Badlands and Carhenge

Classy Nomad's dispersed site was level and off the dirt road.

Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, Nomad View Dispersed Camping was our home after Pierre, South Dakota. The dirt road entrance was off Hwy 240 just south of Wall, SD. We enter where the two radio towers are located and followed the rim road to a level spot down from a small steep hill. The dispersed site rules state that you can only camp in designated camping spots away from the rim's edge. Spots are spacious. We had views of the grasslands/Badlands looking east. We enjoyed pulling our chairs up to the edge of the wall and taking in the views that first night after we got set up for the next two days. Later we would experience some unsettled weather the first night and early morning in the Badlands that included strong winds, gusting to 50 mph, thunder and lightning with torrential rain.

The next day we drove the Hwy 240 to through the Badlands to the Cedar Park Visitors Center and Park Headquarters; we took a few brief hikes before returning to get the whole Badlands experience...beautiful desolation.

Our spectacular July 7 sunrise and the approaching weather.

We departed early on July 7 because of some reported incoming thunderstorms we wanted to avoid. The ground around our trailer got wet enough for us to be concerned about getting stuck, so we made it an early day. The lighting early in the morning and the clouds in the sky made for some beautiful landscape photographs.

At 6 AM we had Hwy 240 all to ourselves with the weather behind us.

We traveled into the Badlands on Hwy 240 before turning south down a dirt road towards the abandoned town of Conata to Hwy 44.

Our route south would take us through some of the more remote parts of the Badlands in the southwest corner and Wounded Knee, South Dakota crossing the border and into the panhandle of Nebraska.

Our first stop in Nebraska was to visit Carhenge, a replica of England's Stonehenge located near the city of Alliance, Nebraska, in the High Plains region of the United States. Instead of being built with large standing stones, as is the case with the original Stonehenge, Carhenge is formed from vintage American automobiles, all covered with gray spray paint. Built by Jim Reinders, it was dedicated at the June 1987 summer solstice. In 2006, a visitor center was constructed to serve the site.

Carhenge was conceived in 1982 by Jim Reinders as a memorial to his father, who once lived on the farm now containing Carhenge.

While living in England, he studied the structure of Stonehenge, which helped him to copy the structure's shape, proportions, and size. It was built in 1987 by Reinders and a crew of approximately 35 family members, and dedicated at the Summer Solstice. Other automobile sculptures were subsequently added to the location of Carhenge, which is now known as the Car Art Reserve.