The main reason we drove along the dirt Sage Creek Road in the Badlands was to see this prairie dog town. We didn’t know there was another town along the paved road in the other direction.
There are at least three identifiable prairie dogs in the above photo. One is crouching on its mound just above the chair seat about even with the top of the chair. The other two are in the extreme upper right. You can also identify several piles made by buffalo. The town was huge, extending for about half a mile along the road and out into the field at least to the ridge in the middle distance.
The prairie dog in these photos was about six feet off the road. He was a bit nervous when we stopped the car nearby and took pictures out the window, but he didn’t disappear — until I got out and pulled out the chair.
Is this the town off the dirt road? This is the place where we walked and my son’s shoes fell apart. It had been a very rainy summer with floods that had closed parts of I-90 and all this dirt was mud that was more like tar. Good times, good times.
It is. I don’t think it’s rained since then. There were inch-wide cracks in the ground and a total fire and smoking ban.