This is a really cool photo. I took it at Theodore Roosevelt National Park – a glorious muddy Middle Earth kind of landscape. And at first glance, that’s all the photo is: a sweeping panorama of what that place looks like. But if you look closer – you can see a small figure – standing on a ledge, in the middle of all of that glorious muddy wasteland. That’s my boyfriend at the time. It was raining that day, so we were wearing huge billowing ponchos, and the poncho is kind of billowing around him, like a cape,
It looks like it could be a still from The Dark Knight, a lonely superhero contemplating the problems of the earth, all by himself.
Or pondering the road to Mordor.
That’s gorgeous, Sheila.
Yes! Mordor! Even better!!
Badlands! I stopped at the visitor center for the south side of the park years ago. I was out of time to stay over and was pretty much hiked-out by that part of my trip. I still want to go back someday though. I’ve always thought horseback would be the best way to tour that park, but I don’t really know.
Dave E – YES – Badlands … my bad … Or is TR National Park the same thing? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The Badlands were the most fantastical place I have ever been – I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I recommend trying to go there on, ahem, a SUNNY day because the entire place becomes a river of mud. We camped in the middle of nowhere, with the rain pouring on our tent – it was kind of awesome.
No, you got it right. TR is the official name of the park but the area is also known as the badlands. When I was there it was sunny and dry and a bit warm for September. It was a desert compared to all of the rolling fields of Montana that I had just driven through. Just the small parts I saw were pretty amazing.
You really can understand why they are called The Badlands. A more forbidding foreign landscape you can’t even imagine!