Badlands Sunrise

Before I go any farther, I want to apologize for this post. I grew up on a lake so I know how easy it is to take a gazillion pictures of the sun rising or setting. I had gobs of them, and they seemed to pretty much all look the same. That's not quite the case here, although I am having as much trouble choosing just a couple of these as I did choosing sunsets over the water 30 years ago. So you are about to be subjected to eleven photos of the sun rising--and the moon setting--over the Badlands of South Dakota. It was not my intention to do an entire post with these images, but there you have it. I hope you can forgive me.

After the triumphant capture of the full moon rising over the Badlands, and Lisa's near miss with a large bighorn sheep ram, we ate a late dinner and turned in. We were to wake early the next day, because there would be a full moon SETTING over the Badlands, right about the time of the sun RISING over the Badlands. That's the beauty of the full moon--it rises and falls with the sun. We knew where we were headed this time--right back to Norbeck Pass and those dramatic buttes and spires.

I still did not have my tripod ready to go so I hand-held all these shots. The good thing about that is I could be a lot more mobile and get different things in the foreground, as well as easily turn 360°. What we were ultimately waiting for was the moment the sun touched the spires, but by golly it was all gorgeous.

There's not much more to say about it, so I will leave you with these images of the Badlands at sunrise. Remember--if you click the first image you will get a slideshow of larger images to scroll through.