Is posting a 4 part video of your family hiking in the badlands as bad as making family members sit through 300 slides of the vacation they did not go on?  I decided it’s not, since you can stop watching at any time and I’ll never know, lol.  So you are spared the “I’d better look interested or look rude” awkwardness.

Anyway, the Badlands were a completely amazing part of South Dakota.  Sections of it had Prairie Dogs which I’ll show you later.  They are cute little things!  It was extremely hot and dry.  The eroded landscape reminded me of what I imagined parts of the moon are like.  Some areas had beautiful colors–which I’ll show you later in the week too.

We stopped and hiked at one point on a medium difficulty trail.  It got super steep and the sandstone crumbled underfoot making it slippery too.  At one point we missed the trail markings and got into an area that was really tough.  You’ll hear Darren ask me something and you can’t quite make out that I said, “I think I’m having a panic attack.”  To which my Dear Son said, “It’s okay Mom, you can do it.”  And Darren said, “Can you breath through it or do we need to stop?”  Which I thought was a very sweet way to respond.  Right at that moment I felt there was no safe place to step that wouldn’t slip out from under me and send me rolling down the mountain to my death.  But then I did take a deep breath and I did take another step and I was okay again.

If you haven’t fallen asleep by video 4, you’ll see we did make it to the top :). At least the videos are short :).