exactly when I made this […]
Norman Maclean wrote in his book A River Runs Through It And Other Stories: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks […]
Our summer outing covered all that but seemed somehow constrained mostly due to the relentless, almost continues terrain known as badlands. They range in one way or another from Utah and Colorado through both the Dakotas. In an open battle now with time and geography I’m Consciously trying to “knock off” national parks I’ve not […]
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