Badlands National Park – Freeway Gypsy

Dreamers dream.

Doers do.

But can we be dreamers and doers?

Absolutely.

Will it be easy?

No.

Will it be worth it?

Absolutely.

Nothing worth it is ever easy.

We’ve officially been on the road for 1 year as of June 18, 2018. While we started living in our RV a few months before we started traveling the RV, we’re calling this date our anniversary. This is the date we chose to quit just thinking about doing what we wanted to do and we actually did it. We haven’t had a city to call home in over a year and that’s quite thrilling. We’ve had temporary homes, but no permanent homes. At this point, we barely even consider Jacksonville our “home base.” Sure, it’s still where we go to doctor appointments, receive our mail, and have a storage unit that keeps getting smaller and smaller, but we have no physical presence there anymore.

In the last year, we’ve:

visited 25 different states
upgraded to a new camper
had a puppy join our family
met hundreds of nice fellow RVers
checked about a million things off our bucket list

The number one question we’re asked is: Where is your favorite place you’ve been? And, without any hesitation, all 3 of us will always answer South Dakota. We loved Custer State Park and Badlands National Park so much and those locations were some of our very first stops – only about 2 weeks into our adventure.

This is just a shout out to anyone out there even thinking about taking a risk and doing something crazy. Whether that’s making the decision to go full-time RVing or anything else life may be throwing your way, kudos to you for even thinking about making a move and doing something crazy. And for all of you thinking about starting the full-time RV journey, reach out to us if there’s anything we can do to help ease your nerves. We’re huge advocates of the lifestyle and would love to help give you that push to start the journey like we did. You definitely won’t regret it!

Welcome to the Badlands, a land full of incredible mountainous terrain, hiking trails, and views with an infinite sky. This is some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen. The rocky lands have various colors running through them in line formations. The tall spires of rocks look like sand castles, the kind where you take wet sand and make dripping formations. Badlands National Park is a must do in South Dakota.

This was our first close encounter with bison and it was an adventurous one. Once we came across the large herd, we were able to watch them eat, waller in the dirt, and even fight each other right in front of our truck.

Watch the whole video! About halfway through it, 2 of the bison start fighting each other!

The highlight of Badlands though – the prairie dogs. These cute little creatures chirp and squeal to communicate with each other. They’re little scaredy cats though. They’re fast and they run from everything! Listen to the one little guy in the video below!

There were plenty of other animals to see as well.

On our way to Badlands, we made sure to stop at a crazy little place called Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. This store originally opened in 1931 and business was bad so they started giving out free water to those passing through. They knew Mount Rushmore would be finished soon and had hopes of of that bringing in more traffic to their little store. Well between Mount Rushmore, the free water, and the 5 cent coffee, they succeeded and became an iconic South Dakota road trip destination. The entire place is divided into little miniature shops (almost like a small mall) and that includes their famous cafe and donut shop.