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SPRING 2018 ISSUE 01 / VOL . 03
Badlands National Park features an alien landscape of ravines , ridges and colored rock layers .
The next day , I took the Harley down State Route 44 . The lush green landscape of the Black Hills gave way to the forbidding and bizarre desolation of Badlands National Park . On the outskirts , I photographed typically Western scenes of cattle grazing against mountain backdrops . The grasslands quickly disappeared and I found myself riding through arid terrain , flat desert plains leading to jagged mountains and intricate mazes of weird rock formations . I stared out from my helmet at an alien landscape : colored rock layers , narrow ravines , deep gullies , knife-sharp ridges , buttes and pinnacles rising up out of the desert like petrified sea monsters , looking like no place I had ever seen on this earth . Signs warned of rattlesnakes , and plague among the prairie dogs . The extreme heat was enervating . I worried that if I dropped the Harley out here , I ’ d be eaten by buzzards .
Riding up Nemo Road to legendary Deadwood , the quintessential lawless Western