The stunning panorama of Badlands National Park rests just an hour east of Rapid City, South Dakota. This 244,000-acre landscape is both barren and beautiful. Wind and rain erosion have created an eerie moonscape of deep gorges and jagged sawtooth ridges with rock layers painted in subtle hues of sand, rose, gold and green.

Bison (aka buffalo) were reintroduced here almost 50 years ago, and the park also offers critical habitat for pronghorn, bighorn sheep, coyote, deer and rattlesnakes, as well as eagles, hawks and turkey vultures which can be seen soaring above. For millennia, American Indians used this sacred land, which provided both physical and spiritual sustenance, as hunting grounds.