Woke up to a beautiful sunrise and much improved weather. The temperature was down to the 70’s and cloudy with a nice breeze, definitely better than yesterday.

Got all geared up and headed out to do some hiking off-trail and look for some more fossils and animals. We began our hiking by following a  riverbed, with the dry weather they’ve had for the last few weeks, it was mostly dry. We hiked about a mile back following the winding and twisting of the river. Didn’t have much luck finding any fossils, but did find a number of ‘Mudballs’. They form when a chunk of the very sticky mud starts rolling downstream in a storm and pickup rocks along the way. We found them from about one inch in diameter to two feet. If you broke one, it was just layers of stones and mud stuck together. We’ve never seen them before (or didn’t recognize them). We did meet some new friends along the way, we found several Plains Spadefoot Toads hanging out near areas where the mud was still damp or wet. Seemed so odd to see an amphibian living in such a harsh desert-like environment. They were very friendly and also very photogenic!. We also saw a flock of some sort of cliff nesting birds that I believe were Rock Pigeons, something scared them and the whole group took off at once. Once they settled down they all landed on the cliff face within a few seconds. There were also numerous butterflies around, but they were hard to get a picture of. We found a number of rocks in the stream bed that came from the Black Hills and were moved here at the end of the last Ice Age. On the trip back to the truck, Brian found what we believe to be a jawbone from one of the Rocky Mountain Sheep. There were a few bones scattered around, but the teeth were too big to be any other animal.

We had lunch and cooled down in the truck as the clouds had cleared out and the temperature rose into the 80’s. Then it was off for another off-trail hiking adventure! We found a number of assorted fossil pieces and got to see some amazing scenery along the way. We were starting to tire out and realized we had a good mile back to the truck and it was now approaching 90°.  Luckily the way back was a bit easier as we followed the flats along the streams instead of scrambling around on the bluffs. We managed to find every plant that had seeds that spread by sticking to your clothes and shoes. When we got back to the camper for dinner, Brian spent about an hour picking them off his shoes and socks!

After dinner we headed back into the Badlands for one last sunset. Our original plan was to stay another day, but we’ve decided to move on to Custer to experience the Black Hills.