 The Badlands of South Dakota |
 The American West opens up ahead as you cross the Missouri, westbound.
The Great Plains undulate gently over the horizon, garnished only by the creamy twin ribbons of the Interstate; the flat green cornfields of the Midwest and the sprawling, rust-streaked cities of the East lie far behind. This is the America you imagined since childhood...
Ranger Daniel Peterson ‘kinda loves vultures’, he concedes, as he warms to his topic before an audience of campers gathered under the cloudless, deepening skies. Bald eagles, night hawks, red-tailed, Swainsons or marsh hawks: watch for them hitching a ride on thermal currents.
The ‘buffalo’ or bison whose hooves once thundered by the thousand across the plains were soon slaughtered, their numbers decimated. Not only was this a colossal cash crop, but the invaders soon realised that without the bison around which the Plains Indian way of life revolved, these too would fade conveniently into near-extinction.
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