When the Air Quality Index is low, your SDPB Outdoors Correspondent knows it's time to lace the boots up for the common good. Something about wandering the Badlands in a sullen haze opens doors of perception -- maybe the smoke from faraway wildfires is all the psychedelics a South Dakotan really needs.
Last Friday, your correspondent ventured into Badlands National Park's seldom seen Palmer Creek unit. The only way in is via a gravel road, then two-track, that runs East from the BIA 27, across from the White River Visitor Center. (A sign indicates that this road leads to St. Mary Magdalene Cemetery). A high-clearance 4WD is a must here.
About three miles in, you'll cross into the Northwest corner of the Palmer Creek Unit. From here, maps indicate that the road does eventually reenter the unit, but not before it becomes impassable. So for now, this may be the only access to the least accessible parcel of Badlands National Park.
No matter, Chevro-legs, Badlands experience and the right backwoods kit can probably get you anywhere in the unit from here.
Your correspondent started early, as local dawn fog mingled seamlessly with traveling haze.
From the parking spot, I followed a Badlands wall East then North, around its edge, then South, climbing to the top at a low point, where instead of grassy table, I found a maze of dry drainages, a higher version of what's down below. The plateau lowered gently to the South, then ascended back to the wall's edge at a high point with the most panoramic, full-circle views I've encountered in the 'Lands, unimpeded by roads or any human presence at all. From here, you could go back the way you came or attempt an ill-advised descent somewhere on the wall.
Standing atop Palmer Creek Panorama Point (43.51584, -102.44052) the circuitous, mad genius geometry of the Lands drifts hazily into other, un-monitored and non-monetizable dimensions. Doors of perception swing open saloon style. Air Quality isn't everything.